Culturally Bound Management Issues in CzechGerman Companies: How to Solve Them

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Culturally Bound Management Issues in
Czech-German Companies How to Solve Them?

• Martin Luke1, Julia Bürger2, Hana indelárová1
• 1 Prague University of Economics, the Czech
  Republic
• 2 University of Regensburg, Germany
  
• November 9, 2005 InterKnow
  Conference Vienna

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Overview

• Projects objectives
• Cultural dimensions CR and G
• Cultural standards CR and G
• Methods
• Research results and suggestions

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1. Projects objectives

• To identify the most problematic leadership and
  management areas in German-Czech companies that
  are based on cultural differences.
• To come with suggestions for improvements in the
  cooperation between Czechs and Germans who work
  together.

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2. Cultural dimensions CR and G

• Various cross-cultural researches
• GLOBE
• (Koopman et al., 1999)
• Schwartz Value Survey
• (Schwartz, 1999)
• Hofstedes VSM
• (Hofstede, 1997, Kolman et al., 2003, Thorpe,
  Pavlica, 1996)
• Trompenaars research
• (Smith, Dugan, Trompenaars, 1996)

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2. Cultural dimensions CR and G (2)

• Fully or partially contradictory findings in many
  values and dimensions. E.g.
• CR is less future oriented, not according to
  Kolman et al., 2003
• CR has lower gender differences according GLOBE,
  is slightly more masculine according Kolman et
  al., 2003, and with extreme masculine profile
  according Thorpe and Pavlica, 1996
• CR has lower power stratification according GLOBE
  and contradictory higher power distance according
  both surveys using VSM (Kolman et al., 2003,
  Thorpe, Pavlica, 1996)
• CR has lower uncertainty avoidance according
  GLOBE, but slightly higher uncertainty avoidance
  according Kolman et al. (2003), and Thorpe,
  Pavlica (1996)

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2. Cultural dimensions CR and G (3)

• Hard to find anything we could rely on and
  recommend for the use in practice to Czechs and
  Germans who work together.

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3. Cultural standards CR and G (1)

• Cultural standards refer to certain ways of
  perceiving, thinking, evaluating, and acting
  shared by most members of a culture, i.e. they
  are seen as normal, typical and appropriate
  behaviour. They are used to evaluate and regulate
  own behaviour and behaviour of other people and
  usually are not conscious (Thomas, 1999).

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3. Cultural standards CR and G (2)
Nový, Schroll-Machl (2003), Schroll-Machl (2001)
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3. Cultural standards CR and G (3)

• More useful for Czech German business practice.
• Lacking empirical evidence from Czech German
  companies (based mainly on research with student
  samples).

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4. Methods Project flow (1)

• Definition of management and leadership tasks
• 29 in total
• e.g. goal setting, motivation, criticising,
  change management, decision making
• that might be the areas of conflicts and
  misunderstandings between Czechs and Germans

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4. Methods Project flow (2)

• Semi-structured interviews
• goals
• to get an overview about the most important
  problems and the attempts to solve them
• to have a data basis to develop items for a
  questionnaire
• to collect enough situations and examples to
  create training and selection material afterwards

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4. Methods Project flow (3)

• Semi-structured interviews
• procedures during the interview
• division of cards with tasks written on them into
  more and less problematic areas
• selection of 5 the most critical areas in CR-G
  mutual cooperation
• detailed description of 5 critical incidents
• recommendations for the solutions
• evaluation qualitative content analysis

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4. Methods Project flow (4)

• Semi-structured interviews
• sample
• top and medium level management in Czech-German
  companies
• 33 interviews in 12 companies in total
• company size medium-sized to multinationals
• 14 Czechs and 19 Germans
• 4 women and 29 men
• they worked mainly in production companies, half
  of them in personnel, sales or marketing
  departments

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4. Methods Project flow (5)

• Questionnaire survey
• content areas
• 8 areas with the highest prevalence of examples
  in interviews and a trust issue
• the content of the individual items was obtained
  from interview statements

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4. Methods Project flow (6)

• Questionnaire survey
• form 1 (descriptions)
• 6-point Likert scale from 1fully disagree to
  6fully agree
• 76 items totally
• Information handover My ... colleagues give me
  important information immediately.
• Problem solving My ... colleagues like to look
  for perfect solutions while solving work-related
  problems.
• Relations My ... colleagues try to create a
  friendly work atmosphere.

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4. Methods Project flow (7)

• Questionnaire survey
• form 2 (suggestions)
• In order to avoid conflicts between Germans and
  Czechs in our company concerning giving and
  accomplishing instructions,
• it has proven worthwhile
• I and my colleagues now do the following
• it must not happen
• it would help
• At the end evaluation of mutual cooperation,
  sociodemographic and company data

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4. Methods Project flow (8)

• Questionnaire survey
• procedure and sample
• emails sent to 540 companies listed in the
  database of DTIHK
• with a link to the website with the online
  questionnaire
• N 92 (105 filled by 51 Germans and 54 Czechs),
  13 excluded
• 71 of participants were men, mostly working for
  medium-sized or large companies in automotive,
  machinery, finance, services, and plastics
  branches

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5. Results Interview (1)

• Problematic areas identification
• from both sides 12 areas, e.g. time management
• just from the Czech side 3 areas, e.g. personnel
  development
• just from German side 5 areas, e.g. customer
  orientation
• not important 9 areas, e.g. coordination

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5. Results Interview (2)

• Detailed problematic issues description
• the same issues perceived in the eyes of the home
  culture, e.g. time management
• Czech view unnecessary strict long-term planning
  
• German view insufficient long-time planning
• the issues important just for one culture
• e.g. German view Czechs take critique personally
• the same causal reasons of the issue attributed
  to the other culture
• avoidance to take the responsibility for a
  decision

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5. Results Interview (3)

• 60 critical incidents
• Mrs. Kopeckova works as a head of personnel
  department in a big production company. She feels
  it is hard for her to orientate in tons of
  documents and papers Germans have. It seems
  often impossible to find there the piece of
  information she needs the what and why. It
  is hidden because of many papers and check-lists,
  the meaning is often lost to her. Especially when
  she is a foreigner without excellent knowledge of
  German language. She perceives it as a result of
  German inability to tolerate uncertainty.
  Everything needs to be made in detail, everything
  has to be explained in order to have the
  certainty one hundred per cent. As a consequence,
  she and her Czech colleagues stopped to read the
  rules and documents.

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5. Results Questionnaire (1)
Interesting items
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5. Results Questionnaire (2)
Scales reliability
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5. Results Questionnaire (3)
Analysis of variance
p lt .001, p lt .01, p lt .05
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5. Results Questionnaire (4)

• German colleagues are evaluated higher in
  detailed and structured instructions and in
  certainty oriented problem solving without regard
  to the nationality of respondents.
• Only German respondents feel to be badly informed
  by their Czech colleagues.
• In the areas of decision making and criticism
  both nationalities perceive Germans as more
  willing to take responsibility and make decisions
  and Czechs as more avoiding conflicts, but
  Germans report higher differences.

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5. Results Suggestions (1)

• Example Area of Problem solving
• 13 suggestions from interviews, 204 completions
  of unfinished sentences
• Czechs should
• Better structure the information, prepare enough
  documents, be more thorough and have variant
  options prepared.
• Understand that processes made in details are
  fool-proof, thus more useful e.g. for new
  employees.
• Improve knowledge of German.
• Understand that their new solution can be also a
  bad solution. They should discuss and consult it
  before they change it.

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5. Results Suggestions (2)

• Germans should
• Not require keeping all the rules, let more
  autonomy and lessen the control, let there a
  space for Czech creativity.
• Try to be more flexible in new situations.
• Act as partners and include more Czech colleagues
  in problem solving.
• Learn to work with less paper documentation.
• Improve knowledge of Czech language and
  mentality.
• Have an expatriate in the Czech Republic who
  mediates between creativity and standardization,
  who can explain, control, discuss issue on place
  and is patient.

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5. Results Suggestions (3)

• Both Czechs and Germans should
• Inform others and communicate
• Be result oriented
• Create international teams
• Clearly define a task
• Make a decision more objectively
• Have respect, understanding and positive relations

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Thank you for your attention!

• lukesm_at_vse.cz
• julia.buerger_at_psychologie.uni-regensburg.de
• sindelh_at_vse.cz