Understanding Culture - Essay Example

Culture and Diversity in Organizations Introduction Culture and its dimensions are complex and difficult to understand irrespective of from which source it comes from. There are many approaches in understanding culture and its dynamics adopted by researchers. It is difficult to understand culture as a whole and hence researchers normally break down the culture into different parts in order to perform a more in depth analysis. Cultural dynamics are much more complicated and are often analyzed based on not only the culture itself but also the resources available to it. Organizational culture is a different topic which cannot be evaluated based on the cultural means alone. It is anchored not only in these cultural resources, but organizational resources as well. In other words organizational culture is not fully dependent on the culture of the employees alone, but the organizational environment, work or business philosophy, attitude of the management etc can also influence the organizational culture. This paper briefly analyses the role of culture and diversity in organizations. Culture and Diversity in Organizations Cartwright & Cooper (2002) have mentioned that there has been much optimism since the "global revolution" about how well an organization will do when it goes "global." Moreover, there has also been much risk in the acquisition and merger of organizations from various cultures to create organizations that are compatible and profitable. The expectation is that these multicultural organizations will appeal to more customers, creating an organization that can get ahead of all the rest (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002). Cross-border mergers have increased by about nine times of what they were just a few years ago. In fact M& A is adopted as a popular business strategy by big organizations in order to expand their wings to different countries and to reduce the competition. But in many cases, the expectations before the M&A have not been fulfilled after the M&A. The integration of the multicultural organizations into a single entity caused more problems than expected. Many of these takeovers and mergers fail because there is actually a production slow down based of the inability of two or more distinct cultures of people unable to work together. Culture is dynamic; everything about the human is immersed in cultural belief. According to Cartwright & Cooper, (2002), culture refers to everything that makes up a way of life including language, which is the oldest institutional medium of expression, thought which is what creates perception of others and understanding of the world, spirituality which is the values system that determines through generations of learning how life will be expressed and interaction which is the human contact and how that give and take of socialization occurs through negotiation, protocol, and conventions (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002). It is the cumulative deposit of all knowledge in the human function. It affects experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relationships, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions. In other words, it is everything the human is. In M&A, the human presence is asked to merge cultures. How can that happen when the term culture meets this definition? How can the human change everything ever learned through history about their culture or presence in the world to make a profit? In my opinion it is impossible to merge cultures even if we would be able to merge organizations. Most of the people believe that their culture is superior to that of other cultures. In M&A, one takes the reason from the other culture and somehow tries to fit it into their own culture which causes a distortion and many issues in the organization. In ethnocentrism, global business usually is in lot of trouble because the important factors in business are overlooked due to an obsession with ones own beliefs (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002). There may be such a focus on the needs of one culture that the other culture does not receive any advantage from working with the first culture. Moreover, the differences between the two cultures are well recognized, but both cultures will assume that the other culture will change. But in practice, nothing will happen and the differences will create problems in future. This is all a recipe for disaster for many companies which engaged in M&A. However, like the example, how does one move past the feeling created by their culture to allowing others to have their own cultural ideas? This may be possible in the instance of two cultures that are very close but not in those that are very different in everything about their culture. Brown, (2010) has pointed out that there have been many explanations attempted lately to talk about the corporate failures that have occurred between the Japanese joint ventures and the western multinationals. In his opinion, there is a need to do away with the simple way of looking at cultural incompatibility and begin to replace that with an awareness of a joined issue of cultural and economic forces that are ingrained in the cultures (Brown, 2010). When American and Japanese organizations engaged in M&A, it was assumed that the economic returns would replace the cultural views that were so different. But what actually happened were the exactly opposite things than the intended ones. “There is often a case when the conceptual style that is used between two cultural groups is incompatible, culture conflict will occur. Conceptual styles are rule sets that are identified and then analyzed and often used to rate the other culture” (Cohen, 1969). Differences in conceptual styles are another reason for the cultural and commercial conflicts occurred at workplace. There are two conceptual styles to be considered here. One of those is the rational style and the other is the analytic. In each style there is a difference in how one culture might deal with the other in a commercial situation. The naive ability of one culture to believe that they can act like the other culture just makes the issues worse. The 21st century is one in which it seems that there will be more of a clash of civilizations as there continues to be a push for global participation in business. The United States and other Western countries have made a push to the East to make this happen but the results have in some cases been disastrous. A case in point was the ‘Wal-Mart push’ into Germany. The spending habits of Germans and the Americans are entirely different. Americans spend lavishly whereas Germans spend judiciously. Even though Wal-Mart tried to incorporate German language and other styles of German people in the German business, they failed to become a German organization and failed miserably. Another issue that cannot be left out from the learning pieces from this unit is the ever-present word of slavery. Even though slavery has abolished by law in the United States, it is still visible in many forms. The black slaves were freed in 1865 after the Civil War. Soon after, the Gold Rush occurred and young Asian women were enslaved as prostitutes and the Chinese men were enslaved on the railroads. Tens out of thousand today are working as slaves in America, cleaning houses, working in farms, prostituting etc. Todays slaves are usually illegal immigrants from Guatemala or other Central American countries, Chinese, or Vietnamese. Most of them come to America on the promise of education or work. Americans have the opinion that they are not putting any restrictions on these slaves as they can leave the country any time or have the freedom to continue or resign from their profession. In other words, Americans argue that these people are not suited to the definition of slaves. At the same time they deliberately remove their papers or separate them from the public life in such a way that running away or resigning from profession is nearly impossible. Conclusions Before claiming the fatherhood of a civilized society, Americans have to go a long way in cleaning their society and their views about culture and diversity. They must realize that culture is more than how we look or act but is a deeply ingrained set of thoughts and feelings that drive everything we do. There are cultures that are so innately different from their culture and they will never be able to get along with such cultures. Even though abolished by law, the issue of slavery is still evident in America in different forms. In my opinion, Americans should learn more to treat people based on their merits rather than their culture. References 1. Brown L., Rugman A.,& Verbeke A ( 2010), Japanese joint ventures with western multinationals: synthesizing the economic and cultural explanations of failure. Asia Pacific Journal of Management Volume 6, Number 2 / April, 1989, Publisher: Springer Netherlands, 6(27). 2. Buzan, B.(2010), Culture and international society. International Affairs. 86(1) pg. 25. Cartwright, 3. Cartwright S & Cooper C L, (1993), The role of culture compatibility in successful organizational marriage. The Academy of Management Executive 7(2). 4. Cohen, R A (1969), Conceptual styles, culture conflict, and nonverbal tests of intelligence. American Anthropological Association. University of Pittsburgh. 5. Kufar, A. (1997), Comprehending cultural incompatibility, Retrieved on 5 July 2010 from http://www.albatrus.org 6. Sahlins, M.(2009), What does captain cook have to tell us about culture? International Journal of Cross Cultural Management: 9(3). 323-338. Read More