National Culture and Values - Essay Example

Cross-cultural management

Box A: National Culture and Values can have an impact on the Management Style and Practice of International Managers? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Introduction

As the world economy increasingly assumes global features, such process amends every particular element of every organization. With the development of communication technologies the world becomes closer and business requires more flexibility (Hansen, Hope and Moehler, n.d.). Numerous operations can be done in seconds; the business environment has grown dependent on a great variety of factors, the boundaries between cultures and societies have been blurred and as a result, the workforce became more mobile (James & Snell, 1994). In such new conditions, it is of the greatest importance that managers were capable of providing due recognition and supervision to them.

Main Body

Individuals from multicultural companies hence would not share a typical set of presumptions, convictions, values, interests, and needs, nor objectives which start from their local environment. For sure, workers don't leave their societies at the organization's entryway when they come to work. These social qualities of each culture are brought into the work environment and have a solid effect on the conduct of a person inside the organization. So it is possible to say that National Culture and Values can have an impact on the Management Style and Practice of International Managers.

The reasonable effect of society on administration practices will along these lines be distinguished in:

• The motivational procedure; since people in a company has different views and interests and needs, which initially constitute the foundation of motivation itself.

• Interaction process; since individuals from associations don't share the general pattern of thoughts; they don't see and assess different situations and practices in the same way, in this respect they do act differently.

• Visioning process; on the terms that visioning procedure could be just adequately accomplished after the achievement of the motivational tasks. That is, basic needs and yearnings and objectives (from the motivational procedure) are required in conjunction with a typical method for seeing the world (from the interaction procedure). In the event that these components are found in a complex, then there will be a sharing of vision.

• Learning process; on the grounds that without a typical vision, there is no sense in aggregate learning. Moreover, people in associations hold various encounters, shifted methods for deduction and acting, and diverse learning;

• Performance, since work yield relies on the above points referred to overall.

In terms of cultural influence on motivation, it can be said that in the organizations with the multinational composition of teams the discrepancy can occur. This means that the power or authority is distributed in favor of any cultural group or groups. Such inequality may turn out to be a highly demotivating factor. The majority of non - prevailing gathering individuals are good to advance a redistribution of force in associations, while a significant number of predominant group individuals restrict it as an unjustifiable and inappropriate arrangement of inequality.

As a consequence, the motivation level of the non-dominant group decreases significantly, thus reducing their perceived importance of their efforts. It may have serious repercussions for an organization because productive of such employees will be extremely low, although they may possess a great potential. So it is really necessary for the higher executives to try allocating the tasks and authority based on the balanced distribution concept, having regard to the diversity of cultures.

It is important to understand that within the interaction framework people that are members of one cultural group have some common perception patterns which then turn into their relationship factors. On the other hand, in the multicultural teams, some particular events or statements or tasks can bring about totally different reactions. Therefore, two people can receive the same message and perceive two completely different meanings (Harris & Moran, 1987).

The conflicts in the multinational team may arise due to such differentiation in perception as it was expressed above. Polarized results in cross-cultural work situations can partly be attributed to clashes of values, themselves linked to ethical considerations (French, 2007). Also, members of divergent cultural groups may see the objectives and aims in a different way so that they may be incompatible. As a result, in practice, organizations typically aim to homogenize their multicultural work groups rather than attempt to use their inherent diversity (Brown, 1983; Fernandez, 1981; Jones, 1986). However, such organizations overlook the positive impact both of multicultural group and conflicts. The conflicts, if they are wisely moderated, can become the stimulating factor to changes which are essential within every organization.

This change philosophy is necessary to be embedded into the vision that the manager has to communicate to his subordinates, especially representatives of different cultures. Accordingly, the vision of such managers ought to be concerned with the establishment of such conditions that allow multicultural employees to contribute to the organization in their full capacity.

Kanter's study of innovation in organizations (1983), for example, revealed that the most innovative companies deliberately establish heterogeneous teams in order to create a marketplace of ideas, recognizing that a multiplicity of viewpoints needs to be brought to bear on the problem. Cox & Blake (1991) also reviewed studies that show that the use of differences leads to higher-quality group processes and products. Learning organization capitalizes on differences because solutions often reside outside the norm. Teams are the playing ground on which differences can be used to question old ways of seeing things and to construct new knowledge (Marsick, 1994).

Nowadays it became much easier for everyone to move around the globe in the search for better conditions of life and work. Therefore, Multicultural Workforce is now quite widespread in many organizations and its role constantly increases. To better analyze this question, we will consider the following simplified equations:

(1) UtilityCi = UCi (Performance, Management, Environment, ... )

(2) Performance = P (Management, Environment, Culture,.··)

(3) Culture = C (Performance, Management, Environment,.··) (Rijamampianina, n.d.).

These equations show us that each of the utility, performance, management, environment and culture categories are dependent on one another either directly or through the reliance on the other elements. It means that such category as culture appears not to be stable as it was thought before. Culture is the function of Performance, Management and Environment and a lot of other factors that makes it extremely hard for a manager to cope with all of these elements (Wageman, Earley and Gibson, 2003).

All in all, cultural and non-cultural factors combine in complex multiple interlinked ways as they impact on work organizations (French, 2007). Only some major feature can be mentioned. For example, Americans are thought to be careerists. They are incredibly enterprising, swift and punctual. Citizens of Asian countries, unlike the Americans, are not mercantile; they do not worship money so much (Shamsi, n.d.). The British tend to be conservative and pedantic, Italians appear to be hospitable, eloquent and generous, willing to put themselves in the place of the other, but sometimes are overly emotional and inconsistent. Japanese are hardworking, leisurely and demanding, they have a pronounced leader and respect for elders. They refer to their leaders as children to their parents, and for the Japanese, every team member ought to be ready to sacrifice everything for the success of the project (Haas and Nüesch, 2012).

Since individuals' conjectures, convictions, values, interests, needs, and objectives are formed by the way of life to which they stick, they can be reasonably profoundly established in a person (French, 2007). Accordingly, it will be fair to assume that cultural factors cannot be amended for the managerial purposes, at least in a short term. Thus it is necessary to take the position here that an individual's conduct in a company will, for the most part, be guided by the outside society from which he or she comes (Jaeger, 1990).

However, there are a number of experts who argue that culture and values are not so important in management practices. They say that people who work in a team where the majority of people are external to their beliefs tend not be offended and in most cases are patient with their managers and coworkers. Moreover, it is said that the vast majority of tasks do not include cultural elements so there should be no difference what people are performing them, and consequently, culture should not have its influence on management as it only reduces its flexibility and efficiency (French, 2007). Indeed, many organizations were managed with an ethnocentric approach to culture, which assumes that any society has the same basic values and goals that characterize Western countries. But the evidence to date shows that this assumption is not valid (Rijamampianina, n.d.). Actually, even if the cultural issue does not become a matter of conflict it is also very important to have regard to the culture as such approach is able to greatly increase the productivity of multicultural team via wise management due to reasons already expressed.

Conclusion

So, it is clear that cultural aspect has a tremendous impact on the management practices of the companies that have their operations worldwide or just have representatives from different countries. The culture in this respect appears to be a prism through which person perceives information, events, orders or goals. Therefore, people with different types of perception can find themselves in the useless struggle with one another and it is a task of a manager to comprehend it wisely. Culture consists of a great number of elements and it impossible to determine the impact of each one of them scientifically. However, managers that are accustomed to the cultures of their subordinates seem to be able to make use of such diversity. The diversity factor streamlines the long term performance of such groups if it is appropriately managed due to differentiation in view on the problem at issue and the providing more wider range of insights and greater creativity. So the culture does have its impact on management as it directly influences motivation procedures, the interaction of employees, visioning and learning processes and the performance of the team.

Box B: Managing multicultural groups and teams, more challenges, more barriers or more opportunities? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Introduction

Managers now ought to take into account even cultural differences in case they are willing to be successful. The question of the efficiency of the multicultural teams is still at issue. It was considered first that such teams only create more challenges and barriers and such formations were largely avoided. However, multinational teams undoubtedly create also more opportunities as the diversity is important now more than ever.

Historically, the word culture derives from the Latin word ‘colere’, which could be translated as ‘to build’, ‘to care for’, ‘to plant’ or ‘to cultivate’. Thus ‘culture’ usually referred to something that is derived from, or created by the intervention of humans – ‘culture’ is cultivated (Dahl, n.d.). That implies for the relational nature of culture.

Main Body

From another point of view, culture in its broad meaning is a social heritage of a group of people, society, country, etc. It is a pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group's history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are considered to be the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are passed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable (BusinessDictionary.com, 2016).

In terms of challenges and barriers that multicultural teams are characterized with, there are direct versus indirect communication; trouble with accents and fluency; differing attitudes toward hierarchy and authority; and conflicting norms for decision making (Brett and Behfar, 2006). The first issue of the distinction between direct and indirect communication is expressing one of the main differences between Eastern and Western cultures. In this respect, in Western civilization people tend to use direct communication methods. On the other hand, there is the Eastern way to present the information, which is usually embedded into the message. As a result, when such representatives of these two types of global cultures have to interact with each other Western people may simply do not get the others point right, while Eastern people may be offended by the way their colleagues convey their messages. Such things may significantly harm the teamwork among the members of one unit. If there is such misunderstanding the whole working process may be sabotaged (Paunova, 2014).

The second most important barrier in terms of multicultural management is a language issue. However, English is the business language of the vast majority of multinational operations, the difficulties can occur due to the lack of fluency of the non-native speaker or his bad accent. As a direct impact, it can result in some basic misunderstanding of the message conveyed. This can create some uneasiness between the communicating parties. Moreover, such troubles may affect the perception of the person and his or her status. The manager or other members of the team as a result of the lack of the language skill consider such person as less valuable to the team or even less skilled and intelligent. It even possible that such member of the team may have the best and the most comprehensive expertise among his coworkers but they turn out to be unable to make use of his or her expertise. In this case, the team will lose its efficiency and the organization will lose its investments in foreign experts (Tenzer and Pudelko, 2015).

Generally speaking, all cultures can be divided into hierarchical and egalitarian cultures. They are different in terms of perception of the leader. In the first one, it is natural to defer to the managers while everyone will judge you if you do so in the second one. So it is obvious that in the team composed of the representatives of these two quite contrary cultures conflicts may arise. The manager that uses his authority in the full capacity can be seen as aggressive or even hostile to some people. At the same time loyal and friendly leader can be not respected in some cultures. Such issue requires quite thorough knowledge of the features of many cultures, but if manager copes with such task his influence and authority will be enough to run the team in the highest level of efficiency (Tiagi, 2015).

The last issue that can turn out to be a barrier in the day-to-day operations of such teams is that cultures also differ in the way the decisions are made. In some cultures like American, the most valuable are managers that are able to make fast decisions in order to provide flexibility due to rapid changes in the market conditions. The Eastern cultures, however, tend to have a thorough discussion of a question at issue in order to be comprehensive with the problem as the whole. If the company with the host culture wishes to benefit from its investment in foreign experts it is necessary to provide such conditions, in which foreign employees will be able to provide added value for the company (Elron, 1997). Furthermore, the most professional managers also manage to reinvent some processes and operations in accordance with the performance of the representatives from other cultures as such practices may be communicated to personnel in order to increase its efficiency.

Although there is a number of challenges and barriers in multinational teams, the investments in such activities can have good returns and thus provide more opportunities if they are managed wisely. Therefore, every manager has to keep a close eye on every conflict or difficulty that arises and determine its underlying reasons. On the basis of such causes, as may be determined, a certain course of action can be developed (Ochieng and Price, 2010).

The main opportunities and benefits that culturally diverse teams provide are increased adaptability, broader service range, a variety of viewpoints and more effective execution. The increased adaptability means that people that constitute such teams in their previous experiences have overcome a vast number of problems and difficulties. As they were chosen at such position among the other employees means that they have been and remain efficient, although everyone in his or her unique way. As a result, such complex of professional expertise enables such teams to deal with divergent problems. Moreover, as some of the employees have come from the different environment and provided that they have managed to successfully establish as due members of such team that means that they have formed some kind of new environment which is more durable to the external challenges (Zhong, 2014).

Secondly, multicultural and multinational teams are able to provide a much broader scope of services than the ordinary ones. Every new individual that enters each team contributes his personal experience and expertise. This statement is applicable to every group of people engaged in the same activity, but the diverse one are sure to have much wider range of skills because of the rareness of each particular skill. However, it is achieved at the expense of the possible communicativeness. Everything depends on the professionality and the expertise of the manager. If he manages to make use of such various skills only then such team will be able to provide significant contributions to the host organization.

As people representing different cultures perceive their environment in different ways they may become a good source of unique insights and ideas. Such a creative troubleshooting often results in higher performance results of such teams because every new way of coping with the task provides more marginal utility than that of the common strategies (Connaughton and Shuffler, 2007).

Multinational teams do not necessarily have to be functioning in the foreign affairs department (Ochieng, 2012). Their insights will be also contribution elsewhere as they see somehow different complex of objectives in the global environment and will amend the operations of the organization appropriately.

Conclusion

However, it is still disputed whether multicultural teams create more opportunities that fact is that barriers and challenges are unavoidable. There is a belief that such groups generate not enough opportunities to cover the risks related to their activity. The policies inspired by such way of thinking prefer consistency to creativity thus reducing the number of multicultural teams in their organizations. Nevertheless, those opportunities that were mentioned above are worth achieving provided that accurate and attentive management is employed.

Finally, due to reasons expressed above, it is possible to say that the management of multicultural teams has both challenges and opportunities. Multicultural teams are characterized by such challenges as direct versus indirect communication; trouble with accents and fluency; differing attitudes toward hierarchy and authority; and conflicting norms for decision-making. Although challenges are capable of diminishing company’s profitability significantly, the opportunities it provides are appealing enough to take that risk and invite foreign experts. References

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