Riassunto esame Inglese monografico 3, prof. Rossi, libro consigliato Riding the waves of culture, Trompenaars e Hampden,Turner

Riding the waves of culture - understanding cultural diversity in business

Chapter 1 - An introduction to culture

This book is about cultural differences and how they affect the process of doing business and managing. The authors believe that you can never understand other cultures, in fact, those who are married know that it’s impossible to understand completely even people of your own culture. If something works in one culture, there is little chance that it will work in another.

This is the context in which they started wondering if any of the American management techniques and philosophy people were brainwashed with would apply in the Netherlands or the UK, where they came from, or in the rest of the world. The authors studied the effect of culture on management for many years and this book describes what they discovered through their research and their cross-cultural training programmes. Thirty companies have also contributed to the research (in order to gather comparable samples with similar backgrounds and occupations were taken in each of the countries in which the companies operated; approximately 75% of the participants belong to management, while the remaining 25% were general administrative staff, like secretaries).

This book attempts to give readers a better understanding of their own culture and cultural differences in general, by learning how to recognise and cope with these in a business context. In fact, understanding our own culture and our own assumptions and expectations about how people “should” think and act is the basis for success. This book will describe why there is no “one best way of managing”, and how some of the difficult dilemmas of international management can be mediated. Throughout, it will attempt to give readers more insight into their own culture and how it differs from others.

The impact of culture on business

International managers are educated according to the most modern management philosophies, but how universal are these management solutions? Are these “truths” about what effective management really is: truths that can be applied anywhere, under any circumstances? Even with experienced international companies, many well-intended “universal” applications of management theory have turned out badly.

For example, pay-for-performance has in many cases been a failure on the African continent because there are particular and unspoken rules about the sequence and timing of reward and promotions. In the same way, management-by-objectives schemes have generally failed within subsidiaries of multinationals in southern Europe, because managers have not wanted to conform to the abstract nature of preconceived policy guidelines. Even the notion of human-resource management is difficult to translate to other cultures, coming as it does from a typically Anglo-Saxon doctrine. It borrows from economics the idea that human beings are “resources” like physical and monetary resources. It tends to assume almost unlimited capacities for individual development and in countries without these beliefs, this concept is hard to grasp and unpopular once it is understood.

International managers must operate on a number of different premises at any one time. These premises arise from their culture of origin, the culture in which they are working, and the culture of the organisation which employs them. In every culture in the world such phenomena as authority, bureaucracy, creativity, and accountability are experienced in different ways.

There is a theory that internationalisation will lead to a common culture worldwide. People point to McDonald’s as an example of tastes, markets, and therefore cultures becoming similar everywhere. There are, indeed, many products and services becoming common to world markets, but what is important to consider is what they mean to the people in each culture. In fact, the essence of culture is not what is visible on the surface, it is the shared ways groups of people understand and interpret the world. If businesspeople want to gain understanding of their corporate goals, policies, products, or services wherever they are doing business, they must understand what those and other aspects of management mean in different cultures.

As markets globalise, the need for standardisation in organisational design, systems, and procedures increases. Yet managers are also under pressure to adapt their organisation to the local characteristics of the market, the legislation, the fiscal regime, the socio-political system, and the cultural system. This balance between consistency and adaptation is essential for corporate success.

Paralysis through analysis: the elixir of the management profession

Western analytical thinking (taking a phenomenon to pieces) and rationality (reckoning the consequences before you act) have led to many international successes in fields of technology. Technologies do work by the same universal rules everywhere, but the very success of the universalistic philosophy now threatens to become a handicap when applied to interactions between human beings from different cultures. In fact, the social world of the international organisation has many more dimensions to deal with. Some managers, especially in Japan, recognise the multi-dimensional character of their company. They seem able to use a logic appropriate to machines (analytic-rational) and a logic more appropriate to social relations (synthetic-intuitive), switching between these as needed. In the process of internationalisation, the Japanese increasingly take the functioning of local society seriously.

In opposition to this, there’s the western approach, based on American business education, which treats management as a profession and considers emotionally detached rationality as something “scientifically” necessary. This numerical and cerebral approach not only dominates American business schools but other economic and business faculties. These schools educate their students by giving them the right answers to the wrong questions.

Statistical analysis, forecasting techniques, and operational studies are not “wrong”, they are important technical skills. The mistake is to assume that technical rationality should characterise the human element in the organisation. No one is denying the existence of universally applicable scientific laws. These are culture-free. But the belief that human cultures in the workplace should resemble the laws of physics and engineering is a cultural, not a scientific belief.

The internationalisation of business life

The internationalisation of business life requires more knowledge of cultural patterns. Pay-for-performance, for example, can work out well in the USA, the Netherlands, and the UK. In more communitarian cultures like France, Germany, and large parts of Asia it may not be so successful, at least not the Anglo-Saxon version of pay-for-performance. Employees may not accept that individual members of the group should excel in a way that reveals the flaws of other members. Their definition of an “outstanding individual” is one who benefits those closest to him or her. Customers in more communitarian cultures also take offence at the “quick buck” mentality of the best salespeople; they prefer to build up relationships carefully and maintain them.

How proven formulas can give the wrong results

Many management processes lose effectiveness when cultural borders are crossed. Many multinational companies apply formulas in overseas areas that are derived from, and are successful in, their own culture. International management consulting firms of Anglo-Saxon origin are still using similar methods, neglecting cultural differences.

For example, an Italian computer company received advice from a prominent international management consulting firm to restructure to a matrix organisation, it did so and failed. Local managers may not openly criticise a centrally developed appraisal system or reject the matrix organisation, especially if confrontation or defiance is not culturally acceptable to them. In practice, though, beneath the surface, the silent forces of culture operate destructively to the centrally developed methods which do not “fit” locally.

If you study similar organisations in different cultural environments, they often turn out to be remarkably uniform by major criteria, such as number of functions, levels of hierarchy, degree of specialisation, and so on. Research of this kind has often claimed that this “proves” that the organisation is culture-free, but the wrong questions have been asked. The issue is not whether a hierarchy in the Netherlands has six levels, as does a similar company in Singapore, but what the hierarchy and those levels mean to the Dutch and Singaporeans. Where the meaning is totally different, there can be miscommunications in different contexts.

Culture impacts on organisations in visible and invisible ways. The more fundamental differences in culture and their effects may not be directly measurable by objective criteria, but they will certainly play a very important role in the success of an international organisation.

Culture is the way in which people solve problems

A culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas. Culture comes in layers, like an onion. To understand it you have to unpeel it layer by layer. On the outer layer are the products of culture, these are expressions of deeper values and norms in a society that are not directly visible. The layers of values and norms are deeper within the “onion” and are more difficult to identify. These basic assumptions define the meaning that a group shares. They are implicit. What is taken for granted, unquestioned reality: this is the core of the onion.

National, corporate, and professional culture

Culture also presents itself on different levels. At the highest level is the culture of a national or regional society, the French or west European versus the Singaporean or Asian (national culture). The way in which attitudes are expressed within a specific organisation is described as corporate or organisational culture (corporate culture). We can even talk about the culture of particular functions within organisations, like marketing or research and development; people within certain functions will tend to share certain professional and ethical orientations (professional culture).

This book will focus on the first level: the differences in culture at a national level. Cultural differences do not only exist with regard to faraway and exotic countries. In fact, for example, there are at several levels as many differences between the cultures of West Coast and East Coast America as there are between different nations. All the examples show that there is a clear-cut cultural border between the north-west European (analysis, logic, systems, and rationality) and the Euro-Latin (more person-related, more use of intuition and sensitivity).

There are even significant differences between the neighbouring Dutch and Belgians. The average Belgian manager has a family idea of the organisation: he or she experiences the organisation as paternalistic and hierarchical, and, as in many Latin cultures, father decides how it should be done. The Belgian sees the Dutch manager as overly democratic (what nonsense that everybody consults everybody). The Dutch manager thinks in a way more consistent with the Protestant ethic than the Belgian, who thinks and acts in a more Catholic way. Most Dutch managers distrust authority, while Belgian managers tend to respect it.

Nowhere do cultures differ so much as inside Europe. For example, if you are going to do business with the French, you will first have to learn how to lunch extensively. Culture is the context in which things happen; out of context, even legal matters lack significance.

The basis of cultural differences

Every culture distinguishes itself from others by the specific solutions it chooses to certain problems which reveal themselves as dilemmas. There are three different kinds of problems: those which arise from our relationships with other people; those which come from the passage of time; and those which relate to the environment. From the solutions different cultures have chosen to these universal problems, seven fundamental dimensions of culture can be identified and five of these come from the first category.

• Relationships with people
• Universalism vs. particularism. The universalist approach is basically: “What is good and right can be defined and always applies.” In particularist cultures far greater attention is given to the obligations of relationships and unique circumstances. For example, instead of assuming that the one good way must always be followed, the particularist reasoning is that friendship has special obligations and hence may come first.
• Individualism vs. communitarianism. Do people regard themselves primarily as individuals or primarily as part of a group? Is it more important to focus on individuals so that they can contribute to the community as and if they wish, or is it more important to consider the community first since that is shared by many individuals?
• Neutral vs. emotional. Should the nature of our interactions be objective and detached, or is expressing emotion acceptable? In North America and north-west Europe, business relationships are typically instrumental and all about achieving objectives. But further south and in many other cultures, business is a human affair and the whole range of emotions are seen as appropriate. Loud laughter, banging your fist on the table, or leaving a conference room in anger during a negotiation is all part of business.
• Specific vs. diffuse. When the whole person is involved in a business relationship there is a real and personal contact, instead of the specific relationship prescribed by a contract. In many countries, a diffuse relationship is not only preferred, but necessary before business can proceed. One example is the case of one American company trying to win a contract with a South American customer, disregard for the importance of the relationship lost the deal. The American company made a well-thought-out presentation which it thought clearly demonstrated its superior product and lower price. Its Swedish competitor took a week to get to know the customer and only on the last day the product was introduced, and it was also less attractive and slightly higher priced, but the diffuse involvement of the Swedish company got the order. The Swedish company had learned that to do business in particular countries involves more than overwhelming the customer with technical details and fancy slides (chapter 7).
• Achievement vs. ascription. Achievement means that you are judged on what you have recently accomplished and on your record. Ascription means that status is attributed to you, by birth, gender, or age, but also by your connections (who you know) and your educational record. In an achievement culture, the first question is likely to be “What did you study?”, while in a more ascriptive culture the question will more likely be “Where did you study?”
• Attitudes to time
• The way in which societies look at time also differs. In some societies, what somebody has achieved in the past is not that important, it is more important to know what plan they have developed for the future. In other societies, you can make more of an impression with your past accomplishments than those of today. So, these are cultural differences that greatly influence corporate activities. Americans, for example, generally start from zero and what matters is their present performance and their plan to “make it” in the future, while the French have an enormous sense of the past and relatively less focus on the present and future than Americans.
• In certain cultures, like the American, Swedish, and Dutch, time is perceived as passing in a straight line, a sequence of disparate events. Other cultures think of time more as moving in a circle, the past and present together with future possibilities. This makes considerable differences to planning, strategy, investment, and views on home-growing your talent, as opposed to buying it in.
• Attitudes to the environment
• An important cultural difference can also be found in the attitude to the environment. Some cultures see the major focus affecting their lives and the origins of vice and virtue within the person, so motivations and values are derived from within. Other cultures see the world as more powerful than individuals and they see nature as something to be feared or emulated.
• The chairman of Sony, Mr Morita, explained how he came to conceive of the Walkman. He loves classical music and wanted to have a way of listening to it on his way to work without bothering any fellow commuters. The Walkman was a way of not imposing on the outside world, but of being in harmony with it. Contrast that to the way most westerners think about using the device: “I can listen to music without being disturbed by other people.”
• Another obvious example is the use of face masks that are worn over the nose and mouth. In Tokyo, you see many people wearing them, especially in winter. When you ask why, you are told that when people have colds or a virus, they wear them so they will not “pollute” or infect other people by breathing on them. In London, they are worn by bikers and other athletes who do not want to be “polluted” by the environment.

Chapter 2 – The one best way of organising does not exist

However objective and uniform we try to make organisations, they will not have the same meaning for individuals from different cultures. In fact, the meanings perceived depend on certain cultural preferences and the meaning that people give to the organisation, their concept of its structure, practices, and policies is culturally defined. Culture is a shared system of meanings. It dictates what we pay attention to, how we act, and what we value. Culture organises these values into what Hofstede calls “mental programmes” and the behaviour of people within organisations is a representation of these programmes. Each of us carries within us the ways we hope to achieve our goals and expectations.