Company Background of Ben & Jerry’s
In 1978, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. was established in Vermont, Burlington. According to Material Handling Management (2008), Ben & Jerry’s operate with “more than 650 employees in three facilities, all in Vermont – South Burlington, Waterbury and St. Albans. Corporate offices are located at South Burlington site.” Ben & Jerry’s hold ‘Free Cone Day: free scoops of Ben & Jerry’s’ once a year to mark its annual anniversaries nationwide. Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is founded in 1985 to offer funding to community-oriented schemes. The board of directors of the company “commits 7.5% of the company’s annual pretax profits to philanthropy.” (http://www.benandjerrysfoundation.org/who-we-are.html) Ben & Jerry’s
Translation lacks vocabulary equivalence because one word can mean different words in other languages. Next, idiomatic equivalence is where idioms are translated which causes misunderstanding to another. Translation also lacks grammatical-syntactical equivalence. In order to understand word meanings, it is required to understand the language’s grammar. Another translation problem is experiential equivalence where it involves translating words that represents an object or experience which is not present in other cultural language. Finally, conceptual equivalence “refers to abstract ideas that may not exist in the same fashion in different languages.” (Jandt, 2010: 137)

Different culture models focus on different aspects of organizations. For instance, Charles Handy (1989) model which is based on Harrison (1972) work, categorized into four culture styles, power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture. Schein (1985) created a model with three levels, artifacts and creations, value and beliefs, and basic assumptions. Deal and Kennedy (1982) corporate culture discussed about speed of feedback and degree of risk. Schein’s model will be used to analyze the issue of Ben & Jerry’s. Hofstede’s model is aimed to reveal “differences in work-related values by analyzing national cultures along five main dimensions: ‘power distance’; ‘individualism’/collectivism’; ‘masculinity/feminity’; ‘uncertainty avoidance’; and ‘Confucian dynamism’.”