I met Professor Haas-Kotzegger during my Global Branding class at the Vienna University of Business and Economics in Austria. I was always highly interested by the real-life examples that she would give in class to illustrate concepts from the course. My Brand Blog on this portfolio website is actually, in part, thanks to her class. We have kept in touch since that class and I was eager to ask her a little about her international role as the Marketing Coordinator for the East Adriatic Markets at Kraft Foods.
At her position at Kraft Foods, Professor Haas-Kotzegger interacted with people from different cultures on a daily basis. In 2005, when Professor Haas-Kotzegger was responsible for that geographic region, the countries were just getting settled with the transition to a market economy. This uncertainty created a lot of tensions between countries as they fought for the highest growth and for the most foreign investment. To complicate things further, some of the countries had recently ended a war between them. So, as one can imagine, the people of those countries were not on the best of terms with each other. Professor Haas-Kotzegger recalls moments of tension when one of the local managers would say a “bad joke” and when she would later have to mediate between the colleagues to ensure the successful operation of the company.
Professor Haas-Kotzegger was very successful in her role because of her cultural as well as professional background. She was working at an international company in Germany at the time when she was offered the position. Kraft Foods believed that Professor Haas-Kotzegger’s Slovenian background, her international business degree and her experience in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) would make her perfect for the position. And indeed it did. Her Slovenian background had taught her to appreciate all cultures and to be patient and open-minded whenever a misunderstanding arose. Her cultural background also helped her be viewed as an insider and gave her credibility when dealing with tensions between the different country offices. She is a strong believer in delegation and trusted the local offices to fulfill their responsibilities.
Whenever Kraft Foods expanded, it acquired local companies and sent Austrian expatriates to integrate the company into the Kraft company culture. Then, the expats trained local employees to take over and trusted them to do a good job. Professor Haas-Kotzegger believes that giving someone the necessary skills and then trusting that they will be able to handle themselves is the best way to do business. Just as important, however, is to show them that you care about the colleagues and that you are there to support them whenever they need help. So she tried to visit the offices on a regular basis and made sure to stay a couple days. In her view, managers that just fly over for a meeting and fly out right away are managers who don’t care about nurturing a business and making sure that it’s as efficient as possible. Hearing a manager speak about their colleagues like that was a little strange to me, having grown up in a very individualistic and short-term oriented society. However, given that Austria and the East Adriatic region is more collectivist and long-term oriented, it made sense that Professor Haas-Kotzegger would work on making sure that every employee reaches their full potential; the more she invests in them now, the more they will offer in the future.
In the end, it was very interesting to hear how Professor Haas-Kotzegger had come into her role as an international markets manager. I hope to someday be able to use her advice on cultural understanding and conflict management in my career as well. Hoping to work for an international company in the food and beverage sector, I know that I will have to work with employees from various different cultures. I also know that I will have do my best to learn from consumers from various cultures in order to create and promote a product that is relevant to their everyday life. I plan to deal with both of these challenges with open-mindedness and sincerity, just like Professor Haas-Kotzegger has.