Cultural resistance to performance reviews: McDonald’s in the Middle East

Hello and welcome to this session. My name is Dr. Tinkuma Edafioghor, and I'm a senior lecturer in human resource management at the University of the West of England in the United Kingdom. Today, we just want to look at how McDonald's, one of the world's largest fast food chains, encountered challenges implementing performance reviews in its Middle Eastern operations. We'll look at the cultural resistance managers faced, the actions that they took, and the outcomes, with implications for global human resource management.

Let's set the scene. McDonald's is one of the biggest global fast food brands, as I said earlier, and it is famous for standardization, and that be it in its Big Mac or the drive-through process or even its HR systems and processes. McDonald's expanded into markets like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The company tried to bring the same US-style annual performance reviews that worked in the US back home. The goal was consistency across various regions or all the regions, making sure employees were evaluated fairly and by the same global standards.

Here's where the problem began. Employees in the Middle East weren't very receptive to these reviews. Why was that? Well, in cultures that place a high value on hierarchy and harmony, direct feedback, especially negative feedback, can be seen as very disrespectful. Instead of motivating employees, the reviews sometimes embarrassed them. Some people even feared losing face in front of their managers. What McDonald's thought would be a constructive HR practice actually caused discomfort and resistance. This shows how performance management can't always be copied and pasted from one culture or country to another. To tackle this challenge, what did McDonald's do?