Cultural Constraints in Management Theories - Literature review Example

Literature Review: International Perspectives in Organization Insert (s) Literature Review: International Perspectives in Organization A number of authors and researchers have increasingly focused on the cross-national environments that many international organizations and business firms currently face. Although many of the previous researches have limited their focus to the cultural dimensions of the international businesses, a number of researchers have also managed to discuss the other important international perspectives in today’s global business environment such as the historical, economic, political and religious differences as well as their impacts on organizational behavior, individual behaviors and human resource management. According to Javidan et al. (2006), global leadership is one of the critical factors in the management of large multinational corporations. In their paper titled “In the eye of the beholder” the researchers particularly use the research findings from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) program as a basis for conceptualizing the global leadership differences. Generally, Javidan et al. (2006) effectively presents the cultural profiles of four countries namely France, Egypt, Brazil and China as a case study to highlight the potential cultural implications of a hypothetical American executive working in the business environments in these countries. Javidan et al. (2006) particularly suggests that cross cultural leadership should represent an open mind and understand overly the cultures of different countries. Mangers should be critical and analyze empirically the cultures of their countries’ to the cultures of the people in the countries of their business operations. Managing and leading in different counties: The corporate management should be considerate on the types of marketing activities across the different countries of their operations. Both the dominant and metropolitan countries managerial schemes should be in an equilibrium and modal way of management. Regional clustering of globe nations: The business corporate world is prone to completion. Through these competitions, a global cultural clustering is therefore eminent with about 62-case studied culture clustering from America continent through to African continent to Asia and Europe (Jovidan et al, 2009 p.122). The study concludes by highlighting practices such as the ability of the individual global managers to share information about their culture alongside the culture of the host country, contemplate bridging the gap between two diversified cultures, to exhibit a high level of ambiguity tolerance and to remain culturally adaptable as the viable instruments to succeed in cross-culture leadership. However, the study seems to be limited both in practical and theoretical perspectives on the way to lead whilst inside a foreign country. On the other hand, Hofstede (1993) critically discusses a number of theoretical to the question regarding the nature of obligations that business organizations and corporations have to the people currently living right at the base of global economic pyramid. Firstly, the authors suggest corporations should be regarded as agents of global justice.The arguments in the international perspectives in organizations include; the regional clustering of the global cultures, managing and leadership in different countries, common cultural dimensions and the impact of globalization. Global as a technical business term involve the overall identification of marketing gaps as per the existing cultural practices. The identification cultural marketing gap is a technical and expensive organizational activity. Hofstede (1993) ended up asking whether the American theories would apply abroad following his survey of more than 116,000 employees of IBM from more than 50 nations. He had to work with the IBM employees from 1967-1978 in order to obtain this data. From the data, he issued a factor analysis of up to 32 questions within 40 nations then used this to figure out four bipolar perspectives of cultural diversity which he named as masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism and power distance. His insight about the cultural variations comes in handy to the contemporary corporations that daily crave for the use of the global virtual teams to integrate superb expertise available for task-related performance, in spite of the involved parties being in different geographic locations. Additionally, the author argues that most business structure are not always aware of the tremendous impacts of globalization. The national culture predominates the current business operations, visions and interpretations. Due to the fact that cultural diversity implicates all the aspects of nearly all the human behaviors, global leadership knowledge on culture and its influential nature business-wise can be useful to the global business executives operating in a multi-cultural types of business environments (Hofstede, 1993 p. 123). Nevertheless, Hofstede’s work has been criticized on the grounds that survey is not relevant when it comes to establishing the level of cultural disparity in addition to his work disregarding the value of the community plus the differences in the influence of a community. Arnold (2013, p.145) suggests that the business corporate world has to be ideologically relevant with every culture across borders. given the cultural differences in the corporate world globally, an effective manager needs to critically analyze the marketing wavelength in a different manner putting into consideration the comparative marketing approach across different countries of operation. Similarities and differences among cultures should also be put into consideration by the global leaders in order to come up with tentative decisions the types of marketing structures to be targeted globally. In addition, according to Arnold (2012), limited theoretical efforts have been devoted towards the role that corporations plus other business entities have as pertains to the close to the four billion individuals living under the world economic pyramid. His article makes numerous theoretical contributions towards this matter. First, the article argues that corporations are deemed as agents of worldwide justice. Second, the article tells the difference between the lawfulness of multinational governance institutions and the lawfulness of corporations plus other business enterprises. Third, the articles argues that the presence of deliberate democracy models associated with corporate legitimacy that the theorists of political CSR keep defending does not suffice as far as attaining global justice is concerned. Finally, the article argues that the Rawlsian theoretical framework has failed in providing a fulfilling account as pertains to the duties of corporations with respect to global justice. Overall, his perspective is fashionable in terms of scope and founded on overlying arguments regarding human rights. Lastly, the Course Work Artices (2012) argues that as many western business companies are closing their operations in the west and moving to the other regions of the word with lower costs, companies and organizations should generally be aware of the need to develop more innovative approaches to effectively manage diversity. Generally, a number of deductions and conclusions can be derived the premises presented in the 4 texts. For example, all the four authors view the world as a global village as a basis f their suggestions that organizational leadership diversity and the understanding of marketing structures overwhelmingly across every part of the world. When it comes to the impacts of globalization, it is eminent that almost every American corporation has been in one way or the other been forced to stick to global leadership elements in order to become successful. In the global leadership paradigm, it has been identified that for the success of any organizational activities each and every organizational leader must be globally oriented. Globalization as leadership factor predominantly revolves around open mindedness as well as respect of other cultures. For example, Javidan et al. (2006), Hofstede (1993) and Arnold (2012) all argue that global leadership has been recognized as a crucial success tool for massive global enterprises. Whereas there is a lot of literary works pertaining to the topic, a number of such works are either generic or unique to specific countries based on a restricted number of case studies. Global leadership therefore is the benchmarking guidelines to the international perspectives in each and every corporate world’s organizations. This argument is particularly consistent with the Course Work Artices (2012) which argues that companies and organizations should generally be aware of the need to develop more innovative approaches to effectively manage diversity. Finally, organizational managements are economically advised to increasingly stick to the cross-cultural diversity; the organizational cross-cultural diversities include; dealing with employees collectively regardless of their countries of origin, targeting global markets, customers and suppliers and lastly dealing with competition with a global eyes. an adoptive mechanism aimed at the identification of the targeted market cultures must be organizationally put in place for the relevance operational activities in the business corporate world. Put differently, global leadership paves way for a better understanding of the cultural contingent and leadership effectively. The understanding of global cultural diversities better is one of the benchmarks towards the success of any international business operations. References Arnold, D.G. 2012. Global Justice and International Business. Business Ethics Quarterly 23(1): pp.125-143. Course Work Artices. 2012. Management Articles of the Year. London: Copyright Chartered Management Institute Hofstede, G. (1993). Cultural constraints in management theories. The Academy of Management Executive, 7(1): pp.81-94. Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., Luque, M., & House, R. J. 2006. In the eye of the beholder: cross-cultural lessons in leadership from Project GLOBE. Academy of Management Perspectives, 20 (1): pp.67-90. Read More