Past experiences have demonstrated that cultural diversity in an organization can lead to issues. For instance, the implementation of a strategy in a context different from where it has been created can be difficult, conflicts between subsidiaries and the headquarters can exist, or management of intercultural teams can be problematic. Walmart in Germany is a relevant example of the cultural context importance when it comes to HRM. In fact, in 1997 and 1998, Walmart acquired two companies in Germany but it was a failure. It can be explained by the fact that feedback of the employees was ignored by managers. For example, in the morning they had to do exercise while singing the name of the brand. This practice may be a morale booster in the United States but in Germany it was seen in a really bad way, such as the practice of spying on colleagues, what can surely be related to the country’s history, among others examples. The US management practices was not in accordance with the German cultural context. (Macaray, 2011)
That is why intercultural management cannot be ignored when it comes to the organization performance, and the ‘universal best practice’ approach to HRM have to be critically considered because what is appropriate to a specific environment will not systematically be for another.
Before, intercultural management did not existed. The universalist approach, which is inspired by the success encountered by Taylor and Ford’s concepts until the 1950s, asserts that the
In the case “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tsedal Neeley states that lack of inappropriate communication, leadership and decision-making is root of the crisis of HS Holdings. Generally, cultural diversity is based on many things one being the idea that certain characteristics should not be completely disregarded but regulated and valued as important. With this in view, diverse cultural issues can result in organizational problems. First, we must view your techniques to manage your global team and recognize the primary root of the problems. Secondly, you will need to identify who should be responsible for the crisis of HS Holdings because of miscommunication and inefficient leadership. Thirdly, defining roles and job descriptions is extremely important in an open work environment and
Diversity must be created and maintained with in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of diversity onto an organization in addition to explaining the legally mandated and stakeholder driven explanations for mandatory diversity.
It is hypothesized that cultural differences in behaviour will mean differences in HRM practices within different cultures but those within the same cultural cluster will be similar whereas those in different clusters will be dissimilar. Employees and managers from different cultures take decisions in different ways – the processes, behaviours and values are not the same. People have different value orientations as a result of individual psychology, life-stage and generation and assumptions about behaviour determined by cultures are linked to a variety of organisational behaviours.
Kreitner, R. (2009). International Management and Cross-Cultural competence. (11th ed.). Management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage
Individual Final Assignment- What information about diversity in the United States has helped you better understand or relate to others in ways that you may not have in the past? Have you learned something new about your own racial, ethnic, or cultural history? Trends in immigration will continue to shape the demographics of the United States. What will the U.S. population look like in the year 2050? Why do you think so? What challenges does the United States face due to the diversity of its people? What are the benefits of such a diverse society? How can we foster a climate of acceptance and cultural pluralism in the United States? In what ways do the media perpetuate stereotyping and prejudice? Provide examples to support your
In multinational workplaces understanding how important the significance of cultural differences is larger than we might think. Organizations that are diverse have to work together because their functionality impacts the productivity of the workplace. It is vital to have an understanding the different cultures to develop a strong organization. Certain principles will help you acknowledge that different cultures exist within the organization. As a manager, you have to analyze the reasons for the development of the differences and
Cross Cultural management explains the behaviour of people in organizations worldwide, helping managers and firms to understand how to act in business matters dealing with the different cultures. (Adler, 2008)
Mismanaging cultural differences can render otherwise successful managers and organisations ineffective when working across cultures. As stated byOsland (1990, p. 4) ``The single greatest barrier to business success is the one erected by culture''. Hofstede (1983) defines culture as "the mental programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another" (Hofstede 1983 p. 25). Through the comparison of Chinese culture and Australian culture using Hofstedes five cross-cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and long-term orientation an insightful view into the differences and similarities of the cultures can be obtained (Chong & Park 2003). Human Resource Management
Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.
A society 's social structure refers to its basic social organization. Two dimensions stand out when explaining differences between cultures. The first is the degree to which the basic unit of social organization is the individual, as opposed to
In this era of Globalisation, cross cultural management is the biggest challenge that is faced by the organisations. Within the business context, cross culture refers to interaction between different cultures. Cross cultural management refers to managing the employees from different cultural background in one environment (Adler, 2008). Cross culture management is a significant issue within the organisations as the success of an organisation depends upon the smooth interaction of the employees. This paper is aimed at providing insight on the cross cultural management and the main issues and challenges relating to cross cultural management. For the purpose of this paper, two articles, “Cross-cultural Differences in Management”, by Amman & Jordan
The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The
Effective cross-cultural management has to be grounded in a detailed knowledge of individual cultures. Discuss using examples from two multinational companies.
Now days, the world becomes a one village. Although, there are different kinds of management styles and cultures impact on business management in the world, employees needs to increase their awareness to achieve the organisation targets. Awareness of cross-cultural management includes procedures and policies that are relate to the management of any organisation or workforce with different cultural and background. According
Many opportunities are associated with a culturally diverse workplace and global expansion may have potential to provide just such a diverse work group. Cross-culturalism in business can provide leaders and employees with a wonderful opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In addition, “the more opportunities for business leaders to interact with people from different cultures, the more likely they will be to have positive attitudes from different cultures and identify, learn and apply diverse culturally-appropriate business behaviors” (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012, p. 614). Culturally diverse environments offer a multitude of benefits including “the variety of perspectives, skills and personal attributes” (Matveeve & Nelson, 2004, p. 254). Moreover, multicultural teams have potential to “generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks” (Matveeve &