Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DEFINATION OF VALUES Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence if personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct and end-state of existence. When we rank an individuals value in terms their intensity, we obtain that persons value system. This system is identified by the relative importance we assign to values such as freedom, pleasure, self-respect, honesty, obedience, and equality. IMPORTANCE OF VALUES Values are important to the study of organizational behavior because they lay the foundation for our understanding of peoples attitudes and motivation, because they influence our perception. They contain interpretation of right and wrong, they imply that certain behaviors or outcomes are preferred over others; as a result values cloud objectivity and nationality. CLASSIFICATIONS OF VALUES There are two approaches to develop values typologies. Milton Rokeach created the Rokeash Value Survey (RVS).It consists of two sets of values, each containing 18 individual values items. One set called terminal values refers to desirable end-state. In short, desirable end-state of existence; that goal a person would like to achieve during his or her life time.
TERMINAL VALUE: INSTRUMENTAL VALUE :
values.
For example a canonical comparison of individualism and collectivism on the cultural scale are the United States, which ranks as a highly individualist society, and Japan, which ranks as a highly collectivist society. Individualism is more focus on the personals goal, hard work and individual achievement purpose rather than the groups. Some said that Individualism has a controversial relationship with egoism (selfishness). For example, the Singaporean are likely to be said is very highly individualism which the employees will always fight for the benefit by themselves and they are very egoism intense of sharing skill or knowledge among themselves because want to protect their career. For info, I had the experience which my friend who are very highly individualism. This person is very self-sufficiency and very personal freedom where he is very independence when doing their assignment alone and didnt need their friend help. Mean that this person is very high individualism because he dont like doing the assignment in the group because he want to keep their work in personally with he ability. Some time he gets the low score in their assignment is because the assignments sometime need a group discussion to do better than individual. In contrast, collectivism is focus on strong association to groups including family and work units. For example, blame for making bad decision is share among group members. Beside that, I had a experience in this collectivism value where my best friend invite me playing futsal with other friend and during the match our team have a some misleading in the pointed and make the situation come worse and hopefully my friend are able to control the situation to be comedown. So in the case, my friend is very caring with us during the match and asks the result our team wins the match in excited. Achievement versus nurturing: Achievement is the degree to which values such as assertiveness, the acquisition of money and material goods, and competition prevail. Nurturing is the degree to which people value relationships, and show sensitivity and concern for the welfare of others.
Achievement-nurturing orientation reflects a competitive versus cooperative of relations with other people. People with high achievement orientation value assertiveness, competitiveness, and materialism. They appreciate people who are tough and favor the acquisition of money and the material goods. In contrast, people in nurturing oriented cultures emphasize relationships and the well being of others. They focus on human interaction and caring rather than competition and personal success. For example, the people in Norway can be score in low achievement oriented because the Norway People are not materialist as we can see that Norway is the low crime rate in the world. Beside that, I had experience which my friend are very high achievement because he always very greedy in term of material . In other hand, nurturing is focus on caring with other people who need assistance and support. In our life, our parent is nurturing us until we are able to independence. They always make sure we all are growth in the better life with enough wear, use, eat and protection. Beside that also, nurse also play an importance role when the patient are in sick. Nurse is example of the nurturing person n the human life when the patients need the caring. I had is experience when my uncle are caring by the nurse when we are not around my uncle. They give my uncle a very comfortable service and tool that needed by patient.
Uncertainty avoidance: The degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations. In countries that score high on uncertainty avoidance, people have an increased level of anxiety, which manifests itself in greater nervousness, stress, and aggressiveness. cultures low on uncertainty avoidance are more accepting of ambiguity and are less rule oriented, take more risk and more readily accept change.
Long-term versus short-term orientation: People who are in cultures with long-term orientations look to the future and value thrift and persistence. A short-term orientation values the past and present and emphasizes respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations. A research study was done and here are a few highlights. China and West Africa scored high on power distance; the United States and the Netherlands scored low. Most Asian countries were more collectivist than individualistic; the United States ranked highest among all countries on individualism. Germany and Hong Kong rated high on achievement; Russia and the Netherlands rated low. On uncertainty avoidance, France and Russia were high; Hong Kong and the United States were low. And China and Hong Kong had a long-term orientation, whereas France and the United States had a short-term orientation. The above cross-cultural values are very importance to the all kinds of organizational but they have the difference value across boundary. Difference culture have difference values, and it same to the difference countries too. The successful apply the better value will help the organization more sustainable and gain more profitable than other.
Hosftede Power distance Individual vs. collectivism Achievement vs. nurturing Uncertainty avoidance Long term vs. Short term orientation
Individualism /Collectivism (ii): reflects the degree to which individual express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organizations or Family. In-group collectivism: In contrast to focusing on societal institutions, this dimension encompasses the extent to which members of a society take pride in membership in small groups, such as their family and circle of close friends, and the organizations in which they are employed. Performance orientation: This refers to the degree to which a society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence. Humane orientation: This is defined as the degree to which a society encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring, and kind to others. A comparison of the GLOBE dimensions against those identified by Hofstede suggests that the former has extended Hofstedes work rather than replaced it. The GLOBE project confirms that Hofstede five dimensions are still valid. However, it has added some additional dimensions and provides us with an updated measure of where countries rate on each dimension. For instance, while the United States led the world in individualism in the 1970s, today it scores in the mid-ranks of countries. We can expect future cross-cultural studies of human behavior and organizational practices to increasingly use the GLOBE dimensions to assess differences between countries. In summary the GLOBE research is designed to contribute the development of empirically based cross-cultural leadership and organizational theory by investigating roles of societal and organizational values and institutionalized practices, organizational contingency variables, and implicit leadership theories as antecedents to cross-cultural variance in leader behavior, leader influence, leader effectiveness and organizational practices and performance.
CONCLUSION
For any culture, it is possible to envision a process in which behaviors favoring one pole are reinforced to a greater degree than behaviors favoring the opposite pole. Thus each can be seen as exhibiting a pattern of preferences about the most desirable ways of thinking and acting.
The ultimate aim of the authors is to link cultural values to three domains of managerial behavior: - Relating to others - Accomplishing Work - Responding to change
Several major cultural issues have been described in this article. These have challenged the comfortable but very culture-bound presumption that there is a right way and a wrong way to do business and to manage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E-Books : - Leadership in a Diverse and Multicultural Environment by Mary L. Connerley, Paul Pedersen - Managing Across Cultures by Malcolm Warner, Pat Joynt - When Cultures Collide by Richard D. Lewis Articles : - Effectively working with Cultural Differences 'Building a successful relationship is the key to success in a corporate environment. A positive relationship with other cultures requires you to interpret body language, respect culture and customs and understand your audience.' This article gives a brief idea about how one should adjust and adapt to the cultural differences. - Resolving Conflict in a Multicultural Environment This is an article summary of 'Resolving Conflict in a Multi Cultural Environment' by Andrea Williams. The author discusses cultural dimension in conflict and resolution in application to local government entities. This article provides information in order to identify cultural conflicts and resolving cross cultural conflicts in three ways. - Adapting to a Multicultural Environment 'The key to the multicultural sales process is not just developing a print ad with multicultural faces, but it is the dedication by the organization to understand the mindset of those that are being marketed to.' This article shows how major industries managed to integrate their sales and marketing strategies successfully into an existing multicultural environment. Gives a good example of Nike.
A PROJECT ON-