Cultural Differences Are Nuisance At Best And Often A Disaster

Lewis, a variety of leadership structures are outlined according to each country. This helps to highlight the vast differences in leadership and management style around the globe, and can aid companies as they begin to forge into the global market.[1] The differences are striking, even between countries with similar cultural backgrounds, like the United Kingdom and the United States of America and demonstrate that in order to have a truly successful business partnership with a different country, you must spend time learning to understand exactly how that country handles business, and how it manages it’s employees. Lewis states, “By focusing on the cultural roots of national behavior, both in society and business, we can foresee and calculate with a surprising degree of accuracy how others will react to our plans for them, and we can make certain assumptions as to how they will approach

For any international organization, understanding cultural differences is very significant in the global context. The article analyzes the role and impact of the cultural perspective when dealing with conflict in the global context. “What seems like a perfectly reasonable approach in one culture may seem ridiculous, disrespectful, inefficient, or unfair to managers from other cultures. Japanese and German managers may be uneasy with conflict resolution preferences that differ from their own.” (Adams, p.110.) The understanding that organizational and global cultures vary results in the connected research supported in several businesses in diverse fields.

Every country differs in culture which has been there for centuries. The international market is growing rapidly, with more and more multinational organisations entering new markets each day. In this assignment I will evaluate how the difference in cultures affects the performance of international businesses.

Task 2c: Evaluate the impact of cultural differences on international business performance in the international market D2

The IBM study of employees from the 70 countries was the basis for the dimensions and has been critized since there was only one company in the data set however, Hofstede’s belief was that using just one company would better reveal the national differences. According to the authors Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashalk (2009), he believed this because the IBM employees were the same in other respects like type of work, job descriptions, and education. This study has been stated to be the most comprehensive study of how values are influenced in the workplace (Itim International, 2012). Itim International, (2012) noted that Hofstede’s work established a paradigm in international economics, communication, and cooperation, from which Hofstede developed the first emphirical model of “dimensions” for national organizational culutre.

Geert Hofstede is a Dutch researcher who identified five dimensions of culture to help understand how and why people from various cultures behave the way they do. The five Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity vs. femininity, and time orientation. Taiwan has a high power distance meaning that people blindly obey the orders of their superiors, and strict obedience is found. Taiwan ranked high in uncertainty avoidance meaning that the people do not like uncertainty and tend to have a high need for security and a strong belief in experts. In individualism Taiwan ranked as a low individualistic

According to Hofstede definition, it is possible to develop the idea of national culture as a culture for a particular group of humans that includes systems of values and is passed down between generations by learning. (Hofstede G. H., 1980, p. 21)

Global expansion, Global Leadership, Global Trends, are all important topics in this growing business world, it is crucial to be a leader who is effective in the comprehension of cultural variances between their native country and the countries they are interesting in working with. Businesses know that it is important to have a leader who has the ability to work in diverse work environments (Murmu, 2014, p67). Furthermore, adding to the need of leaders who can identify, understand and correctly address different issues that can arise when doing business globally, such as, culture, religious conviction, and society within each country they wish to conduct business in. The avoidance of making the error of operating under the assumption that all

It is critical to organizations because the employees are from different cultural backgrounds. These distinctions have to be considered when making decisions because they have an impact on formal work relationships and performance. This understanding is more paramount to multinational organizations because they have business operations right at the heart of different cultures in the various countries. The success of global firms depends on how well the management handles the cultural differences and uses them to the advantage of the

A helpful tool to consider when discussing the possibilities of a culture for a particular company is the Hofstede 's Cultural Dimension. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension studies different aspects of a nation 's culture in comparison to other cultures around the world. Each part of the Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions deals with how specific cultures react to different scenarios. The Hofstede 's Cultural Dimension is subdivided into six specific categories. These categories, also called indexes include the following: Power Distance (PDI), Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV), Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS), Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI), Long Term Orientation

The Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions were created collectively by Geert Hofstede, Michael Bond, and Michael Minkov. These dimensions of culture were created to view how values in the workplace were influence by a particular culture of a given country. Essentially, it was a tool to describe how workforces in different countries operate under their own culture. There are currently six different dimensions of national cultures; power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint. Professor Greet Hofstede was the creator of the first four cultural dimensions, back in 1973. Roughly two decades later, Michael Bond with the support of Hofstede created the fifth dimension, in 1991. Recently in the 2010, the last dimension was added to the list, by Michael Minkov and his research team (Minkoy & Hofstede, 2011). The first four dimensions discovered by Hofstede, dealt with four different anthropological issues that were handled differently from nation to nation. These issues involved; methods of coping with inequality and uncertainty, relationships within a primary group, and the emotional significance of having been born as male or female (National, n.d.). The fifth dimension is long-term orientation. Long-term orientation provides the idea that a given culture or country prefers to do things in an old-fashion manner or in a modernized pragmatic approach. The last dimension,

When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.

During the year from 1967 to 1973, Hofstede (1983) conducted surveys on more than 117,000 IBM employees in 40 different countries. He analysed the survey data and identified four cultural dimensions as ‘power distance’, ‘uncertainty avoidance’, ‘individualism’, and ‘masculinity’ (Drogendijk and Slangen 2006). Bond (1988) added the fifth dimension ‘long-term orientation’ in 1991. Power distance (PID) values the acceptance of different status and unequal distribution of power (Drogendijk and Slangen 2006). Uncertainty avoidance (UAI) measures how members of a society accept, defend against or minimize future uncertainties (Harvey 1997). Individualism (IDV) is the extent to which a society evaluates the role of the individual as opposed to that of the group (Drogendijk and Slangen 2006). Masculinity (MAS) refers to how a society emphasizes the achievements and success (Drogendijk and Slangen 2006). Long-term orientation

A famous study of cultural dimensions, which can provide a more clear view of the impacts of culture on international business.Dimensions of cultural differences are very necessary for organizations especially those who operate internationally to understand and cope with such differences that can manifest themselves in terms of different standards, values and expectations in the various countries in which they operate. (Johnson, Scholes, Whittington 2008: 190) Here I have to mention one of the most effective studies of cultural dimensions, Hofstede's cultural dimensions, which are consisted of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and

In times of rapid globalisation and economic development growth, the environment of business has become more and more complicated as a huge number of firms want to globally expand their businesses. Subsequently, the managerial implications of cross-cultural management is the challenge of this development. As Abbe (2007) states, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the global markets. Culture is the “software of mind” that can influence people’s patterns of thinking and behaving.