Abstract
Theories of culture help us to identify and understand various problems related to cross culture management. In this assignment, various theories of culture are explained with some examples. A brief introduction of culture, language, religion, knowledge about the human characteristics and nature of the people and theories related to culture are explained. These theories help us to understand why there is cross cultural differences, what are the factors creating the conflict, how cross culture issued are addressed and how can we manage cross culture problems. Further these theories tell us about different beliefs and values of human shares and in what way management can address their problems related to cross culture, how management use these theories for their fruitful operation to obtain their desired goal.
Introduction
Human beings are mobile, they move from one place to other for different purposes. They not only travel, they take their culture along with them while moving from one place to other. Cross culture is a concept in management in which different cultures from different nationals, their psychology, environment etc are accessed, review and gap between the differences between cultural issues is reduced. Different nation or people of different culture and religion have different way of living, thinking and doing work. Cross culture management is the study of different culture, environment and bridges the gap between different religions, culture etc.
Due to mobility of people from one place to other, organizations have different types of people from different countries with different cultures, values and religions. Even organizations have their culture in order to perform their work efficiently however due to cultural difference their might be collision in the culture and this collision will hamper organization goal. As per Hollinger & Wiesemann, Airbus had suffered US$ 20bn loss while making A380 superjumbo jet, due to cultural collision between French and German workers. (Hollinger, Weisemann 2008). There was severe conflict between German and French workers regarding ways of working, working environment, cultural issues etc. Theories cross culture will help managements to avoid these sort of collision as well ways to reduce these collisions.
Definition of culture
'Cultures consist of shared constructions that emerge out of social interactions of sets of individuals who inhabit overlapping social and physical spaces.' (Ilesanmi, 2009). It defines as culture is shared with social interaction between individuals who come from different background and share with others. Further, Hofstede (1980) suggested "culture is mental program that control individual response to their environment". Different scholars have different views about culture and they have some limitation as well defining culture.
Features of culture:
As per Thomas (2008), we can say that culture is shared, learned and is systematic and organized.
Culture is shared:
According to Hofstede (1980), culture is mental program which describes human nature along with personality of people. He describes culture is shared on mind in three level of programming as per the environment as well as how people react on it. He describes in lowest level of programming people do the as per normal way means almost all people have same work, it depends with our biological functions like eating, sleeping etc however the level slightly above describes the level of learning and in top level, he describes how culture is learned and integrated on personal life.
Culture is learned:
Culture is integrated in life not once; it is passed from generation to generations. Cultured is learned from person to person, one generation, and one culture to another by means of communication and interacting with environment. For example the usage of junk foods in developing countries like Nepal, India is growing as people from these countries who have interaction with westerners have learned and integrated in their life and similarly other people learned from them.
Culture is systematic and organized:
All culture belongs to system, are organised and integrated to the system, have a base and have an organized value, beliefs towards environment (Thomas, 2008). It consist of thoughts and values which has been designed or desired to share by some social group as per the situation and need of people to opt various laws, political factors, financial.
There are various reason of survival and differ between different cultures. The main factors which cultures differ and persist are survival, language, religion, national culture etc
Survival:
One of the main reasons of existence of culture is survival. Different groups, companies etc have different culture, their culture are different from others so that they can mark their existence and survival. Culture tends to influence people on decision making as well. In case of success of management, they tend to imply same culture to their different branches as well as they believe this culture will make their existence.
Language:
Language plays vital role in the way of cultural transmission (Hall, 1966). Culture is shared and adopted due to use of languages. Various words are transmitted or copied from one language to other in order to specify particular words. Every country has their own language and some countries have more than one language, i.e. different indigenous groups or societies have their own language as well. These languages represent culture, environment, and society of that group. For example although Nepal is small country, it has around 36 different languages of different caste. Each language represents the people of that culture. "One long standing view is that because people encode things in memory in terms of particular language, language determines the way they view the world." (Whorf, 1956). It means language determines the society's mental representation, how they are influenced by the environment. For example, if an Asian guy stays Ireland for 10 years and later return to his home county, his way of speaking is somewhat influenced by English. Thus language plays vital role in cultural transmission and cultural representation.
Religion:
Religion is beliefs, behaviour, and devotion toward god that people share. Different religions have different culture and beliefs. For example In Hindu relight cow is worshipped as god and Hindu people don't eat beef whereas people of other religion eat beefs. Religion represents cultural values such as tradition, language, social living etc. Religion is unevenly distributed and concentrated in specific parts of the world. Religion has a great influence on what the people perceives and behaves to another religion people. It resembles people, the way of their thinking, the society they belongs and culture they adopt. For example, in Muslim religion multi marriage are allowed to men.
Before moving towards to the theories of cross culture, we have to know the culture, language, religion of people, how they can adapt the changes in cross culture. Global managers have to understand that language, religion and typical cultures are factors that can cause collision between people.
Different aspects of culture and beliefs:
In various cases, mangers face different types of cultural issues and different beliefs of people. Major aspects of culture and beliefs are as follows:-
In Group Bias and Prejudice:
It is nature of human being that we are bias and wants to get along with the same culture group. We tend to favour the group which identifies ourselves, identifies our cultures, language, religion etc and make some discrimination about other. We feel comfortable in our group member and relate with negative characteristics with those of out group (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Prejudice judgements then translates discrimination is taken into action against others. It depends mostly upon both cultural and personal factors. Group favouritism occurs in organization due to various factors like gender, age, nationality, religion etc (Wilder, 1986).
Ethnocentrism:
Ethnocentrism is the view that one's own culture is superior to any other way of living (Le Vine & Campbell, 1972). It means person or groups assume that their culture, society, groups, religion is superior to other. It can create conflict between different groups which may lead to violent acts as well as people are ethnocentric. Definition and character of ethnocentrism is defined by Traindis (1994) as follows:-
- What goes on in our culture is seen as "natural and correct," and what goes on in other cultures is perceived as "unnatural and incorrect."
- We perceive our own in-group customs as universally valid.
- We unquestionably think that in group norms, roles, and values are correct.
- We believe that it is natural to help and cooperate with members of our in- group, to favour our in-group, to feel proud of our in-group, and to be distrustful of and even hostile toward out-group members.
To elaborate what Ethnocentrism means we can take example of "Kome" – rice in Japan. Japanese people think rice are the symbol of their independence, they believe Japanese rice are the best rice in the world. Even in the time of scarcity of Japanese rice other imported rice were not more consumed in Japan. There were several debates in Japan about Japanese rice and other imported rice from USA about the taste however most of the consumers were unable to tell the difference. It means although there is not any taste difference in Japanese rice and imported rice; Japanese people still think their rice is superior to other. (Schlender, 1993).
If the company have good policy, they are doing well in one country than they will try to impose the same policy in other countries as well as they think their working style, their culture is superior that's why they are successful in business however people from other country have same problem as well, they think their culture is superior and they will not adapt the culture imported by foreign companies. We take a report of Song Jung-a (2006) published in financial times why big companies like Nokia, Wal-Mart, Mc-Donald, Google, Nokia , Coca-cola etc. are unable to compete to local companies in Korea? These multinationals companies put their cultures in Korean market however Koreans rejected these culture as they believe their culture are superior than others. The main reason for failure of those multinational companies are they try own way ignoring local characteristics and failed to adapt local taste. In order to cope to with situation these multinational companies later realized their ethnocentric way of working is no more applicable in Korea and moved on with joint ventures in Korean companies, re launching new products as per Korean taste etc.
There are various theories of cross-culture management which help us to understand and practice cross culture which are as follows;-
Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck Framework, 1961:
They have described culture under the six dimensions where a society can be categorised under anthropology:
Relationship to nature:
As per this dimension people are bounded by the nature. People need nature and they have to adopt or work together with nature and let the nature control them.
Beliefs about human nature:
In this dimension, Kluckhohn & Strodbeack have described the behaviour or character of people mentioning that people might be good, evil or mixture of both
Relationship between people:
People are concerned and take responsibility within them or attached with the family or group which they belong. Some people prefer to live alone and some of them like to be associated with groups.
Nature of human activity:
People are goal oriented, thoughtful and focus on the time however it totally depends upon the nature of people. Some people like to do the things first as per the interest on time bound however some people don't.
Conception of space:
Some people like to share their feelings or some people like to stay in private or some prefer both.
Orientation to time:
Different people make decisions with respect to time. Some prefer to take decision in present with respect to their tradition in past or they even make decisions for future.
To elaborate this dimension, let us take report of Hollinger, Weismann of regarding delay in manufacturing airbus (Hollinger & Weisemann, 2008). In their report, we identify the nature of human activity dimension that French people like to kiss, talk and interact with each other before work however German people like to work first. Further there is frustration in French side as German were late on their work, they should have finished their work in Germany. We can apply and use the dimension of orientation of time for above illustration. Further different behaviour of French and German workers is also shown which dimension of relationship between people indicates such as French like to work in team and German never had.
In a nutshell, these six dimensions show the relation between human with time, nature as well as culture where they belong to time. These dimensions can be used to identify, identify the problems related to cultural issue across the borders according to nature, thinking, and relationship between people.
Hofstede's study:
Hofstede extracted four dimensions by conducting research based on attitude surveys of IBM in 1980. His dimensions are as follows:-
Individualism-Collectivism:
Individualism is the tendency to view one rather than others and is more concerned with consequences of one. (Thomas, 2008). Individualism means one's core concept values and beliefs and his self identity with in a particular place where he prolonged with whereas collectivism is tendency to view group the rather than oneself. One can sacrifice his concepts or personal interest for good of his group. (Thomas, 2008). In collectivism same beliefs and value are shared among the certain people and prefer group interest to do work with each other.
The person depends upon whether he is an individualist or the collectivist to adopt with the organisation.
Power distance:
According to Hofstede (1980), "Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally." It means society selects groups or individual whom powers are delegated. Power distance also describe in what extent junior people accept that superiors have more power than they have. For example countries of low power distance employees are not afraid to express their doubts and disagreements with their bosses however countries of high power distance are afraid to express their doubts.
Uncertainty avoidance:
In This dimension defines the extent in which societies focus on the ways of reducing uncertainty to create stability in the society. It is determined by the rules & regulations, religious views, social security measures etc. Emotional values are measured in uncertainty avoidance. It determines the stability of the person whether the person is comfortable or uncomfortable in the society.
Masculinity-femininity:
Masculinity –femininity dimension measure the role of male or female plays in the society. This dimension measures the dominance over the female by male. "Masculinity- Femininity is the extent to which traditional male orientations of ambition and achievement are emphasized over traditional female orientation of nurturance and interpersonal harmony." (Thomas, 2008)
Cultural Distance
The main idea of cultural distance is to find relationship between two countries. If the countries are nearer to each other, they will have somewhat similar culture whereas if the countries are long distance gap than they have different culture. (Kogut & Singh, 1988). For example, cultures of Americans and Canadians are somewhat similar whereas cultures of American and Indians are different as Canada is near to America where as India is far from America. This cultural distance is meaningful on board comparison national level not on individual level. (Thomas, 2008)
Conclusion and recommendation:
In this Morden business age, many companies are moving toward globalization and have to face with diverse culture, religion, language, ethnic groups. To cope with cross culture management issues, management have to know about different culture, how to imply new culture to new environment etc. Human nature, behaviours are dynamic and so with culture as well so management as well as people have to adopt the changes according to the time.
The theories of culture help the management help ease the gaps created in the cultural differences. Management should always be cautious towards cross cultural issue otherwise there will be collision between cultures which hinders management growth. They have to find the way using these theories to reduce the gaps of cross cultural issues. In a nutshell, management have to adapt the culture as per new environment, merger their culture to new environment to obtain their desired goal.
As we know world is dynamic and nature of human being as well, these changes create changes in culture as well. New technologies are emerging day by day, these changes in technologies also affects culture of people. Change in technology and its relationship between cultures is not defined in cultural theories which are the limitations of cross culture theories which we have described above. In a nutshell, both management and people have to adapt changes in culture, respect language & religion as well be acquaint with latest technology.
Bibliography
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Hofstede. G, 1980, Culture's consequence: International differences in work related values, Beverly Hills, Sage
Hollinger. P, Weisemann, 2008, Airbus is hampered by cultural differences, The financial times, updated July 15, 19:28
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