Question 1

1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use 2 hypothetical but realistic situations - or real ones - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. you may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.

According to hofstedes there are five dimensions:
1. Power distance index
2. Masculinity
3. Uncertainty avoidance
4. Individualism
5. Long-term orientation

I’m only going to center around two of these dimensions:

Power distance index (PDI)
In short words, it’s the distance between the higher ups to the employees, for example, let compared two different cultures, the Australian (also know as an ozzie) and the Japanese, these two have a good commercial relation, but one very noticeable difference between these two cultures is the distance between manager and employee, in the Australian culture is not rare to see a boss with his employee drinking a glass of beer and speaking as they were close fiend, but, in the Japanese culture, there is a respectful attitude with the boss, and speaking to him as he was a very close friend will be considered as a rude and un-respectful gesture toward the boss.

Individualism
It refers to closeness between people and families, in Australia, it’s a more individualism country, they tend to care more about their direct family and they each take care of their one, while in china, there is a lot of collectivism between families, its not weird to see a gathering with second and third cousins. Also, in China people take care of the connections with other people, people can get a job more easily depending of the connections they have, while in Australia, its not accepted to get a job thru connections with people, it can be considered against the law

Bibliography:
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/japan.html
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/australiaasia.html
http://japanwatching.com/culture/92-how-different-are-the-japanese


2. Write a short essay considering the following questions:

- Do you think there is a corporate culture in every organisation?
- If we assume there is: Can it be modified?

Geert Hofstede said "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another".

There is a corporate culture in every organization; each company has a set of values, regulation and methods to act.
Organizational culture is different from the objectives and goals that the company has, the organizational culture is how to act and work along side with your coworkers and how to interact with the managers and bosses, each company has their own culture, the culture can be modified but not immediately, fast results in this case are not appropriate in order to improve, you have to start with little changes and this will lead to the big changes, but is very difficult to achieve in the first try, if not done right, workers can have a difficult work relations between them, it will be a very stressful environment and there will be confusions.

One of the reasons for an organizational culture is to create a long term relation and a collective mentality in the company, to increase the loyalty of the workers to the company, the little things that some times you don’t see at the first glance, and how they do certain things, are the things you want to look for to see the organizational culture that the company has, and, when you are the new guy in the company, noticing these details will help you to get used to the work and with your co-workers.

Robert Kohls sais "Culture is an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of any given society. Culture refers to the total way of life for a particular group of people. It includes [what] a group of people thinks, says, does and makes—its customs, language, material artifacts and shared systems of attitudes and feelings".



Bibliography:
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/japan.html
http://www.coach-englisch.net/html/culture_quotes.html

Org. Communication + Virtual Teams

Effective communication is the foundation for effectiveness in any type of organization, thru a good communication in a company is more effecting when task are being delegated, especially in virtual teams there has to be a good communication between team mates in order to be efficient, so lets talk a little of communication.
There are two dimensions in communication:

• Interpersonal communication
When you are speaking to another person



• Technological communication
When you “talk” to a person without him in front of you, like thru an e-mail or text message, these are the most dominant in a virtual team.



What is a virtual team? A virtual team is a group of people that are working for a project of the same company, but they don’t work in the same office, in some cases the members of the team are in different countries and they may work for the same or different companies, one of the benefits of virtual teams is that these teams reduce cost and time for the companies, but, a virtual team is not the same as a virtual community, and a virtual team unlike a normal meeting, the team members don’t have to meet face to face in a meeting room every day, they can each work their part and check the progress of the other members, the can schedule meetings thru the web when they need to check something, but one of the most obvious disadvantage is the different time schedules, cause the members may be in different countries, there may be also a little language barrier.



In order to have an effective communication, keep these points in mind:
• Clarity
• Objective
• Understanding
• Consistency
• Completeness
• Feedback
• Time



Bibliography:
http://managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/virtual.htm
http://managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/defntion.pdf
http://www.seanet.com/~daveg/vrteams.htm
http://www.groupjazz.com/pdf/vteams-toronto.pdf
http://managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm
http://orgcomm.web.mtsu.edu/
http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/orgcomm/

Motivation

Motivation comes from the Latin word movere, which mean to move.
Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-orientated behavior, motivation may be rooted in the basic need to minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure, it’s a way to push the employees to reach a goal or an objective.

There are 4 motivational theories:

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Proposed in 1943 by Abraham Maslow. This theory is very simple to understand, as you see in the image, there are different need that a human needs, but he has to start at the lowest levels that is basic needs, when those needs are fulfilled they move to the next one, and the next, and the next until you reach the level on top.





• McClelland’s need theory

Also referred as the three need theory, David McClelland proposed that a persons needs are shaped by life experiences, and these three needs are:

o Achievement
They prefer to work along or with persons that are high achievers, they seek to excel and tend to avoid low-risk because if the success is easily attained then it’s not an achievement which they are not very proud of, and in high-risk situations the success is look at as a matter of chance than achievement by ones own efforts, they like to get feedback of their result. Money is not an important motivation.

o Affiliation
They perform their best in a cooperative environment; they prefer to work in environment where there is a lot of interaction between workers and acceptance between workers, they are very good in situations where they are negotiating with a client or in customer service

o Power
They are very motivates to manage other people, there are two types:
Personal: They prefer to direct everyone and is often perceive as undesirable
Institutional: They want to organize the efforts in order to make it more productive for the organization; a person with high institutional power is more effective than a person with high personal power.

• Herzberg’s two-factor theory

There are two factors that can motivate or affect a company employee into working better or worse, the two factors are:

1. Motivators are the things that motivate an employee to give a higher performance at work such as recognition, achievement or personal growth.
2. Hygiene Factors are things that ensure that the employee will not get dissatisfied at work such as status, job security, salary and fringe benefits (non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries like health insurance, etc).

• Expectancy theory

This theory explains how individuals make their decisions regarding various behavioral alternatives. There are 2 propositions:
1. When deciding among behavioral options, individuals select the option with the greatest motivation forces (MF).
2. The motivational force for a behavior, action, or task is a function of three distinct perceptions: Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valance. The motivational force is the product of the three perceptions:

• EXPECTANCY
That depending on the effort you will get the desired performance and is based on past experiences, self- confidence and how a person perceives the difficulty of the job.
• INSTRUMENTALITY
Is a perceived performance-reward relationship, that if an employee meets the expectations that the company had for them, they will get a reward for their work.
• VALENCE
How a person sees the reward, this point of view depends on the person’s needs, goals and values.

http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/expectancy.htm
http://tutor2u.net/business/people/motivation_theory_herzberg.asp
http://www.quickmba.com/mgmt/expectancy-theory/
http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/maslow.htm
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_herzberg_two_factor_theory.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Motivation-Theory&id=410700

Organizational Culture and National Culture

National and organizational culture are different from each other, if you are negotiating with another country or company, investigate a little beforehand of who you are going to meet and their culture, when negotiating take into account cultural aspect such as religion, body language, education, personal communication, manners and customs, values, social structure and their attitudes (toward time, work and cultural change)

Organizational Culture:
It can be considered as informal, they are guidelines used in organizations practices and you learn them while on your job, you begin to act and imitate you co-workers actions on certain actions and situations, it’s very difficult to change an existing organizational culture to a new one, the changes have to been slowly and thru trial an error, if the changes are too drastic it can change the performance of the employees and it will cause confusion and conflict, but a good organizational culture can change the efficiency of the employees and also the company.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WkazAAuKnk&feature=related

This video can help you understand the Organizational Culture, its in portuguese but is easy to understand

National Culture:
Is Considered as formal, but it can also be misleading, national culture refers to people from any given country, this will characterized some values, attitudes and behavior from people from a national culture, consider the national culture as an iceberg, there is a part that is easy to see like the top, but there is a lot under water that cannot be seen as easily, you can only see the top aspects of the national culture, its easier for a company to expand to a country with a similar national culture.

bibliography:
• http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch16.html
• http://www.soi.org/reading/change/culture.shtml
• http://humanresources.about.com/od/organizationalculture/Organizational_Culture_Corporate_Culture_in_Organizations.htm
• http://managementhelp.org/org_thry/culture/culture.htm

Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is the study of how people, individuals and groups act in an organization. Its main purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives, and social objectives.

This makes an organization or a company more efficient and the possibility to make the employees and workers to work harder and better.

OB involves different sciences:

• Psychology - Human behavior
• Sociology – Society and group dynamics
• Anthropology - Performance
• Engineering - Human learned behavior and org. culture
• Management - Administrative science
• Medicine - Physical and psychological health

There are 4 models of OB, the organizations don’t use one of the models as their only methods, they may use one mainly and complement it with parts of another, in these models, they try to satisfy the need of their workers.

Autocratic

• The basis of this model is power with a managerial orientation of authority. The employees in turn are oriented towards obedience and dependence on the boss.
• The employee need that is met is subsistence.
• The performance result is minimal.

Custodial

• The basis of this model is economic resources with a managerial orientation of money. The employees in turn are oriented towards security and benefits and dependence on the organization.
• The employee need that is met is security.
• The performance result is passive cooperation.

Supportive

• The basis of this model is leadership with a managerial orientation of support. The employees in turn are oriented towards job performance and participation.
• The employee need that is met is status and recognition.
• The performance result is awakened drives.

Collegial

• The basis of this model is partnership with a managerial orientation of teamwork. The employees in turn are oriented towards responsible behavior and self-discipline.
• The employee need that is met is self-actualization.
• The performance result is moderate enthusiasm.

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadob.html