Introduction
This report will argue that Sylvie Chevrier (2009), study of the relevance of national culture to international managers is an interesting but programmatic piece of research. The article questioned the significance of national culture to managers faced with a global business, claiming that “large parts of people’s behaviour cannot be explained by cultural values or shared perception, and called for a different definition of national culture”. The article is broken down into four sections. The first defined and explains the difference between political and national culture. The second section uses Switzerland as an example to examine the significance of national political culture. The third section of the report demonstrates the link between political culture and management practice in Switzerland. The fourth and final section examines the effects and implications of tenacious national culture for managers
Brief description of the paper being evaluated
The aim of the article is to propose political culture as an alternative approach to understanding people’s values, norms or shared believes in a given society or country. The study finds that the concept of national culture does not exist and, therefore cannot be applied globally. Especially in a country like Switzerland which is divided by various linguistic and religious internal borders. Claiming the lack of a strong national culture and difficult communication has caused different regions to remain private and form small political communities. This makes it hard for national culture to exit in such a country and creates many challenges and obstacles for managers of international business. However the article states that the existence of political cultural val...
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... better get our points across. The benefits of these changes where clear to see, we had a much more organise team, we worked and establish our objectives together, explain roles and promote team responsibility. The overall productivity and creativity of the team changes which enables us to achieve our goal in the end.
In conclusion Chevrier has attempted to prove that culture cannot be applied at national and called for an alternative to national culture in today’s business world. Difference exits within small regions of a country. The Switzerland case study is used to display this. Claiming people have a more sense of belonging to their regions rather than the country. Unfortunately for chevier the research she undertook isn’t broad enough to support the claims she made, or even answer the, is national culture still relevant to management in a global context?
Constant technological and global changes create challenges that forces leaders to manage different cultures in different countries. People, goods, services, and ideas are moving today at greater speeds which mean our labor force is becoming more diverse and multicultural by the day. Effective leaders need to understand such global dynamics in order to successfully manage organizational cultures. The cultures of leaders and their core assumptions might be different from the values and assumptions of employees in a different country. Two managers working for the same global company might see things differently due to their backgrounds and cultural values. The different countries, in which the organization operates, will have different cultures depending on the social, economic, and political history of the country. Managing and understanding these differences need an effective cross-cultural thinking leader (Yukl, 2013). Some research questions that Yukl, 2013 suggests are: 1) how behavior differs across cultural values and for different countries? 2) How values and behaviors are influenced by personality across company and country? 3) What types of traits, skills, and experience are most useful to prepare a leader being assigned to a new country? 4) How does the fast-changing culture in developing countries affect and relate to
The ethnology and culture behind a country expresses its unique beliefs and customs in its entirety. Every country develops at its own pace depending on the government and economic system, resources available, the environment and the originated social and traditional practices of its people. The country of Switzerland is prominently known for its great flourish of development due to the advanced lead of technology, trade and successful economy. This case study will bring myself and other classmates to answer the common questions about Swiss culture, to pertain past and present data, relating to the ethnic backgrounds, culture, and traditions within the country that may not be familiar with the average student. This will also result in being
The principles that were ingrained in the culture since its formation in 1914 have made the IBM Corporation one of the best managed companies in the world, with the values being “respect for the individual, the best customer service, and the pursuit of excellence” (Cummings & Worley, 2015, p. 561). These cultural values and principles are a basis for how management feels that employees and others within IBM should behave in regard to customers as well as providing the excellent products and service that IBM has been known for over a century of their existence. Culture in an organization, from the smallest to the giants in the industry such as IBM
Hofstede conceptualizes national culture with several distinctive attributes. Culture to him is territorially unique and nationally shared according to a national tendencies deducted from the survey results. Also, national culture to him is implicit, core, systematically, enduring, meaning it does not change over time, and determinate. Hofstede regards characteristics as identifiable and consequences as predictable (McSweeney 2002). Lastly, he looks at culture “as ‘mental programming’, as ‘s...
“Probably the most cited perspective on corporate culture is that of Schein (1985). He defines culture as having three levels. The most visible, but most superficial, level is that of culture as a pattern of behavior. It is ‘the way things are done around here,’ the norms, the stories, the symbols. These behavioral patterns reflect a second, deeper, level of culture, which are the firm’s shared values. Shared values are, on their turn, driven by the third and most fundamental level of culture: shared assumptions” (Van den Steen, 7).
Value systems across cultures can help to explain the differences in behaviour amongst people from different countries (McCort and Malhotra, 1993), which tend to stay with people over time. There are many different cultures and in order for an organisation to be successful, they need to take many different into account to ensure that they are successful in different countries and cultures. Cultural values appear to have considerable effects on management decision making processes (Clark, 1990; Ken, 1985; Picken, 1987; Shane, 1988; Swierczek, 1991). Culture is defined as “the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (Unesco, 2002).
Mr. Nardelli could have spent more time demonstrating why the changes were necessary and why the urgency. Taking a look at the communication strategies (discussed later in this paper), there appeared to have been a great deal of one way communication, but less collaboration and some employees could have felt their opinions did not matter. As such, not everyone agreed with the changes, however, he did place a sense of urgency.
The importance of culture in International business today cannot be underestimated and it is imperative that attention is paid at strategic, organizational and the individual levels. The “Blue Ridge Spain” case elucidates these at all three levels. My analysis of this case is from the perspective of the Spanish corporation, Terralumen S.A. National culture is the shared implicit beliefs and tacit values that truly differentiate one cultural group from another. I will be using Geert Hofstede’s frame work to deconstruct this case into its separate dimensions.
Marc Howard Ross’s chapter on importance of culture in comparative politics in the Comparative Politics text is a comprehensive and important example of scholarship on culture in comparative politics. The chapter provides an overarching argument for how culture play a crucial role in explanation of politics. It focus on three important elements. Frist, How people uses culture to define meaning. Second, culture is the foundation of social and political identity which affects individual and collective behavior. Third, to a larger degree discusses methodological approaches in cultural studies as well as reports on the advances made in cultural analysis of politics by historically reviewing the cultural studies of politics.
In the article, Cultural constraints in management theories, Geert Hofstede examines business management around the globe from a cultural perspective. He explains how he believes there are no universal practices when it comes to management and offers examples from the US, Germany, France, Japan, Holland, China and Russia. He demonstrates how business management theories and practices are very much subject to cultural norms and values and by understanding these differences, it can give managers an advantage in global business practices.
Ahlstrom, D., & Bruton, G. D. (2010). International Management: Strategy and Culture in the Emerging
The Hofstede model of national culture differences, based on research carried out in the early seventies, is the first major study to receive worldwide attention. This influential model of cultural traits identifies five dimensions of culture that help to explain how and why people from various cultures behave as they do. According to Hofstede (1997) culture is Ù[ collective programming of the mind? This referring to a set of assumptions, beliefs, values and practices that a group of people has condoned as a result of the history of their engagements with one another and their environment over time. In this study, culture refers to a set of core values and behavioural patterns people have due to socialisation to a certain culture. The author̼ theoretical framework will be applied to compare differing management practices in China and the West. The five measurements of culture identified by the author are:
The components of culture discussed in the textbook, ‘International Business: The Challenges of Globalization,’ include aesthetics, manners and customs, education, physical and material environments, personal communication, religion, social structure, values and attitudes (Wild, Wild, Valladres Montemayor, 2015). When moving businesses’ to international markets like Birkenshire Corporations did, being a British organization having operations in China (Huang, T.Y., 2017), these elements of culture are extremely important to consider. Whether being in marketing and having to change the packaging of the product such as language, colors, and picture used; in social structure of the company and how staff arr expected to communicate, or the manners and customs a company has. In the case of Birkenshire Corporation, the main element of culture that was ignored and not considered was the manners and customs. Ignorance of culture was done by both the administrative department, made up of Chinese and non-Chinese staff, and the employees who received the gifts, made up of people from other cultures such as Latin-America, Australia, Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa (Huang, T.Y., 2017). If these employees had been made aware of the manners and customs of all the various cultures present in the Birkenshire organization, this issue could have been resolved in a way that didn’t offend
Tylor has pointed out that "culture is complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". According to this definition, it is easy to know that every nation has different cultural preferences, national tastes and value standards. These factors impact on every part of management in multinat...
Hofstede, G . (1983). The cultural relativity of organizational practices & theories. Journal of International Business Studies ,14 (2), 75-89.