Essay: Maori Culture's Impact On Business In NZ

1. Discuss the significance and contribution of M?ori culture to the mission statements and guiding values of New Zealand business.

2. Discuss the significance and contribution of M?ori culture to policies within New Zealand business. You may select specific policy areas like human resource management, sustainability or procurement.

3. Discuss the significance and contribution of M?ori culture to how staff carry out their day to day work with internal (other staff) and external (customers, suppliers, local community, local and central government) stakeholders.

4. Evaluate changes that have occurred in culture awareness and how these are demonstrated by New Zealand’s social framework (families, organisations, local and central government) and approach to heritage management. You should refer to relevant legislation in your discussion.

Pre-European Economic Conditions Based on Maori Culture

The pre-European economic condition based on Maori culture was independent in both consuming and producing resources as per their own requirements. The earlier trading concept follows the method of exchanging gifts, involved the inter-tribal trading resources. Then, Maori culture more smoothly builds up the commercial relationships, like by battering food, the ground-based assets in the altercation of European technology. The unique ability of this tribe has helped them to attract people through the traditional customs and norms in business schemes. Maori successfully operated enterprises, transporting and trading within New Zealand and abroad by 1850s.

New Zealand is considered a small market among the international markets of countries like China and India. The developed nations around the world are competing in the global market; New Zealand needs to have to be unique and have the value proposition for entering the international market and which, most of the larger competitors will be lacking. That value proposition of New Zealand is Maori culture. Maori economy is the commercial powerhouse of the New Zealand economy. New Zealand’s business market involves the indigenous product and services, which was the impact of Maori culture. The Maori goods and services are unique among the international business market because of the Tikanga Maori aspects of those products and services. The design or the materials not only make the Maori products different from others but also the ways of their dealings in their business. Many Maori organizations are significant contributors to the New Zealand economy. In this new era of business, people want to know the story behind every product like people wants to know what the products whakapapa (genealogy). There have been seen that the prosperity of the tribal business even in the depths of the last recession period (Hanusch, 2015). This business is helping in the increased expansion of sectors like the property, power generation, forest, digital technology, and telecommunication. This Maori tribal business involves a partnership with governments, private organizations and overseas investors (Petrie, 2013).

The impact of Maori culture affects positively the economy of New Zealand and holds the most significant role in the growth of New Zealand economically as well as socially as the contribution of Maori tribes sketches a robust development in different businesses of New Zealand in every aspect. The culture and diversities of Maori tribe become a hallmark of most of the businesses of New Zealand nowadays. Hence, most of New Zealand’s business tries to follow the Maori culture for their business growth by involving the Mori history in the products, and also every product involves a story behind them, which influences positively on the national economy. The Maori business is considered as the ideal model of the enterprise, as this business operates within the entity, which is owned and controlled by Maori, and it is also partially government funded. The cultural authenticity and flexibility are the key factors of this tribal business (Love, 2017). The long-term relationship with the Maori Enterprises helps New Zealand business to prosper and participate in the competition of the Global Business market. The essential factors on which the New Zealand business depends are the cultural competency that is the knowledge of the Maori language, culture and the ability to implement that culture, the relational competency that is growing relationships with the Maori Entrepreneurs and the technical competencies that is the promises of delivering. The recent Maori business has various extents, and it is continuously developing as the major contributor towards the extensive economy of New Zealand (Berryman, SooHoo&Nevin, 2013). The cultural distinctiveness provides additional value to the Maori cultural goods and services, the different worldview and the interpretive lens enables various approaches towards the innovations and problem solutions. Maori also includes other services such as health, cultural, community, recreational and personal services, property services, primary sector and the manufacturing sector (Dyall et al., 2014).

Maori Culture's Unique Ability to Attract People

There is a huge impact of Maori culture on New Zealanders in respect to policies such as human resource management. According to the Employment Relation Act, 2000, the business needs to build up the productive relationship with the employees by promoting confidences and mutual trust in every aspect of the employment environment. In the last ten years, there have been vast changes as the business service providers merge, divests and also re-invent them. The human resource management mostly recruits the employees through the web that is most of the New Zealand organizations have their job pages, and some organizations also have the interactive software, which is associated with the workflow enabling personal interactions with the candidates. There has been an emerging trend of the business operation process as the impact of Maori business enables the New Zealand Business to compete in the global market. The business introduces quarterly updates, and the online systems enable the progress against the objectives. The Human Resource Management sets smart goals and objectives for the employees and provides effective coaching to the employees for achieving those goals and objectives. The HR professionals are facing challenges such as in achieving growth in the emerging competitions in the global business market, in evaluating the relative qualities and strengths of the internal processes, value chain analysis.

New Zealand business identified sustainability as the key factor, for competing in the global market and acknowledged its role in growing its brand reputation, which ensures the trust of the peoples, stakeholders. This tribal business also finds sustainability as the significant factor for attracting capital, innovation, increasing competitions and retaining the talents. The employees are significant factors for the business sustainability. This tribal business delivers simultaneously on the economic, social and the environmental factors for ensuring the long-term benefits of the organization. The increasing demands of the customers and the society have brought up the sustainability factor to the surface. There are different activities of Maori culture, which are based on tribal assets, commercial transaction, Maori services, Maori house designs and the entrepreneur ideas of Maori tribes. As the Maori tribes usually do not incorporate with their morals and ethics in business purpose, their business policies can be defined as the most sustainable policies for growing a business in any aspect. Although there are no specific patterns of Maori businesses, there are some basic dissimilarities among the Maori and a kaupapa business (Grimes, MacCulloch & McKay 2015). According to the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (2003), the Maori traditions are solely based on individual trusts and the incorporations, for the growth of the business.

Maori Economy: The Commercial Powerhouse of New Zealand

The Maori business has great influence upon the New Zealanders and the peoples of Maori tribes are very determined to their work and solely committed towards Maori culture, so that, whenever they are starting a new business, their entrepreneurial activities draws a picture of growth as well as indicates the values of Maori culture. Their basic focus is on tourism where they can showcase their culture and at the same time, they put their instinct cultural values and mottos in their products and services so that, they can attract the peoples from different places which is significant enough to increase the national economy. Therefore, Maori culture is the most important necessity in any business of New Zealand as per today’s statistics (McNeill, 2016).

There is another noticeable factor of Maori culture, that is their working structure with different stakeholders on a daily basis, which constantly improves the individual motto of internal stakeholders and attracts the external stakeholders at the same time. In the case of internal stakeholders, they use to follow a holistic approach, which provides the intrinsic values of Te Reo M?ori. The definition of success for Maori tribes is a little bit different from others. They believe that inner peace is more important than economic growth. Every individual of Maori culture should respect their cultural values and maintained as well to grow their inner peace (Ladkin& Spiller, 2013).

On the other hand, focusing on work for money does not make any sense for them. Maori culture believes that people become more efficient whenever they can change the way of thinking, it is more important to replace money into happiness than to convert money into happiness. Buying any materialistic product makes people happy for an instance, but for achieving that inner peace, one should believe in every cultural connections and instinct values because it gives more happiness than to pursue a material product. So, they need to focus on the creative and performing arts, books, videos, music, and provide all these facilities to their internal stakeholders on a daily basis to improve the way of thinking of their peoples and to grow their inners instinct as well. Now, in the case of external stakeholders like customers, suppliers, local community, local and central government, they usually focus on their products and their languages, which attracts the visitors. Their businesses are almost based on tourism. Therefore, they are the suppliers of their own. They usually put their ideas of cultural values on their products in their languages, which makes the entire product different from other cultures. These are the main attractions of Maori culture and people usually visits here for being the witness of this exceptional culture, for enjoying and cherishing the different values of Maori culture and for buying the unique products as well (Anaya, 2015).

Maori Culture Provides Additional Value to New Zealand's Business Market

The customers are more interested in those products and services, which has history behind it and the Maori products and services are rich in cultural aspects. This is the ultimate reason why the customers are always attracted towards the authentic design of their products and services. Not only the designs of the products attract the customers, but also their way of dealings attracts people. Every product and the services represent their rich cultural values towards their customers. The suppliers always look after the cultural authentication of that product, which is the most important factor in their products and services. The central government has prime responsibilities towards the Maori that is the attempt to work through past Waitangi treaty protests by the negotiations and trying to deal with them by settlements. By doing this, the Crown and Maori both can focus on the Maori problems and the better development in the future process. The government also has a responsibility to promote and retain their indigenous language and culture. This is important for the government to involve them, empower them and raise their average achievement level from their present level, equal to the rest of the society (Wepa, 2015).

The increasing cultural awareness strengthens the relationship between the Maoris in the south and the local authorities. There are two councils in the country, which represents Maori that is the Wairoa District Council and Waikato Regional Council. The Local Electoral Act 2001, allows the councils to form the distinct zones for Maori. The public event like the Matariki (Maori New Year) mainly highlights the cultural variety of the place with the celebration of collaboration, friendships, arts, and harvest. The new training program has been introduced, which helps the planners, the engineers and the architects to be more responsive culturally as per the Maori perspectives and the values while designing the living places and the surrounding. The local institutions, the universities of Auckland, Victoria, and the Auckland Council supports this cultural awareness and prepares their student to work on the Maori culture. This training program has been specially introduced for the students to ensure that the future professionals will be involved in designing and will be better prepared in working with the Maori culture. This program in understanding the Maori culture has recognized an industry gap.  As the industry professionals are more culturally mindful of the Maori traditions, they will be more engaging and building relationships with Maoris (Burford, 2017).

Sustainability: A Key Factor for Maori Business Success

Nowadays Maori people are present throughout New Zealand, and many people are actively keeping their culture and language alive. In the Maori community, the Maori people focuses on the social, cultural and the spiritual life (Tsui&Tollefson, 2017). The preschool children are encouraged to speak in the Maori language, and the primary and the secondary schools have involved the Maori language in the curriculum. The traditional carvers create the intricate works, which helps the Maori culture to keep alive. Every carved piece has a history behind it, and it can only be understandable by the peoples, those who know this culture. The ancient values and beliefs of this tribal culture are accepted and valued by New Zealand’s leaders. Around 130 years ago, the Maori tourism was started that is the local Maoris guides the visitors through the central plateau region of New Zealand. The traditional arts like the carving, weaving, kapahaka(group performance), moko(tattoo),whaikorero(oratory)are practiced in all over the country and this represents the rich and the varied Maori culture.

Hakarepresents the history rich in the folklore and a legend, which reflects the Maori heritage. The current tradition suggests that it was mainly the domain of the men but the legends and the history reflect different story whereas the story of the haka is about the female sexuality power (Papesch, 2015). As stated by the legend, from the sun of God Ra, haka was derived. Most of the people think that haka means war dance but the word haka means a simple dance or songs, which are accompanied by dance (De Marco, 2016). Nowadays, New Zealanders are great customers with haka like the modern All Blacks perform haka with pride and passionately and this increased its recognition as an icon of New Zealand (Palmer, 2016). The New Zealand army has their own and unique haka, which was both, opened and ended by the female soldiers and also acknowledged special position in the armed forces. Today, haka is considered as the unique form of the National expression. In New Zealand, the trade delegations and the other various forms of functions increasingly requesting the haka groups to accompany them. Haka is considered as a unique symbol of New Zealand’s culture and identity, and this helps to internationalize haka in the global village (Brougham &Haar, 2013).

The Heritage New Zealand PouhereTaonga Act (2014) guides the heritage of New Zealand and promotes the identification and protection of the New Zealand heritage (Magallanes, 2015). This act provides for the heritage covenants and also prohibits the destruction and the modification of the archeological site. The Protected Objects Act (1975), administered by the Ministry of culture and heritage, protects the New Zealand’s object from the illegal export and import of the foreign objects and protects the Maori culture as the objects are dependent on the Maori culture, this act protect every object of rich cultural value and saves it from getting illegally exported (Norton, 2017). The Conservation Act (1987) guides the department of conservation of the New Zealand historical resources, and this act promotes the conservation of the natural resources and the culture of New Zealand (Dodson, 2014). In all the ways mentioned above, New Zealand is protecting its culture and spreading cultural awareness among the New Zealanders.

Maori Culture: An Important Necessity for New Zealand Business

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