The Assignment of a German Manager to the UK. Using the Example of a Football Manager

Inhaltsangabe oder Einleitung

The world of work and employment gets more and more international. It is a common case that companies are looking for manpower all around the world to enhance their ability of dealing with internationalisation. In almost every case there is barriers for both employer and employee to deal with that come from intercultural differences between both the country where the company is based and where the employee is coming from.

This seminar paper examines the intercultural differences between the United Kingdom and Germany by the example of the engagement of Jürgen Klopp as a German manager of Liverpool Football Club in the United Kingdom. In order to get a conclusion on how Klopp can be one of the most honored individuals in his subject in just five years’ time, it is essential to work out the cultural differences and similarities between both countries at first. Therefore, both British and German business culture get observed before comparing both by reference to the cultural dimensions-model by Geert Hofstede. Also, the respective impact on working situations is elucidated by reference to standard situations.
In the last part, the theoretical approach gets exemplified with the leadership style of Jürgen Klopp as a manager in the United Kingdom, having a lot of success and how this is transferable into the management world.

For reasons of clarity and comprehensibility and due to the fact, that England is the by far biggest part of the United Kingdom, this paper will go into detail with England most of the time and place less importance on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Furthermore, there is often talk from “players” which refers to the example of Jürgen Klopp being a football manager. This can also be compared to employees or members of a project team.