SUMMARY:
Individual is the basis for the analysis and the interaction of different individuals form a specific group that generally has common interests or a common goal as minimum.
People belong to a group because they have the need to perform, in order to accomplish with integration purposes (This is the motivation of the individual behavior) and those groups are constantly interacting each other (“group dynamics”). “Members in such a highly interconnected context are motivated to maintain a close relationship with other group members for task completion and goal achievement” .(Source: EBSCO database: Chun-Hsi Vivian Chen and Ya-Yun Tang: “Exploring the Mediating Effect of Group Cohesion in Multilevel Analysis”).
The human behavior is affected by a lot of variables such as:
*Internal Perspectives: Belong to the person as individual and they are inside each person, according their past experiences, thoughts, feelings and needs. They may be different due to the basis of each culture adopted in earlier years of the life.
*External Perspectives: They are outside the person and depend of the external events or environment.
We have to take into account both perspectives within an organization, because they might modify the performance of each employee or a specific group of employees. For example: If one person is low-paid by a company, this person will not be enough motivated to do his job, and this situation affects the quality of the job and then, the quality of the organization.
DEFINITION OF ORGANIZATION:
“Social unit of people systematically arranged and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals on a continuing basis. All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between functions and positions, and subdivides and delegates roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out defined tasks. Organizations are open systems in that they affect and are affected by the environment beyond their boundaries.” . (Source: www.BussinessDictionary.com)
Based on this definition, we can conclude
The organization may be compared as:
-Clockwork: Every part that composes it has to fit and has one specific task, in order to complete the organization’s goals.
-Snake pit: It is not an easy task: It is complex and has many daily obstacles.
All organizations have two factors that compose it as a whole and they are denominated: formal and informal. The first ones involve the visible part of the companies with their mission, vision, objectives proposed since the beginning, products and services offered by the company, symbols, language, ceremonies, etc; however, there are a lot of invisible factors that people can recognize only with they work for the company or interact with all members and experiences inside the company (feelings, attitudes, values and beliefs). The combination of all those components forms the organizational culture as a whole, and this is an important concept:
Organizational culture is “likely to how the organization makes decisions, communicates and structures its roles and relationships”(International management and culture” Chapter one) and this is what makes a company different from others, even if they offer the same products. For this reason, it is very hard to copy by the competence and it belongs to the competitive advantage of the organization and their members.
There are a lot of different values and perspectives within a company but the company have establish a model to be followed for all their components in order to achieve some goals; However, we can find some “patterns” in terms of a nation or country and it influences the company behavior very much: They share customs, values and common beliefs, even though there exist other factors as the external ones.
Many authors propose many theories about the cultural dimensions that we have to take into account when we study a specific culture, but we are going to adopt the Hofstede’s dimensions:
-Power Distance
-Individualism vs. Collectivism
-Masculinity vs. Feminity
-Uncertainty Avoidance
-Long term vs. Short term orientation
QUESTIONS:
1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use an hypothetical but realistic situation - or real one - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. you may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.
Nick B. Meyer is a specialist studying cultural dimensions and he says in his conference presented in the EAFIT University, that there is not a “world culture”, that this is a complex concept changing every days and everywhere. However, nowadays we have to be aware of those cultural changes due to the globalization processes. That is why he explains the cultural dimensions and how different countries have adopted their own but have introduced new elements as well. One of the most important is:
• Uncertainty avoidance: “It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; 'there can only be one Truth and we have it'. People in uncertainty avoiding countries are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervous energy.” (Geert Hofstede™ Cultural Dimensions).
Illustrated examples: Israel is a county marked by many social and political disturbs, due to the immigration of Jewish people from many countries and the historical conflict with Arabian world for their territories and their culture maintenance. As we can see in the chart, this culture has a high degree of uncertainty related with future changes and future situations due to the historical context. People avoid taking future decisions because some factor as the war.
Taken from http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_israel.shtml
Taken fromhttp://images.google.com.co/imgres?imgurl=http://decabo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/foto-guerra-palestina-israel
CORPORATE CULTURE IN THE ORGANIZATIONS
All organizations make part of certain type of environment that shares common characteristics or variables. However, it is not composed by only one or two or three actors, but is composed by a lot of organizations, variables and independent actors that affect the relationships, the internal policies and decisions within them as individuals.
Organizations are composed by individuals with different beliefs, customs and values, however, all the organizations need to have clear their own “style” that makes it different from other companies, that’s why I agree with the assumption that every organization has a corporate culture: They establish objectives and targets and they have to start to hire employees with common characteristics in order to achieve those proposals: that is why the companies take enough time to look and select their employees before hire them.
When people are working together they establish some ties that make them a group or team, looking for common goals; but not all the persons need to have the same attitudes and perspectives, they need to use those differences to reach a common proposal, and this I not an easy task, because the company must have a well structured framework to make this possible and this is one of the reason because we have to take into account that if one company is more complex and it has more employees and elements this organizational culture and code needs to be stronger than a simple and easy one.
It think that the organizational culture cannot change totally if we want to keep it strong, because if we do, the company would change their internal and external image and it would bring negative dissonances with their employees, their objectives and their performance in general. But the company needs to improve their culture all the time and it has to adapt it according the continuous changes around the new world, because there is an important concept called “competition” and “globalization”, within a bigger scope. But this concept is not new, Freeman (1892) wrote that there is not innovation without change and recently the specialists says: “A culture that spurs innovation allows for natural work teams to build as often called communities of practice joining people of congruent intellectual interests (Amin and Roberts, 2008). "It is very important to have internal partners ...,"
Taken from http://www.beyondlean.com/images/corporate%20culture%202.jpg
Last source: PROQUEST DATABASE: “Innovation Management and Thought Leadership - A Cultural Requirement in a Global Competitive Environment”, Michel Soto Chalhoub. Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge. Hollywood: Sep 2010. Vol. 16
ResponderEliminar