Note 3 Managing in an Era of Multiple Cultures: Finding Synergies Instead of Conflict

More than Geo-political Concepts of Culture
. In the political sphere, established national boundaries have been challenged, and in some cases destroyed, as ethnic or regional identities have grown stronger.

. Economic as well as political questions are increasingly discussed in regard to regions or continents

Business and Globalization
. Globalization of business has occurred predominantly in three ways, none of which necessarily involves national boundaries.
1.Firms have created international, multinational or global firms;
2.they have acquired or merged with firms already established in a desirable market elsewhere; 3. and/or they have formed strategic alliances and networks.

. Joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers, and acquisitions now offer companies --regardless of size -- the chance to stay competitive and the opportunity to participate in resource-intensive, long-term projects.

.The “expatriate” assignment frequently is replaced by “transpatriate” activity.

. Beyond physical relocation or travel, radical developments in communication technology have enabled a global economy to evolve in which companies and individuals have access to markets far beyond those in which they are geographically located.

---> The pervasiveness and power of the Internet have made the entire globe the potential marketplace and workplace, fostering the rise of distant work and virtual teams.

. apart from transfers initiated by companies, the ever-growing global movement of people has also contributed to an increasingly multicultural workforce worldwide.

. The mosaic of cultural diversity presents a major challenge both in global and domestic work settings

A Multiple Cultures Perspective
. an organization is not a simple, primitive society...... it is a heterogeneous, pluralistic system whose members live within a larger complex society.

. the organization – the workplace – potentially has a multiplicity of separate, overlapping, superimposed, or nested cultures within it.

. the membership body of any particular group may be... nested within the organization, forming sub-organizational cultures according to function, tenure, hierarchy, ethnicity, nationality, gender, role, location, or work group.

Managerial Concerns
. For the manager, then, identifying the existence of a cultural grouping of any sort should be an empirical question, not an a priori assumption.

. At the individual level, people may identify with, and hold membership in, several cultural groups simultaneously.

. These findings suggest that different cultural identities and values may mediate the way in which individuals within the organization perceive, value, and react to such things as the work environment and how much of themselves they invest in their jobs or the organization itself.

The Concept of Culture
. the core of culture is composed of explicit and tacit assumptions or understandings commonly held by a group of people; a particular configuration of assumptions/understandings is distinctive to the group; these assumptions/understandings serve as guides to acceptable and unacceptable perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors; they are learned and passed on to new members of the group through social interaction; culture is dynamic -- it changes over time.

The Emergence of Culture
. This definition implies that culture is a collective social phenomenon – that it can be created, rather than just inherited, by group members.

. To understand a culture, one must understand the basic assumptions of that particular group. Furthermore, this approach assumes that a culture may exist or emerge whenever a set of basic assumptions are held in common by a group of people.

. Since individuals are seen as simultaneous carriers of several cultural identities, depending on the issue at hand, a different cultural identity may become salient at a given moment.

. individuals’ multiple cultural identities within organizational contexts

. salience of any particular cultural identity will increase when that identity is confronted or perceived to be threatened

What Does It Mean for Management?
. the question may become how to build on similarities engendered in other commonly-held cultures for creative solutions and how to use and manage differences.

. synergy may not just happen in multi-cultural teams in terms of members’ national culture. Instead, it requires active work through a team development process that is based on tolerance and appreciation of differences.