Effect of Cultural Differences on Employee Relations - Essay Example

Effects of Cultural differences on Employee Relations Department: Effect of cultural differences on Employee Relations Employee relations refer to the body in an industry that is responsible for maintenance of employee and employer relationships (Stewart, 2010). These relationships contribute in the satisfactory productivity, morale and motivations in the industry. Prevention and resolving of conflicts that involve individuals in the industry is important in Employee Relations. These are conflicts that arise in the work; thus affecting working conditions. Supervisors are required to have a way of correcting poor performance of the employee and addressing their conduct. In these circumstances, appropriate measures must be put in place. This is to ensure justice prevails, and suitable measures are taken. This calls for the supervisors to consider progressive discipline and regulatory measures in effecting disciplinary actions. These measures are also required to resolve grievances and appeals from the employees. There are employee relations policies that outline steps that supervisors are supposed to take to address work performance and behaviour. Steps in these policies are not rigid procedural requirements that should be used in every situation. The measures are helpful in establishing guidelines to help supervisors monitor and ensure workers meet the expectations. Communication is a crucial tool in employee relations (Stewart, 2010). Employees require proper communication so that they can feel as part of an organization. Thus, it is necessary for supervisors to provide information to employees to promote good understanding of the goals and policies of the organization. This information is also important to employees as it helps in correcting poor performance, personal issues and other duty misconducts. Suitable advice is given to employees on legislation, applicable regulations and other bargaining agreements. It is through these advices that all indifferences are taken into account ranging from economic, social and cultural factors. In this process, employees are advised on the way to present their grievances in an organization (Chew & Chan, 2008). In this process, there is a proper understanding of organizational measures in labour provision. Employer’s main objective is work quality. It is obvious that happy employees create customers who are happy thus suitable business results are achieved. It is the need of every employee to get a respectful, fair, and a healthy workplace. Work motivators determine the work quality and the ability for workers to deliver at their level best. They include job security, workplace relations, work-life balance and wages among others. Socially, culture is the way of life that a particular group of people adopts. It is rooted in beliefs knotted with individuals’ mindset and attitudes among persons. This manifests in behaviours that result in values identifiable in a group of people in a particular environment. In an organizational point of view, culture means the way of doings things that are common in an organization. Workers in an organization may have different cultural backgrounds in the purpose of achieving various goals set by the leaders (Stewart, 2010). Training and induction of organizational procedures and policies impact individual behaviour desired by the organization (Mullins, 2010). This creates an organizational culture in the view of achieving desirable performance in the organization. Proximity of employee’s personal goals in an organization determines the extent to which organizational culture can be influenced. It is the role of company leaders to check on how culture manipulation can bring forth improved performances. Culture is deeply rooted in consciousness of human beings. In this respect, no one has sufficient knowledge to influence culture. A unitary culture developed by organization founders or leaders where they enjoy consensus and sharing of management values may not exist (Chew & Chan, 2008). It is then clear that an organizational culture may prove difficult to control, but it can be influenced. According to Mullins (2010), organizational culture is what an organization has in terms of independent variables. These variables are separate and upon gathering them through organization membership, form a culture. The ability to join an organization together, as independent internally variable amongst structure, tasks and actors influences organizational culture. An organizations culture is born from initial stages of organization development. As the organizations expand, other subcultures emerge that may be a source of conflict. This is because members assume differing views on the execution of certain tasks Organizations can be regarded as cultures themselves. In this effect, presence of subcultures in some organizations is characterized by ambiguity and fragmentation due to employees’ differences in perceptions and experiences (Chew & Chan, 2008). Where these differences do not exist, there might be an integrated culture with shared values that enable understanding and common identity. Culture in an organization is intangible and complex (Mullins, 2010). Though it is a basic way of doing things in a group, there are certain complexities that results to internal and external difficulties. Culture can be described as shared values, behaviours, beliefs and perceptions which employees hold. Other factors affect organizational culture apart from perceptions and attitudes. They include the commitment of employees to group challenges, conditions of work, workload and communication. These form part of industry characteristics that may impede change of culture at varying organizational contexts. Organizations rely on their employees in order to achieve objectives set by the managers. Employees are the heart of an organizations performance (Denisi & Griffin, 2008). In this regard, employees expect reward for the work and in the right conditions. This is essential for the continued growth in performance to sustain the reward. Organizations need to make profit whereas workers too need to make money. This creates a meeting point of views from employees and leaders in an organization. This effect results to the working culture that is forward oriented in matters of the organization. In organization cultures, leaders have a way to bring change and to motivate employees (Denisi & Griffin, 2008). This is geared towards improved performance from employees. Leaders may adopt two dependent elements to achieve the desired result in an organization. These include formal and informal settings. Formal organization provides for set written procedures, written rules, standards and delegate responsibilities. The informal organization is identifiable by lack of structure where responsibility is shared. Leaders mostly tend to adopt informal organization to facilitate effective communication, emotional and psychological connection to the company (Denison, 2004). Through this way, it is expected that employees would be in a position to spot and share values essential in developing commitment to the company. On the formal point of view, organization survival depends on its performance. This is based on organization culture that is a product of employees’ informal interaction with the company. It is clear that an organizational culture is a product of a number of variables. These include the desire to achieve personal success and recognition by the employee as facilitated by the regulations of the company. Apart from organizational culture, interpersonal, cultural diversity represents a critical problem for managers, especially in the majority of national and multinational companies. Different force of labor impacts these organizations greatly from a cultural point of view. This has several advantages and inconveniences accompanied. When the companies employ personnel from different companies, there are restrictions clear to cultural differences (Bach & Sisson, 2000). The impacts of multiculturalism of human resources over the companies with international activities are identified (Hofstede, 1998). Based on the investigation the company IBM workers from the entire word, several factors were identified. Individualism that consists of relations between two people seemed to have an effect in companies. Individualism provides that the richer a country is, the more individuated its inhabitants. It is also clear that, on the reverse, the poorer a country is the more developed is its communitarian spirit. The relations between employees are mainly on personal interests, and they do not expect the company to care for them. On the collectivism point of view, relations are based on morality and employees expect the company to care for them (Hofstede, 1998). Another effect of cultural differences is the scope of womanhood. In respect to culture, there are different perspectives of equity between sexes. In masculine societies, roles between man and woman are different. On the other hand, feminine society’s roles are interchangeable. There is more of equality in the societies. Countries such as Portugal, Greece and Japan have predominant masculine cultures. Denmark, Finland and Sweden are examples of countries with a feminine culture. It is obvious that masculine cultures refer competitiveness, ambition and wealth management. Feminine cultures value quality life and relationship (Hofstede, 1998). Power distance forms another aspect of cultural differences that affect employees in companies. This portrays the relationship between the employee and the employer. The analysis is based on how the employees feel about their superiors. Employees report their grievances directly to their managers. Another dimension of the impact of cultural differences is uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1998). This has a significant impact on social relations. It clearly explains the action taken by every culture based on the sudden change in working conditions and environment. In some cultures, the change would be acceptable, but others would feel it is not suitable to accept the change and thus get attracted towards other long career objectives. Culture has greatly influenced industrial relations in many countries (Dessler, 2003). This is through a variety of situations and actors such as economic imperatives, political philosophies and the role of the state. State is a key determinant of the direction of economic and social developments in organizations. There is also the influence of employee unions and different business communities. Most of the undertakings are also influenced by the legacies of the colonial governments. Over the past several decades, many industrialized economies of Australia, New Zealand and South Asian countries took little attention to competitiveness. This was in comparison to the young discipline of the human resource management (De Cieri & Kramar, 2008). In this scope, IR did its function by providing employees with unions that gave a collective voice. This meant to establish standardized terms of employment in various enterprises (Chiang & Birtch, 2005). This considered the effect not only in the enterprises but also across the industry or even the economy. This achievement came through the grant of freedom of association, right to strike and collective bargaining. Similar achievements were evident in South Asian sub-region where unions were relatively considered. Political democracy and enormous bargaining power were granted to these unions. IR thus came to correct the unequal bargaining power between employers and employee. This appeared naturally that IR context theory addressed labour relations that emanated from market imperfections and imbalances between the employers and employees. It provided for the State to provide protective labour laws and efficient mechanism to settle disputes. Another point of concern involved voluntary action on employees to protect themselves. This had to be through maximizing their bargaining strength through collective bargaining backed by state (Bach & Sisson, 2000). The idea of IR focusing on relations external to the enterprise received warm welcoming by many employers in several industrialized countries. This is because it minimized competitive advantage in relation to labour costs (Conway & Monks, 2008). The most significant part involved addressing the most contentious issue of wages. It took the responsibility from them and transferred the negotiations to the representatives of unions and employers’ organizations. Unions in this case welcomed the move as it gave them an influential platform outside the enterprise through uniting employees in organizations. At times, this led to disastrous consequences in developing countries due to the multiplicity and the politicization of unions. This called for increased awareness in employees so to monitor their representatives who operated at a level far from the workplace. The requirement of high literacy to monitor the representatives lacked in developing countries. This had a negative impact on IR system. Social theories such as unitarism and pluralism underpin HRM practices as they have an impact on human relations (Glinow & Mary, 2002). For instance, a unitary view is seen in an authoritarian and autocratic style where managerial prerogative in the decision making process is maintained. This is through hostility and control towards unions. Similarly, it can underpin paternalist approaches where employees are encouraged to think of the organisation as a family (Baumann, 2007). On this approach, managers substitute for unions and concern themselves with employee welfare. This removes the need for the presence of unions. Neo-unitary models of HRM since 1980s reflects on the adoption of cooperative employee and employer relations in pursuit of organisational goals. Pluralism considers management techniques that accept presence of conflicting interest groups in an organization and legitimacy of trade unions. A pluralist approach towards people management involves individualism and collectivism, and reflects on a cooperative partnership between trade unions and management (Glinow & Mary, 2002). This approach develops a scenario where unions help in the achievement of HRM goals. These goals include flexibility in employees, commitment and delivery of quality work. Traditional authoritarian unitarism allows workers to be excluded from decision-making processes. All the powers are concentrated in the managerial docket (Joseph, 2006). This provides for union suppression. In this scope, workers are thereby treated as factors of production in a cost-minimisation approach. On the other hand, paternalist unitarism creates sophisticated human relations. Workers are considered as organizational assets with management seeking to increase employee identification according to company requirements. In pluralism, workers are legitimately in certain areas of decision-making. Constitutionally the emphasis is on having formal agreements to regulate employee and employer relationship. This is based on a legalistic approach towards obtaining the boundaries of power and managerial prerogatives. A consultative approach can also be employed as it is more flexible and less formal. It caters for employee relations where union participation in decision-making is advocated through recognition, problem solving and the two-way form of communication. National cultures differ by a range between collectivism and individualism. The position of the state along this range reflects on attitudes towards trade unionism and the extent employees are given a chance in organizational decision-making process (Joseph, 2006). Managers tend to bear the prerogative in decision making, collective bargaining and solving of industrial conflicts. For example, in a highly individualized culture such as US, trade unions are typically marginalized. The managements also tend to hold the right of decision making unilaterally. On the other hand, Japan reflects a more collectivist culture in employee decision making. Cultural differences show complex patterns (Chiang & Birtch, 2005). Nation states display institutional practices that may appear contradictory in different contexts. In Germany and Japan, they promote employee involvement in unions unlike in the former where pluralistic perspective is exemplified. However, in the latter a unitarist perspective is evident. There is also the pursuit of workplace harmony and collective decision-making process aimed at achieving shared objects. In different nations, the institutional context of employees’ relation differs. In UK, state tends to avoid direct intrusion in the employment relationship (Chiang & Birtch, 2005). This is reflected in a combative relationship between capital and labour. This is mostly in countries characterised by social partnership the state tends to intervene. This is through laying of foundations for cooperative dialogues between managements and employee unions. It is through these measures that trade unions in UK have managed to regulate employment relationships. Cultural difference ranging from the organisational level to multinational levels proves to have a great effect on human relations. Thus, it is necessary for appropriate bodies in companies and governments to adopt suitable measures directed towards addressing the cultural impacts of human relations. References Bach, S., & Sisson, K 2000, Personnel management in perspective, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.230-270. Baumann, A 2007 “Influences of culture on the style of business behavior between Western and Arab managers”, Universität Wien, Wien. Vol.23, No.2, pp.13-19. 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Management &Organizational Behaviour, Financial Times, Harlow, pp.737-773 Stewart, P 2010, Employee relations, Emerald Print, Bingley, UK, pp. 58-105 Read More