The Interaction between Organisational Culture and National Culture

1
The Interaction between Organisational Culture
and National Culture

• Organisational and Professional Cultures and
  Diplomacy. Malta, 13-15 February 2004
• Marie-Thérèse Claes
• ICHEC Brussels Business School
• UCL University of Louvain
• marietherese.claes_at_ichec.be

2
Overview of the presentation

• The multiple spheres of culture
• Globalisation a controversial concept
• Globalisation and the intercultural challenge at
  organisational level
• Three new concepts in organisational culture
• The future direction of ICC

3
Changing global environment(Kurbalija)

• Globalisation
• Information Technology
• Knowledge Society
• Learning Society
• Transnational management
• ICC no longer seen as management of cultural
  differences in the popular sense

4
Conceptual shift in ICC

• The need for a conceptual shift from a
  hierarchical perspective of cultural influence,
  compromise and adaptation to one of collaborative
  cross-cultural learning  (Bartholomew and Adler,
  1996)

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Why this conceptual shift?

• The anthropological conception of culture in
  terms of national culture does not take into
  account that national culture is not easily
  distentangled from organisational and
  professional culture

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Why this conceptual shift?

• Intercultural training uses a narrow concept of
  culture and cultural difference, and doesnt
  handle the interplay of the different forms of
  culture
• Intercultural training focuses on behavioural
  (communication) skills, especially negotiation
• culture shock prevention industry

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Multiple Spheres of Cultureor interfaces
(Saner)
National/regional
Professional
Functional
Industry
Company
8
National Cultures(Hofstede)

• Country clusters
• Anglo
• Germanic
• Nordic
• Latin European
• Latin America
• Arab
• ...

9
Regional Cultures

• Geography east-west, north-south
• History Québec
• Political and economic forces
• Climate
• Religion
• Language

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Industry Cultures

• Banking vs high-tech
• dress codes, behaviour, innovation, interaction
• Sources of competitive advantage
• financial, human, intellectual
• Rates of technology change
• Nature of product/ market
• protect patents vs standardise
• Regulation state intervention (subsidies)

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Differences in Industry Cultures

• Nature of decision -making degree of risk vs
  speed of feedback (payoff)

bond trading
biotechnology
high
degree of risk
retailing
Accountingconsultants
low
high
low
speed of feedback
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Industry Culture and National Culture

• USA entertainment industry (music, film)
• Japan hardware

13
Professional Culture

• Education generalists vs specialists
• Appropriate training
• Selection right schools
• Socialisation proper behaviour
• American MBAs
• British accountants
• German engineers
• French cadres

14
Professional cultures and Diversity

• Professional cultures create a kind of thinking
  (Tanovic)
• Diversity attract and value people with diverse
  educational, professional, cultural backgrounds.
• Difference (diverse groups) as a resource to tap
  into (Saner, Kurbalija)

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Functional Cultures

• Nature of task production / finance
• External environment stakeholder demands
• Time horizon strategic requirements change
• 1950s production line managers
• 1960s financial executives
• 1970s legal experts
• 1990s entrepreneurs
• 2000 MNC, corporate diplomats, good governance

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Functional and national culture

• Which functions are valued
• Finance 1 in Britain, 5 in Germany
• The Netherlands sales
• France marketing
• Germany RD (bottom in Britain)

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Corporate Culture

• Values and beliefs of the founder
• Anita Roddick and Body Shop
• Strong leaders Percy Barnevik and ABB
• Administrative heritage
• Ford vertical integration, centralised control
• General Motors mergers, diversification
• Nature of product/ industry
• telecommunication vs cosmetics
• Stage of development organic vs structured

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Corporate and National Culture

• LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy)French
  refinement and elegance
• IKEA low-cost, home-assembly, unfussyScandinavi
  an egalitarian and pragmatic values
• BMW, Audi German engineering
• Tokyo Disneyland Japanese drive towards
  perfection (courtesy, efficiency, cleanliness)

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Globalisation a very controversial concept

• civilisation-friendly sense of connectedness
  (thanks to TV, IT, tourism, etc)
• Western (American) economic hegemony over the
  rest of mankind

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Globalisation in practice

• Worldwide intensification of competition rather
  than globalisation of markets
• IT-supported world-wide quest for resources
  (networking)
• Resources human capital, technical know-how,
  physical assets, access to mandarins anywhere

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Globalisation five key management tasks

• Providing services to create stakeholder value
• Developing a learning support structure
• Monitoring and controlling
• Realising multicultural synergies
• Allocating resources especially into networks

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Globalisation at the organisational level

• Key competencies at the organisational level
• developing pathways to resources networking
• mediating knowledge from anywhere
• developing organisational learning

23
Global manager new concepts of operational
functions

• Champion of international strategy
• Cross-border coach and mediator
• Intercultural mediator and change agent
• (Barham and Heimer, 1998)

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Global management new dispositions

• Handling cognitive complexity
• Emotional energy
• Psychological maturity
• Applying intelligence and tact
• (based on Barham and Heimer, 1998)

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Communicative tasks in the global economy

• A relationship- supporting activity(intra- and
  interorganisational bonding processes) involving
• Multi- task exchange process
• Intercultural knowledge sharing, networking and
  collaborative learning.

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Intercultural communication

• Far more than effective communication across
  linguistic and cultural boundaries
• A form of knowledge for identifying and
  restricting the undesirable effects of noise
• A form of cross- cultural networking behaviour
  for creating productive interpersonal exchanges
  of ideas and experience
• (Holden, 2001)

27
International Negotiation

• Conceived mainly in terms of language use in
  discrete episodes, less so in terms of recurrent
  encounters which underpin relationship
  management, interactive networking and
  organisational learning processes.
• An intercultural blunder of less importance than
  common goal both of us tried to help our team
  win (Nicolae)

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Four crucial points about international
communication

• 1. Connectivity is more important than what is
  communicated
• 2. Communication activities are future-oriented,
  goal- related (personal, professional and
  organisational), and increasingly electronically
  mediated

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Four crucial points about international
communication

• 3. Communication activities involve continuous
  acts of translation and negotiation
• 4. More nationalities, cultures and languages are
  in articulate communication now than ever before
  in human history mainly to link organisations
  together.

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The role of intercultural communication

• Intercultural communication facilitates
  collective acts of knowledge sharing, group
  learning and networking
• It is concerned with reducing noise
• It appears to inform acts of translation and
  negotiation about contextual meaning and future
  arrangements

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Three new concepts in organisational culture

• Participative competence
• Interactive translation
• Atmosphere
• (Holden, 2001)

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Participative competence

• Adeptness in cross- cultural communication in
  multicultural activities
• Ability to contribute equitably to common tasks
• Ability to share knowledge and experiences and
  stimulate group learning .

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Interactive translation

• A form of cross- cultural work, in which
  participants negotiate common meanings and
  common understandings and learn how to be able to
  work in multicultural teams

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Why translation and negotiation?

• Two kinds of translation activity are taking
  place
• a cognitive, literal process as a personal
  experience and a personal and shared experience
  of interpreting situations
• joint translation/ interpretation process about
  future cooperation and todays crisis

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Atmosphere

• Pervasive feeling, based on past experience and
  in anticipation of future activity
• An outcome and determinant of participative
  competence and interactive translation

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The important point about theseconcepts

• They identify more with organisational processes
  than with culture
• They are not prescriptive
• They see culture as dynamic, not static or
  deterministic
• They do not contradict traditional notions of
  intercultural communication, but extend them

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The future direction of ICC

• Global networks can inflict on mankind new forms
  of alienation (non-recognition, Baldi)
• Future of ICC studies lies in the study of the
  global interactive networks

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The future direction of ICC

• Be conscious of the power and unpredictability of
  the non-globalised economy, ie the non-Western
  world, and the sharp sense of real or percieved
  injustices in the access to, control and use of
  the worlds resources

39
References

• Barham, K. and Heimer, C. (1998). ABB The
  dancing giant. London Financial Times/Pitman
• Bartholomew, S. and Adler, N. (1996). Building
  networks and crossing borders the dynamics of
  knowledge generation in a transnational world.
  In Joynt, P. and Warner, M. (eds). Managing
  across cultures Issues and perspectives. London
  International Thomson.
• Ghoshal, S. and Bartlett, C. (1998). Managing
  across borders. London Random House
• Holden, N. J. (2002). Cross- cultural management
  A knowledge management perspective. Harlow, UK
  Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
• Schneider, S. and Barsoux, J-L. (2003). Managing
  across Cultures. Financial Times/PrenticeHall.