Lecture 5. Work Behaviour Across Cultures

Outline q       Cultural differences of managerial styles q       Dimensions of work-related attitudes q       Are organizations becoming more similar? q       Organization culture and national culture

In what ways does organizational behaviour vary across cultures? Researchers have found culturally based differences in people's values, attitudes, and behaviours. Each of us has a set of attitudes and beliefs - a set of filters through which we see management situations.

Figure 1 shows how managers' beliefs, attitudes, and values affect their behaviour. To a certain extent, beliefs, attitudes, and values cause both vicious and benevolent cycles of behaviour. Douglas Mc-Gregor, an American management theorist, gave us examples of this pattern in his "Theory X" and "Theory Y".

Theory X managers do not trust their subordinates and believe that employees will not do a good job unless closely supervised. The employees, realizing that management does not trust them, start behaving irresponsibly. The manager, observing this behaviour, becomes more distrustful of the employees and installs even tighter control systems. According to McGregor, the manager's belief that employees cannot be trusted leads to the employees' irresponsible behaviour, which in turn reinforces the manager's belief that employees cannot be trusted.

According to McGregor's Theory Y, managers who trust their employees give them overall goals and tasks without instituting tight control systems or close supervision. The employees, believing that management trusts them, do their best work whether or not the manager is watching. The manager, seeing that the employees are present and working, becomes even more convinced that they can be trusted. Managers' attitudes influence their own behaviour, which in turn influences employees' attitudes and behaviour, which then reinforces the managers' original attitudes and behaviour.

Dimensions of Work-related Attitudes

Differences in work-related attitudes exist across a very wide range of cultures. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch researcher, found highly significant differences in the behaviour and attitudes of employees and managers from different countries who worked for the multinational company - differences that did not change over time. Hofstede found that national culture explained more of the differences in work-related values and attitudes than did position within the organization, profession, age, or gender. In summarizing the most important differences, Geert Hofstede found that managers and employees vary on four primary dimensions:

• individualism/collectivism - relationship between the individual and the collectivity,
• power distance - distribution of power in society,
• uncertainty avoidance - relative comfort with uncertainty about the future, and
• masculinity/femininity - society's endorsement of "masculine" or "feminine" qualities.

Another compelling description of how cultures differ has been developed by a Dutch economist and consultant, Fons Trompenaars revealed seven dimensions of culture five of which are relevant to the business areas. They provide the most practical way for managers to consider how cultural differences influence their organization, functional area or specific project. Over a 10 year period, Trompenaars administered research questionnaires to over 15,000 managers from 28 countries. These five dimensions are:

• Universalism versus Particularlism - societal versus personal obligation
• Individualism versus Collectivism - personal versus group goals
• Neutral versus Affective relationships - emotional orientation in relationships.
• Specific versus Diffuse relationships - degree of involvement in relationships.
• Achievement versus Ascription - legitimation of power and status.

Universalism versus Particularlism (Fons Trompenaars)

Universalism means essentially that what is true and good can be discovered, defined and applied everywhere. Particularlism means that unique circumstances and relationships are more important considerations in determining what is right and good than abstract rules.

A clear example of this dimension in business is the role of the contract in different cultures. While weighty contracts tend to be a way of life in universalist cultures, more particularist cultures tend to rely on relationships with people they hold in high regard for enforcement of a deal. Encounters between universalist and particularlist business people may result in both sides being sceptical of each other's trustworthiness.

Business areas affected by universalism/particularlism

Universalism	Particularlism
Focus is more on rules than on relationships Legal contracts are readily drawn up A trustworthy person is the one who honours their "word" or contract There is only one truth or reality, that which has been agreed to A deal is a deal	Focus is more on relationships than on rules Legal contracts are readily modified A trustworthy person is the one who honours changing circumstances There are several perspectives on reality relative to each participant Relationships evolve

Individualism/Collectivism (Geert Hofstede & Fons Trompenaars)

This is the most often discussed dimension of culture and also one of the most important in which cultures differ. Individualism exists when people define themselves as individuals. It implies social frameworks in which people are supposed to take care only of themselves and their immediate families. Collectivism is characterized by tight social frameworks in which people distinguish between their own groups ("in-groups," such as relatives, clans, and organizations) and other groups. People expect in-groups to look after their members, protect them, and give them security in exchange for members' loyalty.

Determinism characterizes such collectivist cultures as Japan, where people believe that the will of the group should determine members' beliefs and behaviour. This belief is reflected in the Japanese saying, "The nail that sticks out will be pounded down." By contrast, self-determination characterizes such individualistic cultures as the United States, where individuals believe that each person should determine his or her own beliefs and behaviour.

Collectivist cultures control their members more through external societal pressure - shame - whereas individualistic cultures control their members more through internal pressure- guilt. Members of collectivist cultures place importance on fitting in harmoniously and saving face. Members of individualistic cultures place more emphasis on self-respect.

Business areas affected by individualism/collectivism

Individualism	Collectivism
More frequent use of "I" and "me" In negotiations, decisions typically made on the spot by representative People ideally achieve alone and assume personal responsibility Holidays taken in pairs, or even alone	More frequent use of "we" Decisions typically referred back by delegate to organization People ideally achieve in groups which assume joint responsibility Holidays taken in organized groups or with extended family

Neutral versus Affective relationships (Fons Trompenaars)

All human beings have emotions, but this dimension concerns the different ways that cultures choose to express emotions. In affective cultures, expressing emotions openly is more "natural", whereas more neutral cultures believe that emotions should be held in check so as not to cloud issues or give the appearance of being out of control.

There is a tendency for neutral cultures to consider anger, delight or intensity in the workplace as "unprofessional'. Conversely, affective cultures would probably regard their neutral colleagues as emotionally dead, or as hiding their true feelings behind a mask of deceit. This dimension determines two fundamental questions: should emotions be exhibited in business relations? Is emotion a corrupting influence on objectivity and reason? Americans tend to exhibit emotion yet separate it from 'objective' and 'rational' decisions. Italians and southern European nations in general tend to exhibit and not to separate. 

Business areas affected by neutral/affective relationships

Affective	Neutral
Show immediate reactions either verbally or non-verbally Expressive face and body signals At ease with physical contact Raise voice readily	Opaque emotional state Do not readily express what they think or feel Embarrassed or awkward at public displays of emotion Discomfort with physical contact outside 'private' circle Subtle in verbal and non-verbal expressions

Specific versus diffuse relationships (Fons Trompenaars)

This dimension deals with the degree of involvement individuals are comfortable with in dealing with other people. Every individual has various levels to their personality, from a more public level to the inner, more private level. There are cultural differences, though, in the relative size of people's public and private 'spaces' and also in the degree to which they feel comfortable sharing those parts of their personality with other people. In specific cultures, people tend to have a large public area and a smaller private area. In more diffuse cultures, the private 'space' is usually larger while the public area is smaller and somewhat more carefully guarded. While diffuse cultures may come across as cool initially, once in the more closely guarded public space, the private space is more accessible than in specific cultures. In other words, the whole individual tends to be involved in relationships in diffuse cultures.

For example, the circle diagrams in Figure 2 compare the more specific North Americans with the more diffuse Germans. North Americans are characterized by a small, intimate private layer that is well separated from the more public outer layers. In Germany, on the other hand, personality structures are characterized by a large private area separated from a relatively small public layer. This means, for example, that it is not uncommon for German business colleagues to interact for years on a formal name basis while in the USA the norm is to be on a first-name basis immediately. To Americans, Germans seem reserved and difficult to get to know, while Germans may consider Americans intrusive and disrespectful.

Doing business with culture more diffuse than one's own appears very time consuming. In specific cultures business is done only in a mental sub-division called 'commerce' or 'work', which is kept apart from the rest of life. In diffuse cultures, everything is connected to everything. Personal preferences reveal character and form friendships. They also make deception near to impossible. The initial investment in building relationships is as important, if not more so, than the deal in some cultures.

Business areas affected by specific/diffuse relationships

Specific (More 'open' public space, more 'closed' private space)	Diffuse (More 'closed' public space, but, once in, more 'open' private space)
Appears direct, open and extrovert "To the point" and often appears abrasive Highly mobile Separates work and private life Varies approach to fit circumstances, especially with use of titles (Herr Doktor Muller at work is Hans in social environments or in certain business meetings)	Appears indirect, closed, and introvert Often evades issues and "beats around the bush" Low mobility Work and private life are closely linked Consistent in approach, especially with use of titles (i.e. Herr Doktor Muller is Herr Doktor Muller in any setting)

Achievement versus ascription (Fons Trompenaars)

This cultural dimension of how people relate to each other deals with how status and power in a society are determined. Each society is presented both with characteristics assumed by a person as a birthright and with those that are left to be filled in through competition, personal effort or luck. Status can be based either on what someone does, or on what someone is. Cultures differ in the ways they have solved this dilemma. Religion seems to have been a very great influence on their solutions. The achievement orientation, like so many modern Western values, developed fully in the environment of the Protestant Ethic. An aspect of Calvinism is the insistence that people must constantly work to improve themselves. Each individual is supposed to be devoted to valued stressing accomplishment, ambition and striving to do better. The Protestants were even more achievement-oriented than the Catholics, who also valued hard work and ambition highly. St Benedict's "Laborare et orare" translates as "to work is to pray".

These values are not shared by traditional Buddhist, Hindu and Judeo-Christian beliefs. For the Buddhist, salvation comes not through a higher form of worldly life, but a withdrawal from the world. Consequently, the world and its achievements not only have no religious sanction, they are antithetical to religion.

In achievement-oriented countries, a business person is evaluated by how well they performed an allocated function. In ascriptive cultures, status is attributed to those who "naturally" evoke administration from others, i.e. older people, males, highly qualified persons and/or persons skilled in a particular technology or project deemed to be of national importance. 

While achievement-oriented organizations justify their hierarchies by claiming that senior people "achieve more" for the organization because their authority, justified by skill and knowledge, benefits the organization, ascription-oriented organizations justify their hierarchies as central to creating the power to get things done. This may consist of power through people and be participative. There is great variation within ascriptive cultures in the form that power takes. Whatever form power takes, the ascription of status to persons is intended to be exercised as power and that power is supposed to enhance the effectiveness of the organization.

Power Distance (Geert Hofstede)

The second dimension, power distance, measures the extent to which less powerful members of organizations accept the unequal distribution of power. To what extent do employees accept that their boss has more power than they have? Is the boss right because he or she is the boss (large, or high, power distance) or only when he or she knows the correct answer (small, or low, power distance)? Do employees do their work in a particular way because the boss wants it that way (high power distance) or because they believe that it is the best way to do it (low power distance)?

In high power distance countries, such as Philippines, Venezuela, and India, superiors and subordinates consider bypassing to be insubordination; whereas in low power distance countries, such as Israel and Denmark, employees expect to bypass the boss frequently in order to get their work done. When negotiating in high power distance countries, companies find it important to send representatives with titles equivalent to or higher than those of their bargaining partners. Titles, status, and formality command less importance in low power distance countries. The United States ranks relatively low on power distance.

Uncertainty Avoidance (Geert Hofstede)

The third dimension, uncertainty avoidance, measures the extent to which people in a society feel threatened by ambiguous situations and the extent to which they try to avoid these situations by providing greater career stability, establishing more formal rules, rejecting deviant ideas and behaviour, and accepting the possibility of absolute truths and the attainment of expertise.

Lifetime employment is more common in high uncertainty avoidance countries such as Japan, Portugal, and Greece; whereas high job mobility more commonly occurs in low uncertainty avoidance countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Denmark. The United States, with its very high job mobility, ranks relatively low on uncertainty avoidance.

Individuals' concepts of the organization vary markedly in their power distance and uncertainty avoidance orientations, depending on which country they are from. Organizations in countries such as Denmark that are low on both dimensions resemble village markets: they have very little hierarchy, everyone talks with everyone, and risk taking is both expected and encouraged.

Employees in high power distance and low uncertainty avoidance countries such as Singapore tend to think of their organizations as traditional families. Employees in countries such as Yugoslavia and Mexico that are high on both dimensions tend to view their organizations as pyramids of people rather than as families. Everyone in the organization knows who reports to whom, and formal lines of communication run vertically, never horizontally across the organization. In the pyramid organization, which operates vertically, management reduces uncertainty by emphasizing who has authority over whom. In high uncertainty avoidance and low power distance countries such as Israel and Austria, organizations tend to resemble well-oiled machines: they are highly predictable without needing a strong hierarchy.

Masculinity/Femininity (Geert Hofstede)

Hofstede defines masculinity as the extent to which the dominant values in society emphasize assertiveness and the acquisition of money and things (materialism), while not particularly emphasizing concern for people. He defines femininity as the extent to which the dominant values in society emphasize relationships among people, concern for others, and the overall quality of life.

According to Hofstede's definitions, masculine societies define gender roles more rigidly than do feminine societies. For example, women may drive trucks or practice law and men may be ballet dancers or house husbands more easily in feminine societies. The Scandinavian countries are most feminine; the United States, slightly masculine; and Japan and Austria, highly masculine. In Japan and Austria people generally expect women to stay home and take care of children without working outside the home. The United States encourages women to work and gives them a certain amount of support for child care in the form of maternity leaves and day care centres. In Sweden women are expected to work; parents are given the option of paternity or maternity leave to take care of newborn children and day-mothers to care for older children.

Swedish expatriate managers often do not have the opportunity to explain their desire for balancing professional and private life to their foreign colleagues. Swedes frequently surprise their international clients when they expect the work week to end at 5 P.M. on Friday or when they announce their intention to return home at the end of the day on the first plane in order to spend more time with their families. Many foreigners, especially Americans, frequently judge Swedes' behaviour as demonstrating an inadequate commitment to work, in actuality the Swedes are simply demonstrating their strong commitment to quality of life (feminine orientation), whereas the Americans and other similar foreigners behave according to their strong commitment to task (masculine orientation).

Hofstede's masculinity/femininity dimension has important implications for motivation in the workplace. Japanese "quality circles," for example, primarily strive to achieve maximum quality (masculinity/ high uncertainty avoidance); whereas the innovative Swedish work groups at Volvo attempt to enhance job satisfaction and flexibility/femininity/low uncertainty avoidance). Because feminine societies also tend to create high-tax environments, extra money often fails to strongly motivate employees (Sweden, for example). Conversely, masculine societies tend to develop into lower-tax environments in which extra money or other visible signs of success effectively reward achievement (Mexico, for example).

Are Organizations Becoming More Similar?

Are organizations becoming more similar worldwide or are they maintaining their cultural dissimilarities? Is the world gradually creating one way of doing business; or is the world really a set of distinct markets defined by equally distinct national boundaries, each with its own culturally unique approach to business?

The question of convergence versus divergence has puzzled the international management field for years. If people around the world are becoming more similar, then understanding cross-cultural differences will become less important. If people remain dissimilar, then understanding cross-cultural differences in organizations will become increasingly important.

To clarify this issue, John Child, a British scholar, compared organizational research across cultures. Reviewing a myriad of cross-cultural studies, he found one group of highly reputable researchers repeatedly concluding that the world is growing more similar and another group of equally reputable researchers concluding that the world's organizations are maintaining their dissimilarity. Looking closer, Child discovered that most of the studies concluding convergence focused on macro level issues -such as the structure and technology of the organizations themselves - and most of the studies concluding divergence focused on micro level issues - the behaviour of people within organizations. Therefore organizations worldwide are growing more similar, while the behaviour of people within organizations is maintaining its cultural uniqueness. So organizations in Canada and Germany may look the same from the outside, but Canadians and Germans behave differently within them. Moreover, though Germans and Canadians may both install robots in their factories, each will interact with the robots differently.

Organization Culture And National Culture

Over the last decade, managers and researchers increasingly have recognized the importance of organization culture as a socializing influence and climate creator. Unfortunately, our understanding of organization culture has tended to limit rather than enhance our understanding of national cultures. Many managers believe that organization culture moderates or erases the influence of national culture. They assume that employees working for the same organization - even if they are from different countries-are more similar than different. They believe that national differences are only important in working with foreign clients, not in working with colleagues from the same organization.

Does organization culture erase or at least diminish national culture? Surprisingly, the answer is no: employees and managers do bring their ethnicity to the workplace. As described earlier, Hofstede found striking cultural differences within a single multinational corporation. In his study, national culture explained 50 percent of the differences in employees' attitudes and behaviours. National culture explained more of the difference than did professional role, age, gender, or race.

Even more strikingly, Laurent found cultural differences more pronounced among foreign employees working within the same multinational organization than among employees working for organizations in their native lands. After observing managers from nine Western European countries and the United States who were working for organizations in their native countries (e.g., Swedish managers working for Swedish companies, Italian managers working for Italian companies, etc.), Laurent replicated his research in one multinational corporation with subsidiaries in each of the ten original countries. He assumed that employees working for the same multinational corporation would be more similar than their domestically employed colleagues, but instead he found employees maintaining and even strengthening their cultural differences. There were significantly greater differences between managers from the ten countries working within the same multinational corporation than there were between managers working for companies in their native countries. When they work for a multinational corporation, it appears that Germans become more German, Americans become more American, Swedes become more Swedish, and so on. Surprised by these results, Laurent replicated the research in two other multinational corporations, each with subsidiaries in the same nine Western European countries and the United States. Similar to the first company, corporate culture did not reduce or eliminate national differences in the second and third corporations. Far from reducing national differences, organizational culture maintains and enhances them. Why might organizational culture enhance national cultural differences? At this point neither managers nor researchers know the answer. Perhaps the pressure to conform to the organization culture of a foreign-owned company brings out employees' resistance, causing them to cling more firmly to their own national identities. Perhaps our ethnic culture is so deeply ingrained in us by the time we reach adulthood that it cannot be erased by any external force. Perhaps other as yet unexplained forces are operating. The unambiguous conclusion is that employees maintain or enhance their culturally specific ways of working when placed within a multinational organization.

Summary

Laurent's research documents a wide range of cultural differences in work-related behaviour and beliefs. Hofstede's four dimensions - individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity - highlight the most important differences for organizations. To manage effectively in a multinational or a domestic multicultural environment, we need to recognize the differences and learn to use them to our advantage rather than ignoring them or allowing them to cause problems. First, we investigated some of the ways in which we perceive, describe, interpret, and evaluate cultural differences. Then we are going to explore some of the ways in which organizations can best use those differences to their advantage. The myth of the transnational organization-the organization that is beyond nationality in its design and operation - remains, in reality, a myth.