Understanding Cultural Perspectives

Culture

• Culture has various facets and interpretations
• These include national/societal, ethnic, organizational, and professional culture
• Culture often refers to learned, shared, and enduring orientation patterns
• These patterns are demonstrated through values, ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and symbols
• Culture can be defined differently according to various contexts
• Levels of analysis may or may not include certain facets

Conceptual Perspectives on Culture

• Cross-national comparison (comparative)
  • Aims to differentiate and cluster national cultures
  • Views nation-state as culture
  • Assumes a single, immutable cultural identity
  • Searches for universally applicable dimensions
  • Considers culture tractable through generalizations across national units
• Intercultural interaction (intercultural)
  • Focuses on how people from different cultural backgrounds interact
  • Sees culture as socially constructed
  • Emphasizes national culture or identity
  • Recognizes organizational culture
  • Considers importance of contextual analysis
• Multiple cultures (multicultural)
  • Investigates how different cultures shape individuals and organizations
  • Views culture as collective and socially constructed
  • Recognizes organizations as having multiple cultures
  • Acknowledges the complexity of identity and organizational life

Social Anthropology Model

• Character of human nature
  • Ranges from "Good" to "Evil"
• Man's relationship to nature
  • Ranges from "Man dominates" to "Nature dominates"
• Time focus of human activity
  • Ranges from "Past" to "Future"
• Modality of human activity
  • Ranges from "Spontaneous expression of desires" to "Achieving measurable goals"
• Relationship of man to man
  • Ranges from "Hierarchical" to "Individualist"

Hofstede's Model of National Culture

• Symbols, heroes, rituals, and values are components
• Hofstede was among the first to analyze the effect of national culture on management practices.
• Empirical study at IBM included 66 national subsidiaries and 116,000 questionnaires
• Sixty of 150 questions regarded values and opinions
• Four aspects of national culture affect our thinking about organizations
  • Power distance
  • Uncertainty avoidance
  • Collectivism/individualism
  • Masculinity/femininity
• Additional aspects added later from a Chinese study
  • Short-term versus long-term orientation
  • Indulgence versus restraint

Hofstede's Model of National Culture Dimensions

• Power Distance
  • Low power distance: Minimizes inequality, hierarchy is for convenience, superiors and subordinates are equal, and subordinates are consulted
  • High power distance: Inequality is unavoidable, managers should be benevolent autocrats, subordinates should be told what to do, and authority is respected
• Uncertainty Avoidance
  • Low uncertainty avoidance: Uncertainty is accepted, deviance isn't threatening, ambiguity is tolerated, and innovation is encouraged
  • High uncertainty avoidance: Uncertainty is threatening, deviance is not tolerated, predictability is favoured, and resistance to change is shown
• Collectivism/Individualism
  • Collectivist: 'We' mentality, identity is based on the social group, and relationships come before tasks
  • Individualist: "I" mentality, value standards apply to all, and tasks prevail over relationships
• Masculinity/Femininity
  • Masculinity: Distinct gender roles, stress on competition, and managers are decisive
  • Femininity: Fluid gender roles, stress on co-operation, and managers use intuition and strive for consensus
• Short-Term vs. Long-Term
  • Short-term orientation: Need for achievement, loyalty varies by business needs, and stress on short-term profits
  • Long-term orientation: Need for accountability, maintain lifelong personal networks, and stress on future market positions
• Indulgence vs. Restraint
  • Indulgence: Perception of personal life control, priority on freedom of speech, high happiness, and active involvement in sports is common
  • Restraint: Perception of helplessness, higher police presence and priority on control, fewer happy people, and less participation in sports is common

GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research)

• The GLOBE program is similar to Hofstede but brings cultural dimensions further
• It examines practices vs values at the industrial, organizational, and societal level and uses data from 17000+ managers in 900+ organizations from 62 countries
• Nine dimensions of societal cultural variation:
  • Power distance
  • Uncertainty avoidance
  • Humane orientation
  • Institutional collectivism
  • In-group collectivism
  • Assertiveness
  • Gender egalitarianism
  • Future orientation
  • Performance orientation

Descriptions of GLOBE Dimensions

• Power distance: The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally
• Uncertainty avoidance: The extent to which a society relies on social norms, rules and procedures
• Humane orientation: The degree to which a collective encourages individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring and kind
• Institutional collectivism: The degree to which organizational practices encourage collective distribution
• In-group collectivism: The degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness
• Assertiveness: The degree to which individuals are assertive, confrontational and aggressive
• Gender egalitarianism: The degree to which a collective minimises gender inequality
• Future orientation: The extent to which individuals engage in future oriented behaviours
• Performance orientation: The degree to which a collective encourages group members for performance improvement

Culture 'as Is' vs. Culture 'as Should Be'

• Questions were asked in terms of 'is' and 'are' to indicate actual behaviors
• The questions were rephrased using "should" to respondents at a further stage to indicate "ideal" way of doing things.

Culture Clusters

• Globe uses nine dimensions to make culture clusters using religion, language, geography, ethnicity, historical developments, and economic similarities
• The clusters are organized by average societal culture distance

Country-Culture Conundrum

• Equating culture with nation-states is critical because country boundaries may be arbitrary
• Also culture may not be homogeneous within countries
• The dimensions of comparative culture have been revised
• New ones developed and added to existing models, especially in the Hofstede framework

Alternative Approaches to Cultural Studies

• World Values Survey
  • A global network studies changing values impacts on social and political life by conducting representative surveys of almost 100 countries using a common questionnaire
• Cultural clustering
  • An example is Ronen and Shenkar's (2013) clustering of cultures with similarities and dissimilarities in work related attitudes
• Ecocultural perspective:
  • Culture is seen as an evolving adapting to ecological and sociopolitical influences and individual psychological traits are adaptive
  • This perspective includes religion, language and geography
• Social axioms
  • An example is Leung & Bond's (2004) generalized beliefs

Culture and Sustainable Development

• Culture is likely to affect sustainable development indirectly

CapBuilder #6: Assessing Country and Societal Culture

• Assessing culture is complex but can help understand the role in sustainable development
• Tools include using studies from Hofstede, GLOBE, and world values survey

CapBuilder #7: Appreciative Inquiry

• Requires a positive outlook on issues
• Traditional problem solving vs. Appreciative Inquiry
  • Problem to be solved vs Possibility to happen
  • Focused on problems vs what is working well with positive possibilities
• Appreciate: Recognizing the best in the world
• Inquire’: Explore & discover new potentials
• It is a approach on organization that focuses on change through strengths instead of weakness
• Companies use terms like "crisis, trouble report, evaluation and failure rate"
• Five Core Principles:
  • Constructionist
  • Simultaneity
  • Poetic
  • Anticipatory
  • Positive
• The 5-D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry -Definition (What is the focus of inquiry?) -Discovery (What gives life?) -Dream (what might be?) -Design (What should be?) -Destiny/Delivery (What will be?)