LER403:

Slide 1 - Introduction

Welcome to this presentation which sets the background for your studies of cross-cultural management. In the following slides, we will focus on exploring what national culture is and how it might impact the workplace.

Slide 2 - Dimensions of IHRM

Firstly, to position this presentation, you will remember from the last lesson that we identify two core dimensions of international HRM, and today we are focusing on the first of these: comparative HRM. Comparative HRM looks at how people are managed differently in different countries, and the first way in which we start to explore this is through cross-cultural management. This looks at the impact of national values and beliefs on how we manage people in organizations.
In later lessons we will pick up other aspects of comparative HRM, and later, the strategic international HRM dimension, which build on this cross-cultural management perspective.

Slide 3 - Cultural Conditioning

Before we start, just take a few moments to look at the picture below.
Is this a beautiful young woman, or an old lady wrapped up against the cold?

Hopefully, the more you look at the picture, you will see that both interpretations are possible. Can you see both ladies yet? You can come back to the picture later and see these two pictures emerge before your eyes if they are not there yet. Just keep on focusing.

This picture is often shown in lessons on cross-cultural management, as it highlights the fact that different people, with different backgrounds, can see the same thing in different ways. We all have our own individual frames of reference which we use to interpret the world around us. It is argued that these frames of reference are at least in part a result of the country in which we live. This is known as cultural conditioning. We can therefore distinguish between countries based on their national culture characteristics, and what this lesson is designed to do is to show you how we might be able to interpret these distinctions.

Slide 4 - Frameworks of National Culture

Because, as you will discover, national culture is such a tricky concept to define, one of the most helpful starting points we have to explore this is through the use of frameworks. Frameworks offer us a way of breaking down national culture into its constituent parts, and so we can use these as tools for describing how nations might differ.
Geert Hofstede has produced one of the most widely-used frameworks for exploring national culture – indeed you may well have heard of his work already if you are working in an international position. Based on an empirical study in IBM around the world, Hofstede identified 4 dimensions of national culture: individualism – collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity – femininity. I am not going to describe what these mean here, as you can follow this up in your reading, but this is by far the most commonly used framework today, especially in the business setting.

Slide 5 - Keep in Mind...

Now, before we go on to take a brief glimpse at what national culture means for the workplace, we first need to ring a few alarm bells so that you are aware of the limitations of these cultural frameworks.

Number one: it is important to note that the sources of data on which these frameworks are based are still very limited. The studies of individualism and collectivism are predominantly based on data from the U.S.A. and Japan, so how representative they are of other individualist and collectivist countries might be called into question. A note on Hofstede’s work also – all of his data were collected within one organization, IBM, mainly in the 1960s. Although its generalizability has been tested since, this limited sample may raise some issues for us.

Number two: the study of national culture is limited by the adequacy of the tools we have to measure it. In other words, we are only "scoring" countries on the dimensions that have been identified. There may still be other dimensions of culture that researchers have not yet been able to uncover.

Number three: A danger of relying on cultural frameworks, and country scores on different dimensions of these frameworks, is that of ‘ecological fallacy’. Ecological fallacy occurs when we use national culture characteristics to describe all members of that culture at the individual level – sometimes also referred to as stereotyping.

And finally, number four: national culture is only one factor which helps us to explain work behavior in different countries, as I will move on to illustrate now.

Slide 6 - Cultural Drivers of HRM

So what effect can we expect national culture to have on how employees react to different practices in the workplace? The readings will explore this further, but here are a couple of starting points to think about.

Firstly, how might the definition of what makes an effective manager vary between cultures given that employees might have different values in different contexts? Should a manager be paternalistic (as they are in India, for example) or more performance driven (like they are in the USA)? Depending on the answer to this, this will determine some of the criteria against which a manager’s performance should be evaluated, and the training they need to receive. Therefore, our HRM policies for these managers might differ in different country contexts.

Similarly, the appropriateness of giving direct face-to-face feedback depends largely on the extent of power distance and uncertainty avoidance in different cultures as you will see. This has implications for recruitment interviews, performance appraisal meetings, and communication and participation systems.

What are an employee’s expectations of the manager-subordinate relationship in the workplace? This varies based on cultural factors, as does our last point here, the differential concepts of organizational justice: a practice may be perceived to be fair in one context, but does not meet the expectations of equity and equality in another.

You will be able to read more examples of such practices in the texts that accompany this lesson, but hopefully this introduction has whet your appetite for exploring national culture and its implications in the workplace.