CROSS CULTURAL MANAGEMENT

The Concept of Cross-cultural Management: Working as part of culturally diverse team



The Concept of Cross-cultural Management: Working as part of culturally diverse team

Introduction

In the contemporary world, diversity has emerged out as one of the major issues facing the organisations. Managing a diversified workforce is not an easy task. The organisations have now realised the importance of culturally diversified workforce. Firms are hiring Individuals having differing identities in large numbers. These firms are planning to expand their businesses to other parts of the world. This paper has two parts. The first part discusses the concepts and theories of cross-cultural management. The second part discusses the Hofstede's model of cultural dimensions. The application of this model on West African and Indian cultures is also presented.

Part A: Theories of Cross-cultural Management

In a broader perspective, cultural diversity can be managed through communication (creating awareness among all employees about diverse values of peers through communication), cultivating (facilitating the recognition, support and encouragement of success of any employee "for all other workers), and capitalising (linking diversity to every business process and strategy such as succession planning, reengineering, employee development, performance management and review and reward systems) strategies. There are many different innovative ways that organisations have adopted to manage diversity.

Concept of Diversity and Cross-Cultural Management

The existence of different cultural subsystems in organisations causes the phenomenon of cultural diversity formed by a system of values established for organisational action and ethnic differentiation and gender of all persons as members of the organisation have equal status and share power (Adler, 2003, 22).

The concept of cross-cultural management revolves around other inter-related concepts, including: racial, gender, national origin, ethnicity, ability, and even geographic origin. For some researchers, cross-cultural management is a set of differences, resulting in potential differences in behaviour between varying ethnic groups (Adler, 2003, 23).

Several factors influence the interactions in culturally diverse work groups, following investigations, researchers have suggested that members perceived each other, according to their cultural differences as racial and ethnic call for the categorisation and specification, suggesting a typology of behaviours predicted according to cognitive processing of members of the working group (Bae, 2007, 80).

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Model

According to Geert Hofstede, there is no such thing as a universal management method or management theory, which is valid worldwide. Even the word "management" has a different origin and meanings of countries around the world. Management is not a phenomenon that can be isolated from other processes that take place in society. It is interacting with what the family, school, politics and the government takes place. It is also clearly related to religion and views on science. The cultural dimension model of Geert Hofstede is a framework that five types (dimensions) of differences / value perspectives between national cultures describe: (Bae, 2007, 80).

The distance of power: The degree of inequality among people, which the population of a country considers as normal.

Individualism versus collectivism: The extent to which, people feel about their responsibilities to ensure or even to care for their families or ...