Cultural Differences in Teams - Essay Example

Cultural Differences and People Management Cultural Differences and People Management Introduction It is a reflective paper mainly about the things that I learned during the course in my business class. To be honest, this course proved to be very helpful to me. The paper shows how I researched the chapters that were taught in class and also what I researched from elsewhere in the books and online articles. I must admit that after taking this course I became aware of some of the concepts I had no idea about. The best part is that this course was very interesting, and it did not seem that I was studying. I enjoyed every bit of this course in class and the research I made on this course. It has been one of my favourite subjects by far. Cultural Differences in Teams It was one of my favourite lessons in class. It was very informative, and I got to test some of the theories that I learned. I totally agree with the notion that collectivist and individualist cultures exist, and the society is mainly made up from these cultures. In a class, I got to learn that people belonging to the collectivist cultures place high value to society as a whole. They live a more selfless life working hard for themselves and even harder for the welfare of their community. However, an individualist society is a little different from this. In such societies, people tend to place more importance on individual goals rather to the objectives of the society. There is only ‘I’ and no ‘We’ in this type of a culture. I wanted to see if this was true and I researched on the Internet. Triandis (1995) has written an entire book on these types of cultures, and he writes that people from collectivist cultures are nurtured and raised to think about the society rather than about them. People in this kind of a culture live with unity often seeking help from one another. Triandis (1995) describes the individualists as entirely different. People living in these kinds of cultures promote individual goals. They are independent and feel ashamed of seeking help from others. These readings proved very beneficial for me. I never knew that these cultures existed until I took a closer look at different communities that exist in my country. One of my father’s close friends is an Indian, and I have grown up seeing him. When I went through the notes, he was the first person that came to my mind. Mr Mukesh was so much like what I had studied in class. He lives in an Indian neighbourhood where everyone interacts on a daily basis. I happen to know this because I have witnessed it with my own eyes. There are always relatives and other neighbours in their house when I go there. Mr Mukesh’s father lives with his family, and his father is the primary decision maker of his house. It shows high power distance in Indian families just like I studied in class. He is the elder of the family to whom everyone respects. Mr Mukesh has a store in the neighbourhood. His father but run by Mr Mukesh and his son who is about my age own this store. The son is also like Mr Mukesh. He takes down orders from his father and does what he is told. I have never seen him air his opinion or revolt against his father. He has been brought up to respect the people around him by listening and consulting them. When I asked my father if the aim of Mr Mukesh is to serve his community, he said, “yes indeed it is.” My father also believed that Indians do not just live for themselves but also people around them. I could see what I learned in class and therefore I was so happy to do this chapter. However, there is one other very interesting thing I learned from this chapter only after researching more from various other sources. In a class, we were taught how a football club like Arsenal managed to win league titles despite having players from different cultures. They even have a Premiere League record of winning the competition without recording a single loss that particular season. They came to be known as the invincible after that (Lawrence, 2014). All this is only the bright side of things. Arsenal Football Club suffered a lot during their brief period of success. They are one of the clubs that could not manage cultural diversity in the long run. After their successful campaign at the top fights, things started to go wrong for them. Majority of the players were French under their French manager Arsene Wenger (Lawrence, 2014). It is believed that these players supported each other and mostly spoke French that other players failed to understand. This majority of French players significantly affected the team. It is believed that some of the French and Brazilian players started quarrelling among themselves more frequently in the dressing room. This changed the way Arsenal played their game and passed the ball. For the next two years, they were destitute in the domestic league (Lawrence, 2014). It is believed that Arsene Wenger had to depart some of the most talented French and Brazilian players in his team so that peace could be maintained. Some of these players were Robert Pires, Patrick Viera, and Gilberto Silva. Just two seasons earlier before being asked to leave the club these players were regarded as the invincible captained under Patrick Viera. Things change dramatically if people from different cultures do not make an effort to understand each other (Lawrence, 2014). This example of the Arsenal Football Club has cleared the concept of cultural diversity. It was a splendid example to study and research. A Glimpse of Chinese Culture It was interesting to study the Chinese culture in class. China interests me mainly because it will be a major economic player in the world in the next 20 to 30 years. There were some things that I already knew which was taught to us in class. I knew that China had an enormous population, and I was not surprise to learn that they there are different social classes in China. A country with such a high population would have more working class people and a few rich ones. I had also learned about Confucianism in various other courses and also in school. I am well aware of the teachings of Confucianism that calls all the people in the nation to respect their elders and work towards reaching the goals of the society. It was something very similar to what I learned about the cultural differences in teams’ session. I expected something different from this class. I wanted to know things that could be implemented to make communication easier for the Chinese. If China will be a major player in the world then, the present generation must be prepared to deal with the Chinese. I read a book by Friedman (2010) called the next 100 years: Forecast for the 21st Century in which he says that the Chinese are producing everything from Apple iPhone to Dell Laptops in China. He questions about the future American and English students and their entrepreneurship ideas. The fact is that the labour in China is so cheap that none of the major companies in the US and the UK would be able to produce products using American or English labour. For this reason, he suggests that the students of today must interact with the Chinese. There will come a day when every product in the American and European countries will be massively produced by and in Chine. Future American and European entrepreneurs would be able to run business more successfully if colleges and universities take the students to China to show how work is done by the working class and try to make them build a relationship with the other business persons and working class people in China. For example, if a student of today wants to be an entrepreneur then it is vital for him to study and know about the market where his laptop will be made. Friedman (2010) suggests that there should be a platform where the American and European students could interact with Chinese students. This way the future business entrepreneurs from China would be able to interact with the rest of the world and know what they want. It will ultimately mean more opportunities for everyone. If this does not happen then American and European students in the future would have spent their youth learning theories in class and when they would graduate to open or set up a business it would take them another 5 years to penetrate the Chinese market that could make the most reasonable products from them. I found this theory by Friedman (2010) very conducive for the American students. It is what we need, and I feel this is what the university and colleges should focus on. If China is the future then, it is better to interact with them. The Historical Context of Natural Culture: the ‘British’ example It was yet another very informative class. I came to know about the social class of the Britain in the past and then managed to discover the social class at the present by going through some reading materials. Class division mainly started with the industrial revolution from what I learned in the class. The industrial revolution replaced many employees with machines and also made many employees work along with machines. It was a time when very poor people emerged in the UK. The working class had to work for some six days a week working 7 to 8 hours every day. Work was their professional and social life (Foster, 2005). It was also the time the middle class developed. Middle-class people were businessmen who had jobs from the rich people. These people were often educated and could afford most of the things produced by the industries. It was only the luxurious items like perfumes and imported food that the wealthy class could afford. So the UK was made up of three classes of people that supplemented one another. The working and middle class worked for the wealthy class of people. However, the UK started to develop the concept of achievement culture with the beginning of the industrial revolution (Foster, 2005). It was a time when many middle-class people saw that the need for education was rising and opened up a few training institutes. We studied this in achievement culture in class and that it gave people the opportunity to prosper if they made an effort towards it. Many middle-class income earners made a switch to the wealthy class as a result. It also gave birth to the concept of high universalism. The rules for everyone were the same. The poor, middle class and the rich were all equal to the law. For this reason, the working class was also allowed to develop trade unions (Thackeray, 2002). I am very impressed with all the information I received from the class division in the UK and what caused it. However, I wanted to check if this group still existed. For this reason I tried to find out in news, articles, and books written by authors about social classes of people in the modern UK. To my surprise I discovered that UK has seven classes of people in the modern world. Blackburn (2013) elucidates that there are now seven different social classes of people in the UK. They are the "elite, established middle class, technical middle class, new affluent workers, traditional working class, emergent service workers and precarious" (Blackburn, 2013). All these groups have emerged from the three groups of social classes that emerged as a result of the industrial revolution. Blackburn (2013) explains that after the industrial revolution, there were workers that gained experience and found better jobs. They had the skill, experience and a better pay. Although they still remained workers, but their social position elevated a bit. They earned at least twice more than the new workers that were hired for jobs. The value of experience was being appreciated for the first time among workers. It further divided the class system. There were new affluent workers, traditional workers, and then there were these inexperienced workers. Blackburn (2013) points out that the class system in the modern world is created as a result of socially fitting people into a circle. The elite class, for example, is the wealthiest people in the UK, and it is not a common practice for them to go for a drink or play golf with the working class of people. The elite class is accustomed to doing things to similar class of people. The middle and poor class are much more in number, so there is more division between them. Blackburn (2013) also points out that although there is no caste system in modern UK, but there are all indications that one can be made in the distant future. The reason is that there is much difference between the elite and the precarious class of people. I remember that I studied in class that there is no caste system in the UK but I was not aware that there could be one created. Blackburn (2013) justifies his opinion by saying that the elite class has all the luxuries in the world and houses in almost every continent while the precarious can only treat themselves to a good warm dinner maybe once or twice a month. If social classes are further formed in the future, which likely is the case then the elite will only get richer and the poor class only poorer. Relationships between Culture and Leaderships Leadership is not one of my favourite chapters because as far as I remember I have been learning about this part of the management from the first day in college. However, this course helped me to think and explore beyond the horizon. I must admit that before taking this class I was only aware of about four to five most common types of leadership styles that included democratic, autocratic, bureaucratic and charismatic. After taking this class, I realized that leadership meant more than that. For this reason, I was not disappointed. Leaders are the most important people in business or anything that they lead. They are an inspiration and also the de-motivation. In short, they are the reason for the success and failure of an activity and people responsible for that activity. In a class, we learned how important it is a leader to consider all the cultures and act accordingly. A successful leader is someone who feels the emotions of the people around him and behaves respectively. He respects the emotions of his employees and gives them time to adapt. The problem is that such types of leaders are found in book and not in the real world. Establishing that a leader should have distinctive qualities and should be able to mould him in the different environments and cultures he is exposed at concluded the lessons. To be honest, I believe that it is very hard for a leader to transform according to the needs of people and the environment given to him. It is very difficult for a leader to keep everyone happy by being in the way he or she wants him to be. Even if he behaves in the way the vast majority wants him then there is no guarantee of success for the activity for which they all have been gathered. However, I came across a few reading about a new type of leadership style called emotionally intelligent leadership. Emotionally intelligent leaders are the ones who act according to the emotions of the people. They are fully aware of their emotions and the employees working for them. They do not act in an aggressive way towards their employees and are always available to them (Shankman, 2010). These are their key features. The aim of this leadership style is to act defensively towards employees so that they can approach a problem no matter how grave it is. People are regarded as people and not machines, and an emotionally intelligent leader understands that people have their good and their bad moments at work. This type of leadership is highly being followed in Asian countries like Japan and Hong Kong. The results are extraordinary. HSBC is one of the banks that allow its leaders to develop this style of leadership. The bank has reported extra an ordinary result in Asian countries where it is has implemented this type of leadership strategy. In recent years, employees of HSBC have been found to be more cooperative with their managers (Shankman, 2010). They have also reported of being treated fairly with no incident of an outburst coming from the senior management. It has been reported that complaints in the local branch of Hong Kong has massively declined since the arrival of this type of leadership. I have come to know that this type of leadership is still new and is mostly followed in Japan and Hong Kong. I do believe that this is one very effective strategy and maybe the future of running business or any other activity as it helps a leader to understand his employees and act accordingly (Shankman, 2010). Management Development and Cultural Differences Management development and culture proved to be an informative class. I had no problem in understanding this because I had already studied about emotionally intelligent leaders. Although this chapter was about cultural intelligence, it is very carefully related to emotional intelligence. A leader with high cultural intelligence is just like a leader with high emotional intelligence except he is able to group out particular people who are different from one another because of their culture (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004). One of the examples of the research conducted by Earley & Mosakowski (2004) clearly helped me to understand about an emotionally intelligent leader and a person with cultural intelligence and also helped me to distinguish the two. Earley & Mosakowski (2004) explained a scenario about an American manager and his team of workers. The team comprised of two Germans who shunned all the ideas that came out from the rest of the group members. The leader with emotional intelligence would probably consider this rude and try to change the topic. He would then attempt to deal with the emotions of the people whose idea were shunned by the German team members. The leader with cultural intelligence would try to judge the Germans based upon their culture. He would attempt to know the reason the Germans were shunning the idea coming from the rest of the team members. Leaders with cultural intelligence attempt to study the culture of the people and know from where the team members belong. They do not avoid the situation as they know that each employee expresses in his or her way (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004). I must agree with this notion. There are people who do things differently, and the leader must study the reason a particular thing is done before shunning it or changing the topic. All the leadership styles have their advantages and disadvantages. After reading this chapter, I remembered an incident from my internship program. Someone had complained to our leader that there was a group of people who sat on the floor and had food. Some people did not like those groups of people to sit on the ground and eat while they sat on the table. When the issue was reported to the leader he quietly asked the reporting group to switch their places of having lunch rather than hurting the religious and social belief of a group of people. I am now sure that our leader had potential to separate different types of people from their culture and cater their needs. Conclusion This limited course was very helpful to me. The best part is that I got to research and gather information like never before. I got to know why there is a cultural difference in the way people act and do business. I learned that Mr Mukesh, my father’s Indian friend, behaved in the way he does because he was brought up that way. There are people whose culture only permit them to live with others, and these Indian friends of my father were belonged to just that type of culture. I also learned a lot about the Chinese culture but moreover I researched and found out that it would be better if the entrepreneurs of tomorrow get to meet and interact with the market and people they would be conducting business with. This course helped me to understand how the social class came into existence and what has become of it. I was surprised to know how far it has gone in the Great Britain and could lead to a caste system belonging to the ancient Indians. I also learned about emotionally intelligent and cultural intelligent leaders. I must admit that I was unaware of all the things that I explained in this paper and it helped me a lot to attain some vital information not only about business management but about how and why people behave in certain ways. List of References Blackburn, R. M., 2013. Social Stratification: Trends and Processes. 4th ed. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Earley, P. C. & Mosakowski, E., 2004. Cultural Intelligence. Harvard Business Review, 82(10), pp. 141-169. Foster, J., 2005. Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution. 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Friedman, G., 2010. The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. 2nd ed. New York: Allison & Busby. Lawrence, A., 2014. Invincible: Inside Arsenals Unbeaten 2003-04 Season. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin Books, Limited. Shankman, M. L., 2010. Emotionally Intelligent Leadership for Students: Workbook. 3rd ed. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons. Thackeray, F. W., 2002. Events that Changed Great Britain Since 1689. 4th ed. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.. Triandis, H. C., 1995. Individualism & Collectivism. 1st ed. New York: Westview Press. Read More