National culture
Hofstede carried out a research study to identify how values in employment sectors are affected by culture. He described national culture as the process of programming all the human minds, which quickly assist in determining individuals from another group. This shows what a particular group has in common that distinguishes them from another one. The levels comprise of values, rituals, heroes, and symbols. His research was based on data collected from a vast multinational corporation of seventy countries, IBM, where he first used forty different nations with huge teams of respondents. He then did the research to fifty countries and three regions. This detailed study was to show how culture values affect the workplaces between 1967 and 1973. He found out that organizations are bound to culture.
Culture forms the different ways of feeling, the way we think and act and is learned and experienced by people in various institutions. It differs from one nation and region to another. He stated that the shared characteristics were inherited from one generation to the successors though the degrees of values and cultures shift at a slow pace. His research showed that national culture differences are explicitly seen at the deepest level where values are. In various institutions, we have management skills, which are specific to individual national cultures as each uses a managerial skill that is efficient for its running which could not be suitable for another. The cultural process of countries together with existing small divisions are difficult to describe adequately, as they are composed of several distinct cultural aspects which people participate in without realizing.
People use their thinking to manage organizations in the reality by their values. Most of the times societies comprise of institutions and agencies which are an image of the dominating values within the culture. This has outdone the generalization of the Western culture approaches to managing since the management strategies in this countries vary thus this fact is not justified. The generalized western countries include Germany, France, United Kingdom and Sweden while there is another notion of Asian management generalizing management in various countries. The way individuals approach certain issues in life is indicative of their culture. This includes their perception of their surroundings and their consideration of right or wrong values from their beliefs. Despite the fact that culture is in the people’s thoughts, it is becoming clearer in the society institutions and tangible goods. Thus individual values, beliefs and expressions should account in managerial procedures.
Managers are role models to the employees; they motivate them to perform optimally in their sector, which is a source of the organization progress. Set rules and regulations should be easy to understand and incorporate every aspect of the nation culture that allows similar interpretation.
Some factors account for some differences in the cultural setup all over the universe, which guide in explanation of the working of various organizations and the characters of the individuals within them. Hofstede classified the values that distinguished nations’ cultures in four groups, which explained how custom performs a role as mind software. These include the following:
Individualism versus collectivism
In individualism, individuals are required to offer themselves and their families support while collectivism is whereby the social framework is robust and individuals expect help from their relatives and other in-group in return to some other loyalty they might have offered them. This approach shows the extent of dependency that society holds among the people.
Morocco proves to be an excellent example of a collectivistic society where the individuals are connected highly with their relatives for loyalty. The society members of Morocco have strong bonds, and anyone cares for the other members of his/her group. When one commits a crime, shame is evidenced while there are supposed to be morals for an employer/employee interaction.
Large versus small power Distance
Power distance is a range of the authority, which makes society members to accept the inequality of the power distribution in the institutions and organizations. It influences the entire community members either the less or more powerful. This lead to the comfort of individuals in higher powers while those possessing lower powers struggle to enhance equality in the authority authorization demanding justifications for the inequalities.
Where power distance is large, the ruling is centralized with dictatorial leadership. An enormous number of supervisory workers are required, and there is the acceptance of the benefits of authority. The centralized approach establishes a hierarchy defined by authority. All these individuals in the different positions are answerable to the central power. In lower powers, the ruling is decentralized with participatory decision-making protocols that require few staffs for supervision. The individuals at this level are aware of their rights and tend to maintain people at equal levels.
The approach illustrates the ways society deals with differences among people once they occur. It has an impact on the improvement of the people’s institutions and organizations. For example, Morocco is very hierarchical regarding the society ranks where the entire citizen accepts the order each person is placed, and there is no further justification. It highly reflects traditional inequality notion where centralization of resources is the key issue. Subordinates only follow orders from their bosses without questioning. Seventy percent of the people practice this.
Strong versus weak Uncertainty Avoidance
Uncertainty Avoidance shows the level by which society members become restless with fickleness, which motivates them to beliefs that guarantee certainty while sustaining institutions that brings comfort to them. When the uncertain avoidance is stable, the society thrives on supporting rigid beliefs and morals where ideas and persons that do not abide by them are not tolerated. The organization has well-outlined systems and standardized protocols with promotions based on age. There is a strong urge for agreement and respect for authority. For weak uncertainty avoidance, there is flexibility in practices and a deviation from such act is more easily tolerated thus is risk taking. The organizations at poor AU have few structural levels and few regulations with promotions mainly based on achievements.
The dimension deals with the society approach of the team regarding the uncertainty of their future. It also focuses on the pros and cons of attempting to control the future of individuals. Every culture has learned to deal with such anxieties in varying ways (Minkov, 2014). Morocco country has a great partiality for avoiding uncertainty thus it sustains firm beliefs and behaviors that are intolerant of ideas and actions against it. There are psychological needs for rules governing every action. Every individual has an inner feeling to work hard to cater to the needs and a sense of the need for personal security (Mazanec, 2015).
Masculinity versus Femininity
Masculinity is associated with certain traits in the society that includes heroism, success and assertiveness while Femininity describes modesty, care and humbleness. This describes the social roles given to the different sexes in the community, which will be reflected in the institutions (Matzler, 2016). Each sex can perform the functions of the other party without necessary being grouped in their category.
A society where masculinity is highly evidenced shows that the actions of the entire community will be influenced by competition, success and execution. Mostly success is associated with the winner, which commences right from the lower schools to higher organizations in the lifetime. The society with feminine qualities leads to nurturing and life quality traits being dominant in the dimensions they use to govern the society as a whole (Luo, 2016). Feminine is also associated with the belief that rising out in a group of people is not admirable. Masculinity and femininity issues motivate individuals to be best and have a liking of what one does respectively. In Morocco, this dimension is highly recognized and put into practice.
Hofstede portrayed strong masculine in Japan and lowest in Sweden. Thus, in Japan, greater success would be seen from the inclusion of more male employees that would form a strong team whereas in Sweden it would be better to balance the skill of employers instead of the gender (Rallapalli, 2015).
Long and short-term orientation
It was the fifth element that came up from research by Michael Harris Bond with the help of Hofstede applied to 23 countries only. It shows that each society has to sustain part of the links from the past and deal with the present and future problems at the same time (Rienties, 2013). This is dependent on the type of the society involved. Some societies, which are normative, may prefer to adore norms and traditions but be suspicious on the societal shift while others support the currents ideas preparing for the future (Hopkins, 2016). Morocco nation has a culture that is normative with people being highly concerned with the absolute truth even in the ways they think. They respect their traditions and tend to save less for future focusing on obtaining quick results.
Indulgence
This was the sixth feature that illustrated Michael Minkov’s research on the World Values Survey information from ninety-three countries. These show the degree by which individuals control their wants and inspiration based on the way they were brought up. Children should be allowed to socialize to become human. Culture may be indulgent or restrained because of weak and strong controls respectively. In Morocco, the society culture is restraint because of the distrust and negativity character towards socialization issues (Mack, 2015). Such societies do not pure a lot of emphasis on recreation time and control the gratification of their needs. This gives the individuals a feel that their activities are hindered by social norms, which are wrong (Leshley, 2014).
After his research on seventy-six countries, he concludes that culture only subsists by correlation: he found that the results of the various countries on the six aspects correlate since all the study populations were human beings though unique Thus culture can be used for comparison (Hofstede, 2016). The comparable scores have been stable over time though some factors lead to the change of the culture universally. Many countries are affected at the same time, which changes together with a shift in their habits. In failed and highly developed states, the dimension will change slowly.
Some research works done after his work
Hofstede had proposed six areas that continued studies should engage to enhance complete understanding of the cultural aspects. This comprised of the non-Anglo approaches to cultural aspects; inclusion of more countries to the study; research of cultural shifts with time; culture divisions and their effects and outlandish structural and managerial theories (Solmazer, 2016).
After Hofstede work, various researchers used a variety of concepts that indicated that the national cultural value is correlated to workplace morals and other organizational outcomes. Hofstede dimensions have been most influential in their cultural classifications. His work on the national culture has been cited highly compared to other as it has been used widely in the study of cross-cultural management.
A large number of researchers concentrate on the individualism-collectivism model thus their research is narrowed down to single Hofstede finding which restricts comparisons across the various culture levels. Cross-cultural where two or more countries are included, and monoculture research comprising of persons from the same country has been done. This has shown a high variation of culture within nations on beliefs and intellectual dimensions. Additionally, it has demonstrated that it is significance for understanding the differences in culture within a country (Bauer, 2016). They relate cultural values with the outcomes of various management areas that constitute change, conflict, decision and human resource commands (Jackson, 2015). The aspect of culture in leadership and personality has also been proved through researches.
In change management, the collectivistic in the United States has shown a larger group with the right attitudes towards advances in technology and better chances for living standards from highly developed infrastructure (Taras, 2012). In conflict management, the Hong Kong has been seen to like bargaining and meditating more than the American using undergraduate meditates and non-subjects. The study was carried out in the procedure that was just to the subjects. The Hong Kong subjects used had a high likelihood of suing a stranger compared those from the US. The scores for Mexican items are higher regarding accommodation and cooperation than the ones in the United States.
In Hofstede research, the cultural values were tackled at country level, which has been freely utilized in the study of single countries. This has positively described a new approach to evaluate culture. It has also been applied in the test of cultural theories where many methods including experimental and managerial research surveys (Jang, 2015).
It has also led to negative impacts where there is inadequate connect between theoretical and methods that criticize Hofstede work and the researchers at the individual level. For instance, the research that has illustrated that individuals in one country could be highly individualistic and at an average level of collectivistic than persons from another country.
Contradictions in national culture
Culture related research has become more complicated with advancement to investigate on their implications in the society. In business, studies by the GLOBE group have enlarged the Hofstede findings on the culture impacts on various activities and consequences (Deephouse, 2016).
While most of Hofstede work has been efficiently used, it dates back thirty years ago and can be improper to use for the present society. This has necessitated the updating of his dimensions in some of the nations, which have also incorporated the impacts of culture on higher education systems. Information was obtained from the US and Taiwan, and it illustrated that job-related cultures are not fixed and can vary over time with the shift of other critical factors in the society. For example, socioeconomic and political environment shift leads to a change in the people’s cultural values, which is central to Hofstede findings. This necessitates the updates on such values periodically to avoid misunderstanding of national cultures and their implications.
To investigate the cultural changes Fernandez researched on Hofstede dimensions in nine countries and identified the changes over the past 25 years on the same. He used information from senior student entrepreneurs and business professionals. His argument was that Job parallel cultural dimensions could be easily affected by changes in the society in democracy, economic and education sectors.
In some research, Uncertainty Avoidance approach has been criticized for being invalid, and they recommend that variation should be measured across groups though it does not imply that the dimension is in existence. Lena Schmitz, who used data from France and Germany to prove the invalidity of the dimension, did the research. The study illustrated that it could not be measured using the invariance from the IBM study by Hofstede where the individuals involved were not dependent on characters of their groups (Desmarchelier, 2016).
In 2003, another critic rose due to the definition of cultures as Baskerville thinks that he included very critical aspects that are not supposed to be part of the explanation. These are beliefs, norms, customs and other habits (Laitinen, 2016). He believes that Hofstede had narrowed down to values ignoring the cultural domains. Thus, he suggested that he might have not covered culture at all. He showed that only nations were involved in the research.
He had neglected multicultural countries like Belgium and other cross-border cultures like Spain. This is associated with the methodology used by Hofstede to carry out his national culture research (Farivar, 2016). The number of respondents that he based his conclusion on the culture is said to be inadequate to represent the cultures of particular countries. This showed ignorance on the basic statistics. Most of the researchers use his models blindly which leads to bias as they are not able to evaluate culture richness entirely.
In 1999, Bhimani did a research and identified that he studied in the countries with well known. In 2002, McSweeney showed that IBM is not a representation of the universe. The studies illustrated that more studies are recommended to make conclusions.
Managers’ use of findings from the key studies
Use of different cultural background is essential in related work organization as it motivates people and improves proper interrelation among employer and employees. The management team is supposed to cope with global economic challenges with the way they manage their staff who are culturally different from each other (Kaasa, 2015). For managers to recruit, inspire and maintain high standards of skilled employees, they need to understand several cultural variations in their institutions.
Management of human resources involves many steps, which are repeated most of the time until one gets the best approach. They thus learn slowly from experience and the evaluation of every outcome from individual practices. During recruitment, the finding shows that one is supposed to divide all the interlinked aspects in a multinational organization though concentrate on getting the people required to do the job. Many people come from different cultures that a manager one needs to know the effects of culture on the recruiters and the candidates you require to avoid biases (Dedahanov, 2016).
Setting the organizations target involves strategic planning were based on significant differences between the countries to participate in preventing failures in the outcomes. For instance, two neighboring countries sharing little besides the mutual border like Netherlands and Belgium.
For training, the manager has to recognize that learning in high power Distance is centralized to the instructor whereas in the low power distance education experiences are supposed to be very interactive with debates, case studies and centered to the learner (Berg, 2015).
In rewarding the employees, culture issue is very sensitive. Some cultures appreciate cash related rewards while in countries that are more feminine with concepts like greater responsibility are considered relevant. Issuing of bonuses and allocation of incentives to groups work well in other nations thus, managers have an enormous task to identify the rewards recommended for each culture. Adaptation to different culture-based management systems is also crucial in case of job transfers to foreign countries
For an appraisal, a manager requires to be very keen on various models of culture that can affect the improvement of the activities that guide in the progress of the company. One needs to understand clearly the individualism and collectivity of the cultures and evaluate which will disgrace and disrespect. The outcomes of the employees should be considered. This R-STAR cycle can be appropriately used to as it incorporates many cultures and several tools are efficient for different cultures.
A sufficient management practice requires cooperation and utilization of all the people’s effort together with the available economic and technical resources. Both human and non-human resources are crucial to achieving final management goals set. The culture scores from the various countries studied by Hofstede dimensions compare to other data available to the particular state (Kirkman, 2016). For instance, power distance is interrelated with inequality in income distribution. The dimensions also explain the conflict among different countries or organizations.
The managers will only deliver quality work if they commence with clear comprehension of their culture and the bias they have. This leads to a clear understanding of other people’s culture and their preferences and closes the gaps, which might result in mismanagement of the institution (Kaasa, 2016). This knowledge might show the effectiveness leading towards promotion of global economy
Conclusion
Cultural norms are significant in the relationships between various individuals in the workplace. We practice culture without knowing it, but if we get into a foreign place, we get to realize the differences in cultures since everything seems different from the normal circumstances. Hofstede cultural dimensions help us determine the approaches we use to make decisions and actions in a lifetime based on how the people around us think or see us. His dimensions will only guide though deviations to his findings will always occur. Therefore, there should be intervention by international managers and manage theorists to comprehend on the range of organization values that are influenced by various cultures (Bakir, 2015). It will build and promote intercultural relationships in the organizations.
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