Chapter 3 Understanding the Role of Culture

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Chapter 3Understanding the Role of Culture

• Power Points by
• Kristopher Blanchard
• North Central University

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Overview

• Culture and its effects on organizations
• Cultural variables
• Cultural value dimensions
• The Internet and culture
• Developing cultural profiles
• Culture and management styles around the world

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Key Terms

• Culture Savvy
• Cultural Sensitivity or Cultural Empathy
• Culture of a society
• Self reference criterion
• Parochialism
• Ethnocentrism

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Culture and Its Effects on Organizations
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Culture and Its Effects on Organizations

• Once upon a time there was a great flood, and
  involved in this flood were two creatures, a
  monkey and a fish. The monkey, being agile and
  experienced, was lucky enough to scramble up a
  tree and escape the raging waters. As he looked
  down from his safe perch, he saw the poor fish
  struggling against the swift current. With the
  best of intentions, he reached down and lifted
  the fish from the water. The result was
  inevitable.

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Cultural Variables

• Never assume that a manager can transplant
  American, or Japanese, or any other countrys
  styles, practices, expectations, and processes
• Managers need to develop a cultural profile that
  identifies the specific differences found in each
  country

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Subcultures

• Residents of the country only conform to the
  national character to a certain degree
• Could be from ethnic, geographic, or other
  variables
• Good managers treat people as individuals and
  they avoid any form of stereotyping

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Influences on National Culture

• Kinship guides family relationships
• Education formal or informal education of
  workers affects workplace expectations
• Economy means of production and distribution in
  a society influences all aspects of the resource
  allocation
• Politics system of government imposes varying
  constraints on an organization

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Influences on National Culture

• Religion spiritual beliefs of a society are so
  powerful that they overpower all other cultural
  aspects
• Associations the formal and informal groups
  that make up a society
• Health system of health care affects employee
  productivity
• Recreation the use, attitude, and choice of how
  to use leisure time

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Cultural Value Dimensions

• Values are a societys ideas about what is good
  or bad, right or wrong - such as the widespread
  belief that stealing is immoral and unfair.
  Values determine how individuals will probably
  respond in any given circumstance

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Project GLOBE Cultural Dimensions

• Assertiveness refers to how much people in a
  society are expected to be tough, confrontational
  and competitive versus modest and tender.
• Future Orientation refers to the level of
  importance a society attaches to future-oriented
  behaviors such as planning and investing in the
  future.
• Performance Orientation measures how important
  performance improvement and excellence is in a
  society.
• Humane Orientation refers to the extent to which
  a society encourages and rewards people for being
  fair, altruistic, generous, caring, and kind.

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Hofstedes Value Dimensions

• Early research that developed a framework for
  understanding how basic values underlie
  organizational behavior
• Power Distance Level of acceptance by a society
  of the unequal distribution of power
• Uncertainty Avoidance Extent to which people in
  a society feel threatened by ambiguous situations

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Hofstedes Value Dimensions

• Individualism Tendency of people to look after
  themselves and their immediate families only and
  to neglect the needs of society
• Masculinity Degree of traditionally masculine
  values of assertiveness, materialism, and a lack
  of concern for others

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Trompenaar Value Dimensions

• The Universalistic approach applies rules and
  systems objectively, without consideration for
  individual circumstances whereas the
  Particularistic approach puts the obligation
  toward relationships first and is more
  subjective.
• In the Neutral versus Affective dimension, the
  focus is on the emotional orientation of
  relationships.

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Trompenaar Value Dimensions

• Managers in Specific-oriented cultures separate
  work and personal issues and relationships. In
  Diffuse-oriented cultures there is spill-over
  from the work into the personal relationship and
  vice-versa.
• In an Achievement society the source of status
  and influence is based on individual achievement.
  In an Ascription-oriented society, people
  ascribe status on the basis of class, age,
  gender, etc.

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Critical Operational Value Differences

• Time differences in temporal values
• the clock is always running vs. mañana which
• means tomorrow in Latin America or bukra
  which
• means tomorrow or some time in the future in
• Arabic.
• Change based largely on long-standing religious
  beliefs, values regarding the acceptance of
  change and the pace of change can vary immensely
  among cultures.

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Critical Operational Value Differences

• Material factors Americans attitude toward
  nature that it is there to be used for their
  benefit differs from the attitudes of Indians
  or Koreans, for example, whose worship of nature
  is part of their religious belief.
• Individualism Americans tend to value individual
  achievement over group goals for others,
  conformity and cooperation takes precedence over
  individual achievement

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Developing Cultural Profiles
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Looking Ahead

• Chapter 4 - Communicating Across Cultures
• The Communication Process
• The Culture Communication Link
• Information Technology