Culture And Business-2

Cultural Environment An Understanding of Culture & its Impact on Business

What IS Culture ?

“The integrated sum total of learned behavioural traits that are manifest & shared by members of society” OR The way in which people in a society collectively attach meanings to concepts & contexts around them & respond on the basis of those meanings

Meaning Organization culture has been defined as the

philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes & norms that knit an organization together & are shared by its employees.

4 feature are distinct to culture Beliefs, arts, customs Passed on from generation to generation Shared phenomenon Normative value

Characteristics of Culture  Individual Initiative – The degree of responsibility,

freedom & independence that individuals have.  Risk Tolerance – The degree to which the employees are encouraged to be aggressive, innovative & risk seeking.  Direction – The degree to which the organizations creates clear objectives & performance in a coordinated manner.  Integration – The degree to which units within the organizations are encouraged to operate assistance & support to their subordinates.  Management Support – The degree to which managers to provide clear communication assistance & support to their subordinate.

Continue  Control – The number of rules & regulations & the amount of

direct supervision that is used to oversee & control employee behavior.  Identity – The identity to which members’ identity with the organization as a whole rather than with their particular work group or field of professional expertise.  Reward system – The degree to which reward allocation are base on employee, performance criteria in contrast to seniority, favoritism & so on.  Conflict Tolerance – The degree to which employees encouraged the air conflicts & criticism openly.  Communications Pattern – The degree to which organizational communications are restricted to the formal hierarchy of authority.

What IS Culture ?

☼ Culture as “ways of living” ☼ Conscious and unconscious values, ideas, attitudes, and symbols that shape human behaviour ☼ Culture is learned, not innate ☼ Culture defines the boundaries between different groups ☼ All facets of culture are interrelated

Levels of culture National Culture

Business Culture

Organizational Culture

Occupational Culture Management

National Culture It is dominant culture with in the political

boundaries of the nation state. The dominant culture usually represents culture of the people with greatest population or the greatest political or economic power. National culture has considerable significance for the international mangers who need to manage culture diversities.

Business Culture It represents norms, values & beliefs that

pertain to all aspects of doing business in a culture. Business culture tells people the correct, acceptable ways to conduct business in a society.  Selection Process of Employee  Motivational Program  Structure  Strategies  Negotiation with other business people

Occupational Culture Such as physicians, lawyers, accountants &

craftspeople, have distinct cultures called occupational culture. The occupational culture cannot be ignored by the manager just because of the dominant importance of national & business culture

How is culture created? External Adaptation & survival Mission & strategy Goals Strategy Monitoring Internal Integration Language Team Value Reward & Punishament

Components of Culture social interactions among people; nuclear family, extended family; reference groups technologies that are used to produce, distribute, and consume goods and services

Social Interaction Material Life

Language

Components of culture Value System

values shape people’s norms and standards

One of the major vehicles to channel from one generation to the next

Aesthetics

Education

Religion

language has two parts: the spoken and the silent language

ideas and perceptions that a culture upholds in terms of beauty and good taste

community’s set of beliefs that relate to a reality that cannot be verified empirically

Differences in Culture Increasingly, managers must deal with multiple

ethnic groups with very different cultures. Thanks to globalization, you are likely to work with Japanese, French, Chinese, German and all sorts of other nationalities. It is important to recognize that people from different cultures have are different in a variety of ways, including different ways of looking at things different ways of dressing different ways of expressing personality/goodness

A)

High Context vs Low Context

 A low context culture is one in which things are fully (though concisely)

spelled out. Things are made explicit, and there is considerable dependence on what is actually said or written. A high context culture is one in which the communicators assume a great deal of commonality of knowledge and views, so that less is spelled out explicitly and much more is implicit or communicated in indirect ways. In a low context culture, more responsibility is placed on the listener to keep up their knowledge base and remain plugged into informal networks.  Low context cultures include Anglos, Germanics and Scandinavians. High context cultures include Japanese, Arabs and French.  Implications  Interactions between high and low context peoples can be problematic.  Japanese can find Westerners to be offensively blunt. Westerners can find Japanese to

be secretive, devious and bafflingly unforthcoming with information

 French can feel that Germans insult their intelligence by explaining the obvious, while

Germans can feel that French managers provide no direction

 Low context cultures are vulnerable to communication breakdowns when they

assume more shared understanding than there really is. This is especially true in an age of diversity. Low context cultures are not known for their ability to tolerate or understand diversity, and tend to be more insular.

B) Monochronic vs Polychronic  Monochronic cultures like to do just one thing at a time. They value a certain orderliness and sense of there being an appropriate time and place for everything. They do not value interruptions. Polychronic cultures like to do multiple things at the same time. A manager's office in a polychronic culture typically has an open door, a ringing phone and a meeting all going on at the same time.  Polychronic cultures include the French and the Americans. The Germans tend to be monochronic.  Implications  Interactions between types can be problematic. German businessman cannot understand why the person he is meeting is so interruptible by phone calls and people stopping by. Is it meant to insult him? When do they get down to business?  Similarly, the American employee of a German company is disturbed by all the closed doors -- it seems cold and unfriendly.

Future vs Present vs Past Orientation C)

 Past-oriented societies are concerned with traditional values and ways of doing things. They tend to be conservative in management and slow to change those things that are tied to the past. Past-oriented societies include China, Britain, Japan and most spanish-speaking Latin American countries.  Present-oriented societies include the rest of the spanish-speaking Latin American countries. They see the past as passed and the future as uncertain. They prefer short-term benefits.  Future-oriented societies have a great deal of optimism about the future. They think they understand it and can shape it through their actions. They view management as a matter of planning, doing and controlling (as opposed to going with the flow, letting things happen). The United States and, increasingly, Brazil, are examples of futureoriented societies.

D) Quantity of Time  In some cultures, time is seen as being a limited resource which is constantly

being used up. It's like having a bathtub full of water which can never be replaced, and which is running down the drain. You have to use it as it runs down the drain or it's wasted. In other cultures, time is more plentiful, if not infinite. In old agricultural societies, time was often seen as circular, renewing itself each year.  Implications  In societies where time is limited, punctuality becomes a virtue. It is insulting to waste someone's time, and the ability to do that and get away with it is an indication of superiority/status. Time is money. In cultures where time is plentiful, like India or Latin American, there is no problem with making people wait all day, and then tell them to come back the next day.  Time-plentiful cultures tend to rely on trust to do business. Time-limited cultures don't have time to develop trust and so create other mechanisms to replace trust (such as strong rule-by-law).

E) Power Distance  The extent to which people accept differences in power

and allow this to shape many aspects of life. Is the boss always right because he is the boss, or only when he gets it right?  Implications  In high power distance countries (most agrarian countries), bypassing a superior is unsubordination. In low power distance countries (US, northern europeans, Israel), bypassing is not usually a big deal.  In the US, superiors and subordinates often interact socially as equals. An outsider watching a party of professors and graduate students typically cannot tell them apart.

F)

Individualism vs Collectivism

 In individualist cultures, individual uniqueness, self-determination is valued. A

   

person is all the more admirable if they are a "self-made man" or "makes up their own mind" or show initiative or work well independently. Collectivist cultures expect people to identify with and work well in groups which protect them in exchange for loyalty and compliance. Paradoxically, individualist cultures tend to believe that there are universal values that should be shared by all, while collectivist cultures tend to accept that different groups have different values. Many of the asian cultures are collectivist, while anglo cultures tend to be individualist. Implications A market research firm conducted a survey of tourist agencies around the world. The questionnaires came back from most countries in less than a month. But the agencies in the asian countries took months to do it. After many telexes, it was finally done. The reason was that, for example, American tourist agencies assigned the work to one person, while the Filipinos delegated the work to the entire department, which took longer. The researchers also noticed that the telexes from the Philippines always came from a

Indian Values & workplace behavior  India is diverse & demographically complex country.  Dominant Indian values are affinity to family, humility, non

competitiveness, spiritual harmony, respect for wisdom & age, patience, cosmic harmony, cooperation, generosity.  The famous Indian scriptures Bhagavad Gita focuses on “Karma” or work & considers it to be the sacred duty of every person.  Perform good deeds,  Bhagavad Gita summarizes that work done with ideals of truth & selfishness & love & not for personal gains of money, power & fame, equips us with great power. However, times have changed & so have people.

Current Practices Training!! 70% of US companies provides no cross-cultural

training.

Employees for international assignments Flexible work timings  Clear Communicators Comfortable in new situations

Ultimately

Think Globally. Act Locally. ~

Derek Torrington, 1994

Learn Globally and Deliver Locally