Culture and IHRM

What is Culture?

“Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society.”

- Edward Tylor

A system of values and norms that are shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living.”

- Hofstede, Namenwirth, and Weber

The Determinants of Culture

 Levels of Culture

—  Culture and Nation

—  National Culture

¡  Family, religion, education, mass communication media, multi-national companies (Tayeb, 2003)

—  Corporate Culture

—  Professional Culture

Dimensions of culture

 Criticisms of Hofstede’s Model

—  Inappropriateness of surveys (i.e. positivism and interpretivism)

—  Surveys in one company – IBM

—  Reliability and validity

—  Separation of organizational and occupational/professional cultures

—  Culture is linked to early socialisation and may differ between and within countries

—  Temporal specific

—  Rooted in a positivist paradigm

Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness [GLOBE]

—  62 countries

—  Dimensions predict impact on leadership and organisational effectiveness

—  Similarities with Hofstede

—  GLOBE assumes culture affects what leaders do and how organisations are structured and managed.

                                        (House et al., 2004)

GLOBE

—  Created Country clusters – These regional clusters were based on:

¡  Common language

¡  Geography

¡  Religion

¡  Historical accounts

—  Cultural Cluster scores - Cultural Dimensions

 GLOBE: Some findings

—  Charismatic/value-based desirable across most cultures e.g. Confucian Asia, Nordic Europe,

—  Team based leadership considered to help outstanding leadership in many cultures e.g. Latin America

—  Partcipative - positive but effectiveness dependent on culture e.g. Nordic Europe

—  Autonomous - desirable in some cultures not all e.g. Eastern Europe, Germanic Europe

—  Self Protective - Middle East, Southern Asia

—  Humane Oriented - Middle East

Strengths

—  Worldwide study: 62 countries, 951 organizations, 17, 300 managers

—  Generalisation

—  Universal perceptions of bad and good leadership is this possible

—  Highlights the complexity of leadership

Criticisms

—  Multitude of findings – no single theory

—  Narrow in scope

—  Difficulty in interpreting cultural dimensions

—  Conceptualisations based on prior research

—  List of desirable leadership qualities do not consider situational effects

Implications for HRM

•       Power distance – creativity and innovation?

•       Uncertainty Avoidance –risk management?

•       Humane Orientation – ‘low pay’ strategies?

•       Collectivism (Institutional) – variable pay?

•       Collectivism (In-Group) - teamwork verses individuals?

•       Assertiveness – performance appraisal / grievances?

•       Gender Egalitarianism – equal opportunities?

•       Future Orientation – long term goals and investments?

•       Performance Orientation – ‘performance management’?

Understanding Culture: Competing paradigms 

Critical Perspectives of Culture

—  Power relations i.e. class, ethnicity, gender

—  The impact of colonialism

—  Ethnocentricity

—  Cultural relativity

—  All best understood from an interpretive perspective!