Cultural and Institutional Features and Predominant HR Policies in the UK and Germany - Essay Example

? Critically compare and contrast the major cultural and al features and predominant HR policies and practices in UK and Germany (Institution) (Course) (Tutor) (Date) Introduction Nearly all organizations are keen to establish a set of basic human resource practices and policies to govern the work place modalities, these policies and procedures are seen to be greatly affected by the cultural and institutional features of the country or region in which the organization is located. This paper seeks to not only establish and describe the predominant HR practices and policies in Germany and the UK, but also the prevailing major institutional and cultural features affecting the two countries. A Critical comparison of the major cultural and institutional features and predominant HR policies and practices in UK and Germany According to Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory the comparison between Germany and the UK. Both the two countries managed a score of 35 points on power distance. Germany is seen to be highly decentralized while at the same time it is also strongly supported by a large middle class. The Key management in various institutions have to carefully take into consideration any co-determination rights that may exist, in addition to its leadership being continually challenged to display appropriate levels of expertise. Extensive control is also one of the factors that is strongly disliked in Germany (Hofstede Centre 2013). In comparison to this, the British society has been noted to be strongly advocating for and believing that any inequalities that may happen to exist between people should be greatly minimized. Hofstede also shows that there are some inherent tensions in British culture as pertaining to one not being limited to how far they can be able to progress in life irrespective of where they were born on one hand, and the relative importance of birth rank on the other hand (Hofstede Centre 2013). UK scores a high of 89 on the individualism score for it to be considered among one of the highest countries on the individualistic score. The British people are considered to be a highly private and individualistic people. Children in the UK are often taught to always try and think for themselves in addition to their trying to find out how they can be able to effectively contribute to and play a role in society after establishing their unique purpose in life. In comparison to the British society, the German society attains a score of 67 on the Individualism score (Hofstede Centre 2013). German society tends to focus on parent-children relationships with little emphasis on uncles and aunts. German communication is ranked as being one of the highest scores globally in line with the accepted ideal of one being honest even if it hurts (Mooij 2007). With a high score of 66 points, the German society is highly regarded as being a mainly masculine society. Good performance is highly valued and the German school system is keen to spate children into several different types of schools when they reach the age of ten. The general sense is that people in Germany “live to work” and their tasks provide them with self esteem. In Comparison, the British society also attains a score of 66 in masculinity (Hofstede Centre 2013). The British society is also highly driven and success oriented. People in Britain also live to work and well defined and clear performance ambitions (Strangleman and Warren 2008). On the uncertainty avoidance score, the UK with a score of 35 is seen to be quite a happy nation (Gibson 2002). With the low score in UAI, the British as seen to be relatively comfortable in any ambiguous situations that they may happen to encounter. (Hofstede Centre 2013). The German score on the UAI index is also set at 35. The society tends to place a lot of importance on details so as to ascertain that a project has been well thought-out. Germans are seen to compensate for any high uncertainty on their part by strongly relying on their individual expertise (Mead and Andrews 2009). The Germans are seen to score a low of 31 points on the Hofstede’s Long term orientation. This makes the Germans mainly a moderately short term orientation culture. The German culture is seen to greatly respect traditions in addition to having relatively small propensity to saving habits as a result of the relatively strong social pressure of impatience towards one achieving quick results (Chaston 2012). At 25 points, the UK is seen to score lower than Germany. The UK’s planning horizons are seen to be short and intent on achieving quarterly goals and various quick results. Some of the inherent problems that have been raised in regards to Hofstede’s model include the term “power distance” should not be considered to be an independent variable and should instead to considered as part of the “Individualism vs. Collectivism” element. The “Masculinity vs. Femininity” is an inappropriate factor in the measuring of a social culture. Trompenaar’s system seeks to overcome these disadvantages by being more focus-oriented. It attempts to analyze what is on a people’s sight and minds, it also attempts speaks about the framework and logical organization of a culture’s behaviour. To do this trompenaar’s system evaluates seven different aspects which are; universalism-particularism, specific-diffuse, collectivism-individualism, sequential-synchronic, neural-emotional and Inner-directed-outer directed aspects. Using these focal points, tromenaar’s sytem is able effectively overcome these inherent disadvantages of Hofstede’s system (Moon and Choi 2001). German Institutional features are characterised by their having embraced some mainly Neo-Corporatist ideological features. According to Schmitter, one of the main merits of a neo-corporatism is the fact that adopting neo-corporatist institutional features is conducive to stimulating relatively high economic growth rates. There are less trade union strikes in Germany as Neo-corporatism allows for extensive discussions between management and workers (Birch 2007). The German institutional features are also marked by their active employment of constructive engagement with various trade unions in addition to having relatively high taxation rates. The German institutional features are also marked by their adoption of work councils. Adoption of work councils has caused the labour moment in Germany to be relatively very powerful at all levels from the shop to the boardroom. The work councils in Germany are very powerful and have authority over all personnel in an organization. The work councils must approve of all personnel transfers within an organization even if the transfer is only within a certain given department. As a result of the work councils, Germans tend to enjoy greater job security than workers in various other countries such as the United states and the UK (Hall and Hall 1990). The German laws make it relatively difficult to fire an employee and German firms have mostly resulted to simply bypassing incompetent employees during promotions or assigning them job niches where they will be deemed as causing the least damage (Hall and Hall 1990). In the UK, main institutional feature that has been mainly adopted is neo-liberalism. In this institutional feature, customers are considered to be the man agents in the economy and neo-liberalists consider it offensive for one to consider consumers as being rather weak in the face of the often large corporations. The ideology also advocates support for open markets, deregulation and economic liberalization (Payne 2012). Trade Unions are considered to be a key feature of the British Industrial relations system. Trade unions in the UK tend to focus on achieving three main objectives, these are; improving and providing various key opportunities that are designed to help the workers in the UK to advance towards full employment, helping in the continual maintenance and general improvement of the working conditions, hours and wages that employees receive, and constantly attempting to extend the influence that is exerted by the working class over the various industries in addition to arranging for their participation in management. As such it can be seen that trade unions in the UK have successfully provided various benefits for themselves in addition to their working towards the development of various social services in the state (Singh and Singh 2011). Human resource policies and procedures can be broadly described as the set of formal guidelines and rules that businesses have compiled and put in place to help them in the hiring of new staff members, their training, their frequent assessment, and any rewards that are to be given to their workforce (Hollinshead 2009). When these policies and procedures are carefully organized and disseminated in a form that is easy to use, they can serve a vital role in the pre-empting many of the misunderstandings that may happen to arise between an organization’s employees and its employers pertaining to the employees’ obligations and rights in the business environment (Redman and Wilkinson 2001: Harzing and Pinnington 2011). The United Kingdom has various human resource policies that in contrast to German HR practices where the human resource directors is not considered to be part of the board, in the UK, the human resource director is part of the board of directors. The human resource polices of the organization are usually, on the whole, carefully worked out at the human resource management head-office level. During the development of these policies, there is a constant liaison with the various on-the-spot executives. This is seen to be in contrast to German policies where the roles of the human resource manager are mostly taken up by the chairman of the board or the managing director (Brewster 1994). In contrast to the German human resource where the main career development method that is used is succession plans, in the UK, assessment centres and performance appraisals that involve information exchanges ad interviews carried out between a company executive and his respective chain of command are the main career advancement methods used. The UK career advancement system places more weight on the feasibility and method used in the career development (Brewster 1994). The British institutional framework is found to be more permissive as compared to that found in most of its other European countries neighbours (Brewster 1994). In contrast to these industrial relations and human resource management in the UK, German industrial relations and human resource management practices are subject to more binding and uniform regulations that are mostly based on the formal agreements and statute that have been negotiated and encompassed by all the parties in the agreement (Harzing and Pinnington 2011). The industrial relations scene in Germany is also more stable as compared to the UK’s; this has resulted to a situation that has seen the determination of the human resource management policies in a company being heavily dependent on work council determination. The work councils in German provide a close link between collective and individual employment relations and it is vital that their input is carefully considered and taken into account in the development of these human resource polices (Mu?ller-Jentsch and Weitbrecht 2003). As a result of the influence of the various foreign work cultures in Germany, the German work culture has undergone some profound changes from the various stereotypes that were often associated with it. However, it can be noted that the very formal and homogeneous “German” value system has not undergone any changes but has seen a pluralisation of lifestyles norms and values. It can thus be seen that within the German human resource work culture there happens to exist various subcultures which sometimes happen to have contradicting value systems (Mu?ller-Jentsch and Weitbrecht 2003). The German work culture is highly focused on the task at hand. (Schroll-Machl 2005). German companies have countless of procedures, rules, processes and regulations that have been formulated into their human resource policies. German organizations and business people tend to prefer using written agreements and contracts of all types. In the German human resource culture, there is a strong emphasis on time planning and management. Appointments are held in high regard and are precisely planned and strict adherence to the set times is expected. Punctuality is considered to be an indication of good manners (Curry 2001). The German culture is marked by very explicit and direct communication. Important statements are formulated openly and directly without any sugar coating. The communication might wrongly appear to be threatening and rude without intending to. Germans are seen to not easily recognize and respond to verbal subtleties such as various indirect hints (O'Creevy, Gooderham and Nordhaug 2005). German work culture policies are drawn to emphasise on the strict maintenance of the separation of the different spheres of an employee’s life. Behaviour is greatly modified in regards to whether a given individual is in an employee’s business or public life in addition to any closeness that might have been cultivated between them. This detachment has led to persons of other different cultures perceiving Germans as being very cold and remote in addition to being extremely unfriendly (Schroll-Machl 2005). Conclusion As it has been clearly shown in the paper, although the UK and Germany happen to have contrasting institutional features, they share several key cultural and HR policies and practices. It is of vital importance for one to put the differences and similarities into consideration especially in the event that one needs to expand an organization’s operations into either of the two countries. Personal Reflection on a Cross Cultural Group Work Experience Recently while working on this project, I had the opportunity of working with persons from cultures that were completely different from mine. Initially during the group formations, I found myself hoping not to be assigned to work in a group that had people who were from a different culture from mine. This was mainly because I had previously found it hard establishing a good and working rapport with most of them. However, I found myself assigned to work in a group with fellow students who shared different cultures based on their ethnicity, country of origin and religion. During the familiarization stage, I found my listening skills to be severely stretched as I attempted to try and carefully understand what some of the members were saying. This is mostly because of their different accents. I found myself afraid to keep on asking them to repeat themselves as I was afraid that they would perceive this as being rather rude of me. According to (Levi 2011), conflicts often arise during the familiarization stage of a group discussion. Nevertheless, I managed to at least know their names as they introduced themselves. During the planning and preparation stage, I was assigned to work on a segment of the group presentation with one of the group members who shared a different culture from mine. We managed to slowly build up a rapport and I soon found myself enjoying his company. He was about the same age as I was and shared the same challenges that I was going through. Our various group members had unanimously agreed to rally at a later date to compile our work, ready for implementation. Although my new friend and I were available for the meeting on the set date, the other group members were all busy attending to other lessons, assignments and various other obligations. This gave us an opportunity to fine tune our work portion as well as get to better know each other. The group members arrived later and the implementation and completion process were rushed and were not as carefully worked upon as I thought they would (Levi 2011). Overall, I really enjoyed working in the cross cultural group. Working in the group has caused me to better appreciate persons from different cultures and I now find myself making more friends from cultures that are different from my own. In hindsight, I wish we had made more effort towards ensuring that we all met promptly. In the future I will ensure that I stress on the importance of this to all the group members (Levi 2011). Bibliography Brewster, C., 1994. Policy and Practice in European Human Resource Management: The Price Waterhouse Cranfield Survey. Routledge. Curry, E., J., et al. 2001. Global road warrior : 92-country resource for the international business communicator and traveler. 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