Managing Corporate Culture of Marks and Spencer - Coursework Example

Few would question that there is now a global economy and that cultural differences must be recognized in the study and understanding of organizational behavior. The first chapter started off by defining culture, which is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behavior and the last chapter focused on performance management as a factor in the organization culture per se this chapter is more directly aimed at the culture of overall societies and countries. Managerial leadership involves influencing others to direct their efforts towards the pursuit of specific goals. There are a number of factors across cultures that influence the way in which managers lead their subordinates. Some of these factors are personal values, risk preference, the manager’s background, interpersonal skills, and decision-making. The challenge for HR professionals is to adjust positively to the culture of the organization. They have to choose paths that reflect the corporate culture of the firm and the attitudes of its people.
These contextual factors have had major implications for the Leading Edge organizations. But in responding to these pressures, they do not have a completely free hand; they are constrained by what has been called their 'administrative heritage'--the cultural and physical constraints on an organization (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989). The degree of discretion, or strategic choice, an organization has will be determined to a large extent by leadership style, national culture, commitment to past and continuing strategies, the success of certain symbolic actions, and the nature of its systems and processes.

The task of cultural adjustment, however, is the most challenging and important one confronting international, marketers; they must adjust their marketing efforts to cultures to which they are not attuned. In dealing with unfamiliar markets, marketers must be aware of the frames of reference they are using in making their decisions or evaluating the potential of the market because judgments are derived from the experience that is the result of the enculturating process.