Organizational Culture

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Organizational Culture Diversity
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Organizational Culture

• Underlying values, beliefs, and principles that
  serve as foundation for organizations management
  system.
• Influences
• HR practices
• Managerial style
• Downsizing/restructuring efforts

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Are HR practices universal?
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Proposition

• Universal management solutions do not exist.
• Reason?
• Variations in culture may moderate effectiveness
  of managerial practices
• Success of HR practice requires fit between
• assumptions, values, and beliefs inherent in any
  given managerial practice
• culturally based assumptions, values, beliefs
  held by those being managed

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Proposed Model
National Culture
Managerial Practices
Work Attitudes
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Take one popular management technique...

• Empowerment
• Individual autonomy decision making authority
• Subordinates, not managers, know best
• Supervisors consult with subordinates before
  making decisions

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Where Would Empowerment Succeed?

• What are the values inherent in this practice?
• Individualism
• individual decision making and autonomy
• Horizontal strategy
• subordinates participate equally in
  organizational decision making
• What types of individuals/cultures are likely to
  accept this HR strategy?
• Where would this strategy be successful?

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Research Findings (Robert, Probst, Martocchio,
Drasgow, Lawler, 2000)

• Data collected in Mexico (HC), Poland (VI), USA
  (HI), and India (VC)
• Hypothesis ? Empowerment will lead to positive
  job attitudes in Mexico, Poland, and USA
• Empowerment positively related to supervisor
  satisfaction in Mexico and USA and Poland
• Empowerment was not related to supervisor
  satisfaction in India, and was negatively related
  to coworker and work satisfaction

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Group versus Individual Empowerment

• Teamwork
• work groups that are empowered to make decisions
  together
• group-based pay incentives
• group-based performance evaluations
• Individual Empowerment
• individual decision making
• individual pay incentives
• individual performance evaluations

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What about downsizing?

• Based on theory of individualism and
  collectivism, who would be most negatively
  affected by the threat of job loss??
• Collectivists
• Focus on group ties
• Why not individualists?

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Research Findings (Probst, under revision)

• Among collectivists,
• job insecurity results in
• higher job stress,
• more negative job attitudes, and
• more negative emotional reactions to the
  downsizing
• Among individualists,
• job insecurity is less related to these outcomes

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Results
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Implications

• Different managerial practices will be more
  effective with different people.
• For greatest effectiveness, need to tailor HR
  practices to the workforce as much as possible.
  Dont assumes that
• US practices will work equally well in other
  cultures
• US practices will work equally well among all
  employees in US sites either!

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Implications (cont.)

• Greater cultural distance between employee values
  and organizational culture, the more
  dissatisfaction and more negative outcomes

Individualism
_______________ Collectivism Emotion should
be expressed _______________ Emotion should
be repressed Competitive Nature
_______________ Cooperative Nature
Task Orientation _______________
Relationship Orientation Written
Communication _______________ Oral
Communication
Aggressive _______________ Non-aggressive
Confrontation
_______________ Diplomacy
Self-promotion _______________
Modesty Individual Work Rewards
_______________ Group Work Rewards
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Results of Value Incongruence

• Reduced organizational commitment
• More turnover intentions
• Less satisfaction with coworkers, pay, promotion
  opportunities, and supervisors
• More physical and mental health problems
• More job-related stress
• Less job security

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Suggestions

• For job seekers
• determine your own cultural value system
• apply for jobs in companies that have similar
  values ? do your homework before accepting a job!
• For managers
• dont assume that everyone is motivated by the
  same rewards and/or managerial style
• For organizations
• if you truly value diversity, create an
  organizational culture that minimizes
  institutional bias