INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT.

International management assignment.

International management assignment.

Q1:

National Culture

The failure to date of the main theoretical approaches to generate testable hypotheses about the cross-national variation in measurable industrial relations outcomes highlights the need for further theoretical development of the possible explanatory role of national culture. Cultural explanations for cross-national differences in industrial relations systems have been stressed by: Abegglen (1958) who examines the Japanese factory; Lipset (1961, 1995) who explains the exceptionalism of American trade unions; Crozier (1964) who analyses the French bureaucracy and industrial relations system; and Gallie (1978) who, in his study of British and French oil refinery workers, compares workers' frames of reference and the institutional structures of managerial power and trade unionism in the enterprise. Critics of the cultural analysis include Sorge (1977) and Rose (1985) who, along with the rest of the Aix School, were concerned to shift the culture perspective away from the 'opaque' notions of Crozier to what they called the 'societal effect', e.g. the impact of the national system of education and training (though, in a personal communication to the author of 22 July 1999, Rose suggests the Aix group overdid their critical attitude towards the cultural approach of Crozier). The obvious riposte to this critique is that variables such as education and training may be, to some extent, proxies for national culture, but they may also be intervening variables that would disappear if more precise definitions of culture were available.

Child (1981) has supported the use of national culture as a variable in cross-national organizational theory. For Child, an adequate test of national differences that are culturally intrinsic would require an examination of whether organizational characteristics continue to differ across nations when contingencies and economic systems are similar or controlled. In addition, there would need to be a demonstration that the remaining differences are explicable in terms of an adequate theory of national cultures. Thus, if we are to develop a cultural theory of comparative employment relations we need a reasonably precise definition of culture, an idea of how the term can be used with clearly specified dependent and independent variables and a specification of the relationships between these variables that will allow for the testing of hypotheses. The theory must also specify the mechanisms or processes that give rise to these relationships (Kelly, 1994).

While Hofstede pays little attention to labour markets or to industrial relations, it is proposed to use his model as a conceptual framework for this study. It is argued here that national culture will, in a similar manner, influence the shape of key industrial relations institutions such as the structure of bargaining, the amount of federation and government involvement and the existence of worker participation. It will also influence industrial relations outcomes such as the pay structure. The influence of national culture may be mediated by the historical and strategic choices of the actors and by institutions, e.g. the habit of employer coordination (Figure 1). This approach is similar to that adopted by Greif (1994) who has argued that cultural ...