Business Across Cultures Effective Communication Strategies English for Business Success by Laura M. English and Sarah Lynn_4 pot

For many managers, the culture oftheir organization may dominate over national differences.. agement of culture” is now about creating a corporate culture inwhich people will work togeth

Figure 3.12 shows the proportion who answered “a” (internal trol).

con-Our database shows that Western cultures share extremely nally-controlled orientations It is obvious that most Westernmanagers are selected on the competence (false or not) that essen-tially any environment can be controlled, any market created, andany problem overcome by one’s own doing You market what wecan produce, better known as technology push Asians, who mostlycome from externally-oriented cultures, are supremely equipped to

inter-be stimulated by signals from the markets Correspondingly, theyoperate under the handicap of often not being the ones pushing thelatest technological developments

Thus the dilemma is between “selling what you can make” or ing what you can sell.”

“mak-94

Figure 3.12 Internal versus external control: percentage selecting “what pens to me is my own doing.”

hap-GENDER DIFFERENCES

The locus of control is one of the few value dimensions where menand women score with any significant difference across cultures.Both in the US as well as in Asia and Europe, males are significantlymore inner-directed than females (see Figure 3.13)

Women seem to be more motivated by external stimuli while menseem to believe they are in control of their environment by superim-posing their views on it

We use a range of questions of which the following is an example toposition people along this dimension:

Of the following two statements, which do you believe to be more in line with your reality?

(a) Becoming a great success is a matter of hard work; luck has little or nothing to do with it.

(b) Becoming a great success often depends on being in the right place at the right time.

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Figure 3.13 Gender differences – degree of internal control

Whilst men are equally divided, with 50 percent answering “a” and

50 percent answering “b,” 58 percent of women answer “b” (moreouter directed)

Internal versus External

Lowest (most important variable) Country

IndustryJob functionReligionGenderAgeEducationHighest (least important variable) Corporate Climate/Culture

RECONCILING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONTROL

The major issue at stake is to connect the internally-controlledculture, arising from the talent of technology push, with the exter-nally-controlled world of market pull in order to achieve a culture of

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10/1 The Ultimate Niche:

markets without any clients

1/10

At the mercy of your clients

Adapting to the environment by being pulled by the market

inventiveness If we take a consumer electronics company likePhilips, nobody will deny its great knowledge and inventiveness inits specific technologies and the quality of its marketing The problemthe company had faced was that its two major functional areas didn’tseem to connect and communicate The success of an organization isdependent on the integration of both facets The push of technologyneeds to help to decide which markets you want to be pulled by Andthe pull of the market needs to help you to know what technologies topush (see Figure 3.14).

YOUR OWN ORIENTATION ALONG THESE DIMENSIONS

Throughout chapters 2 and 3 we have sought to both explain eachvalue dimension and demonstrate how these can describe culturaldifferences After recognizing and respecting these differences, wecan begin to reconcile them You can usefully think about your ownorientation along these dimensions and how your overseas businesspartners would score Then think about where there are differencesand ask yourself these questions: “What tensions do these differ-ences produce?” and, thereby, “what dilemmas do I face because ofthese differences?”

You may not be aware of the differences, or maybe you and othershave already been able to reconcile them It is where these differ-ences occur that you will be faced with dilemmas – and these youwill have to reconcile We offer our methodology as the route to thesolution

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Corporate culture

CHAPTER 4

Cultural factors in business derive not only from differences

across national boundaries, but also from those within andbetween organizations For many managers, the culture oftheir organization may dominate over national differences Consider

a young Japanese manager, who typifies Japanese thinking and ues, working in Japan for a US company When he gets promoted to asignificant management grade, he travels the world, visiting the HQ

val-in the US frequently Now he spends his time workval-ing and val-ing with peers, who may be of many different nationalities It is nottheir country or nationality differences that dominate, but what theyshare in terms of the “way things are done in this organization.”Their system of shared meaning is no longer from their countries ofbirth but from their shared way of working together, from makingPowerPoint presentations to colleagues using an in-house style withcorporate logos to using their own “corporate language,” from talk-ing in terms of short-term budgets (rather than longer-term Japanesethinking) to e-mail protocols and resource planning systems

interact-The corporate culture of the organization is now the driver agement of culture” is now about creating a corporate culture inwhich people will work together to achieve the organization’s goals,reconciling dilemmas that originate from issues of corporate culture

“Man-Of course, this is not free of (national) culture An organization inone part of the world with a society that ascribes status may choose

an organization model that builds initially upon ascription ratherthan achievement But what of the global company with a diverseworkforce? And what is the link between corporate culture andbusiness?

This chapter discusses how one can approach the role and ment of organizational culture The basic framework is to comparethe current corporate culture with some idealized state as a means of

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eliciting the dilemmas which have to be reconciled The ideal rate culture is therefore discussed in the context of business goalsand the dilemmas that it provokes.

corpo-DEFINING CORPORATE CULTURE

Organizational culture is an elusive concept, which has been marized by Silvester, Anderson, and Patterson (1999) Definitionsinclude a system of publicly and collectively accepted “meanings,”which operate for a group at a particular time (Trice and Beyer,1984); a pattern of “basic assumptions” developed as the group ororganization learns to cope with its environment (Schein, 1996); andmore simply as “the way we do things around here” (Deal and Ken-nedy, 1982) “Yet despite the numerous strategic and culture changeprograms that have been initiated by organizations in recent years,efforts directed at identifying specific, observable and thereforemeasurable features of organizational culture have met with far lesssuccess Moreover, the transmission of cultural values also remains aneglected area in organizational psychology and whereas attemptshave been made to measure culture at the team level, often called

sum-‘group climate,’ there remains a dearth of research which focusesupon deeper strata of shared culture in work groups” (Silvester,Anderson, and Patterson 1999) The effect of this has been to miti-gate the clarity with which organizational culture, and in particularculture change, is viewed

Only recently have Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars (2000)revealed new generalizable frameworks based on their extensiveresearch data that transcend these lower-order models

THE ROLE OF CORPORATE CULTURE

Basic to understanding culture in organizations is that we can define

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culture as a series of rules and methods, which an organization hasevolved to deal with the regular problems that it faces Organiza-tions face dilemmas in dealing with the tension between the existingset of values and the desired ones – or between partners of a merger

or strategic alliance While cultures differ markedly in how theyapproach these dilemmas, they do not differ in needing to makesome kind of response They share the destiny to face up to differentchallenges of existence Once the leaders have become aware of theproblem solving process, they will reconcile dilemmas more effec-tively and will therefore be more successful

It is becoming more frequently recognized that organization opment and business process reengineering have failed too oftenbecause they ignored aspects of (corporate) culture However, sim-ply “adding” the culture component does not suffice This explainsperhaps why culture is very often ignored Values are not artifactsthat can be added They are continuously created by interactionsamongst people and are not “just out there” like rocks As such, cul-ture is only meaningful in the context in which the members of anorganization go about their daily work

devel-CORPORATE CULTURE IN MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS, AND

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES

Globalization through mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances

is big business – currently well over US$2,000 billion annually Theyare sought after more than ever, not only for the implementation ofglobalization strategies but as a consequence of political, monetary,and regulatory convergence Even so, two out of three deals don’tachieve anywhere near the expected benefits that prompted the ven-ture (Trompenaars and Woolliams, 2001)

It is common to acquire an organization with less concern for full

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integration simply to purchase its inherent value Increasingly ever, motives originate from a range of other expected benefits,including synergistic values (e.g cross-selling, supply chain consoli-dation, and economies of scale) or more direct strategic values (tobecome market leaders, penetrating a ready-made customer base,etc.) The emphasis in the pre-deal and post-deal management is toooften focused on seeking to exploit the new opportunities quicklyunder a mechanistic systems or financial due-diligence mindset(KPMG Consulting, 1999).

how-It is assumed that the task to deliver the benefits is to align the nical, operational, and financial systems and market approaches.Our research reveals that the underlying failure to deliver the realbenefits arises from the absence of a holistic, structured, method-ological framework Because of this, senior management does notknow what to integrate or what types of decision are important inorder to deliver the anticipated benefits Whilst any integration pro-gram should be based on operational matters where the benefits arebeing sought, much more attention and resource needs to be given

tech-to managing the cultural differences between the new partners.Relational aspects like cultural differences and lack of trust turn out

to be responsible for 70 percent of alliance failures This is even morestriking when we realise that building trust is a cultural challenge initself Lack of trust is often caused by different views of what consti-tutes a trustworthy partner In addition, intercultural alliancesinvolve differences in corporate cultures as well as national cultures.Problems can be due to more or less “objective” cultural differences,but also to perceptions about each other, including perceptions ofcorporate and national culture

HR has a major role to play Consideration must be given to ship styles, management profiles, organizational structures, working

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practices, and a wide range of perceptions in and of the marketplace In short, culture is pervasive Even when strategists andsenior managers recognise the importance of culture, frustrationcontinues because until now they have had no means of assessing orquantifying its causes and effects, or of taking relevant effectiveaction.

Based on our extensive experience working with client companiesinvolved in such mergers and alliances, we have developed a newmethodology that we call Cultural Due Diligence This provides anoperational framework in order that the consequences of corporateculture clash can be made explicit and thereby reconciled to ensurebenefit delivery It is again based on the three ‘R’s: Recognition,Respect and Reconciliation

MAJOR TENSIONS ORIGINATING IN

CORPORATE CULTURE

Much of our inductive thinking owes its origin to our portfolio ofeffective diagnostic and analytical tools and models, and the largeand reliable database we have established This enables either us tofacilitate or let organizations themselves diagnose the tensions theyare facing

Structure is a concept that is frequently used in the analysis of nizations and many definitions and approaches are to be found Ourinterest here is in examining the interpretations employees give totheir relationships with each other and with the organization as awhole Organizational culture is to the organization what personal(seven dimensions model) culture is to the individual – a hidden yetunifying theme which provides meaning, direction, and mobiliza-tion and that can exert a decisive influence on the overall ability ofthe organization to deal with the challenges it faces

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Just as individuals in a culture can have different personalities whilesharing much in common, so too can groups and organizations It isthis pattern that is recognized as “corporate culture.” Corporate cul-ture has a profound effect on organizational effectiveness, because itinfluences how decisions are made, human resources are used, andhow the organization responds to the environment.

We can distinguish three aspects of organizational relationshipswhose meaning is dependent on the larger culture in which theyemerge:

1 the general relationships between employees in the tion;

organiza-2 the vertical or hierarchical relationships between employeesand their superiors or subordinates;

3 the relationships of employees in the organization as a whole,such as their views of what makes it tick and what its goals are

Figure 4.1 Four culture types

Our model identifies four competing organizational cultures thatare derived from two related dimensions:

• Task or Person (high versus low formalization)

• Hierarchical or Egalitarian (high versus low centralization)Combining these dimensions gives us four possible culture types, asshown in Figure 4.1

THE EXTREME STEREOTYPES OF CORPORATE CULTURE

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The Incubator

This culture is like a leaderless team This person-oriented ture is characterized by a low degree of both centralization andformalization In this culture, the individualization of allrelated individuals is one of the most important features Theorganization exists only to serve the needs of its members

cul-An Incubator organization has no intrinsic values beyondthese goals; the organization is an instrument to the specificneeds of the individuals in the organization Responsibilitiesand tasks within this type of organization are assigned primar-ily according to the member’s own preference and needs.Structure is loose and flexible and control takes place throughpersuasion and mutual concern for the needs and values ofother members

Its main characteristics are:

• person oriented

• power of the individual

• self-realization

• commitment to oneself

• professional recognition

The Guided Missile

This task-oriented culture has a low degree of centralizationand a high degree of formalization This rational culture is, inits ideal type, task and project oriented “Getting the job done”with “the right person in the right place” are favorite expres-sions Organizational relationships are very results oriented,based on rational/instrumental considerations and limited tothe specific functional aspects of the people involved

Achievement and effectiveness are weighed above thedemands of authority, procedures, or people Authority andresponsibility are placed where the qualifications lie, and theymay shift rapidly as the nature of the work changes Every-thing in the Guided Missile culture is subordinated to an all-encompassing goal

The management of the organization is predominantly seen as

a continuous process of solving problems successfully Themanager is a team leader, the commander of a commando unit,

in whose hands lies absolute authority This task-oriented ture, because of its flexibility and dynamism, is highlyadaptive but at the same time is difficult to manage Decentral-ized control and management contribute to the shortness ofchannels of communication A task-oriented culture is designedfor a rapid reaction to extreme changes Therefore matrix and