Cultural Differences and Improving Performance

How Values and Beliefs Influence Organizational Performance

Bryan Hopkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780566089077
• eBook ISBN: 9781317156574
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

One of the most significant and yet largely overlooked factors influencing performance and workplace problem solving in many large organizations is that of national culture. Managers, and the organizations for which they work, need to be able to understand the influence of cultural values and beliefs on performance in order to identify appropriate solutions; strategies appropriate in one part of the world may be ineffective or even counter-productive in another. Bryan Hopkins' ground breaking book relates the concept of cultural dimensions, as developed by writers such as Hofstede and Trompenaars, to the performance engineering approaches of Gilbert and Mager and Pipe, to show how strategies for solving workplace performance problems need to consider the cultural composition of the workforce. It then provides a practical structure for problem solving within the context of an international, multi-cultural environment. This is a book for both managers working in an international setting or for those in national organizations who are dealing with the challenge of culturally diverse workforces. It's also a book for governments seeking to understand the potential implications of national culture on civilian or even military interventions.

Part I The Theory

DOI: 10.4324/9781315575254-2

CHAPTER 1 How Do Cultures Differ?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315575254-3

KEY POINTS

• How an individual behaves is determined by the relationship between their personality, human nature and their culture.
• Culture is a pattern of behaviour shown by a particular group that is manifested by surface behaviour and values and driven by a particular perception of the world.
• Culture is not static and evolves over time.
• Cultures can be analysed and compared in a number of different ways.

What is Culture?

The starting-point in our journey to explore how cultural values and beliefs affect performance in the workplace is to look carefully at how cultures differ. A considerable amount of research has been done since the 1960s into this subject, and the purpose of this chapter is to consider some of the key ideas that have been put forward.

First, the word ‘culture’ itself. It can be defined in many different ways, but in this book we use it to mean a pattern of behaviour shown by a particular group. Other writers have defined it in different ways – for example, as ‘collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others’ (Hofstede, 2005, p. 4) or as a ‘functional blueprint for a group’s behaviour’ (Klein, 2000, p. 4). This programming is the result of growing up within a society and learning that certain ways of behaving are accepted and so strengthen your position within that society, whereas other behaviours may be unacceptable and lead to exclusion. However we define it, it is a physical manifestation of a group’s values, and so to understand the significance of culture within the workplace we will have to consider the values held by people in the group.

It is important to remember that culture has two dimensions: space and time. The space dimension is obvious. People associated with a particular geographical area tend to have their own culture – for example, the Belgian, the British or the Brazilian. Of course, within these there will be many subcultures of regions, towns, districts within towns and a myriad other affiliations, such as gender, social class, religious, corporate and generational. Each of these may display its own cultural manifestations, although each will almost certainly be recognizable as part of the overall national culture. As far as cultural differences associated with gender are concerned, Nisbett asserts, ‘… females of both cultures [Western and Eastern] tend to be more holistic in their orientation than males, but we find this only about half the time, and the gender differences are always smaller than the cultural differences’ (Nisbett, 2003, p. 100).

What is less obvious is that culture is dynamic; it changes with time. Although this may not be obvious at a single point in time, when we think back to our childhoods we can see that the past was indeed a different country – we did things differently then. Culture changes everywhere with time, but at a different rate. For example, the changes in Western European countries over the last 20 years are dwarfed by the cultural changes that are taking place within China as its economy opens up and rapidly grows. While this is an example of cultural change being driven by political pressures, social and environmental factors can also play a part, through, for example, such things as opening up education to more people or climate change leading to different agricultural patterns or mass migration.

THE PROBLEMS OF CULTURAL STEREOTYPING

Variations across space and time mean that we must be very careful to avoid inappropriate stereotyping – for example, believing that all Japanese eat raw fish or that all Russians drink vodka. To some extent, stereotyping is inevitable and helpful, as it allows us to reduce the complexities of different cultures to a simple set of ideas that we can manage. It also creates an in-group (to which we belong) and an out-group (to which the others belong). This increases our feelings of self-worth and creates a separate group that we can use for scapegoating purposes.

The big problem with stereotyping is that it tends to be self-reinforcing. When we meet someone who conforms to the cultural or racial stereotype that we hold of their group it strengthens that stereotyped image, whereas when we meet someone who contradicts their stereotype we often dismiss them as exceptions rather than using their existence to modify our stereotyped image of them. Dealing with our stereotyped images is an application of emotional intelligence: when we meet someone and label them with the qualities of a stereotype we hold, we need to be able to recognize exactly what we are doing and then review the assumptions we have made on the basis of that stereotype.

Adler (2008) suggests that there are five things we need to do in order to make sure that a stereotype is a help rather than a hindrance:

• Acknowledge to ourselves that we are thinking of a stereotype, so that we know we are holding in our minds an image of a group rather than of an individual.
• Make the stereotype descriptive rather than judgemental, so that the stereotype says something about what that group does, rather than that this characteristic is good or bad.
• Make the stereotype the first best guess about this group, based on limited, existing knowledge.
• Be prepared to modify our stereotype as we find out more about the group and its values and norms.
• Make the stereotype accurate and as good a description as possible of the group.

THE VALUE OF WEARING CULTURAL GLASSES

Given that there are great differences within all cultures, stereotyping is a simplification, and assuming that the Japanese person in your team will behave in the same way as all Japanese do would be a big mistake. For this reason, in this book I have tried to avoid, where possible, labelling people from certain countries as having particular characteristics.

Instead, reflect on the stereotype and consider how a person might view a situation, given that they might have a particular mental programming. This is the notion behind Kulturbrille, or ‘cultural glasses’ as described by Ichheiser (1970) when writing about how we, as individuals, perceive other people. What you need to do, as a manager grappling with performance problems involving culturally diverse teams, is to put on your own pair of cultural glasses and think about how the situation looks from a different cultural perspective. This is crucial because, as explained in Chapter 6, the first stage in defining a performance problem is writing the problem statement, and if you fail to define your problem correctly, you will find it very difficult to identify effective solutions. Chapter 6 explains how important it is to define a problem statement in different ways in an attempt to capture different perspectives. So when doing this, wear your cultural glasses.

Failing to wear cultural glasses makes it very easy to misunderstand situations. Some nationalities frequently fall into this trap. These are mainly the big economic powers, whose past influence has led them to assume that they do not really need to take much account of others’ differences. So, for example, Great Britain and France still find it difficult to recognize that the age of Empire is over, and the United States and Japan can be sensitive to cultural differences because of their self-sufficient and island backgrounds respectively. Conversely, smaller countries that have long been used to having to take account of the big powers in their commercial dealings have always had a tradition of cultural adaptability.

About ten people worked in an open plan office. They were all white British with the exception of Sanjay, whose family originally came from India. The white British members of the team developed a jokey team culture, with a lot of teasing and a certain amount of swearing. Sanjay did not join in with this. As a result, the rest of the team decided that he was unfriendly and aloof and excluded him from general conversations within the office.

Two cultural systems were at work here, the white British culture where teasing, swearing and banter was an important way of establishing a group identity, and Sanjay’s, which was quite different.

As a result of his upbringing he felt uncomfortable with the type of behaviour that the rest of the team demonstrated. This had nothing to do with how friendly he was, but the limited cultural perspective of the other team members interpreted his behaviour as being just that.

Because we regard our own culture as completely normal and unremarkable and other people as different, we can find it easy to almost assume that we ourselves have no culture. I can certainly remember how shocked I felt at seeing, really for the first time, what British culture was like when I returned home after spending two years working in the Sudan. As that was the first time that I had spent any extended period of time in another culture, I had never previously had the chance to reflect on the fact that other people might have different beliefs and values. This is a major reason why people who have had multicultural experiences early in their lives, perhaps because they have parents from different cultures or because of travel opportunities, generally find it easier to operate in culturally diverse teams.

Certain cultures are more prone to this than others. Living on an island made it less likely in previous times that British people would meet people from other cultures, with the result that they were perceived by others as being ‘insular’. The sheer size and diversity of the United States means that it can provide holiday destinations of all types, so many Americans have never travelled abroad: in 2002, according to The Guardian (Travel section, Saturday 24 August 2002) only 22 per cent of American citizens had a passport, implying that 78 per cent of its citizens probably had very limited experience of what it might be like to be something other than American.

A lack of cultural self-awareness can have various effects. It might make us feel that people from outside our in-group are completely different to us an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The Theory
• Part II The Practice
• Further Reading
• References
• Index