InstructionsYou recently attended a conference for your company on Diversity and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. As part of the initiative on going to the conference, you are to prepare a report on
A Global Workforce
Globalization Impact on Culture
Culture is impacted by globalization, especially when it comes to a popular or dominates culture. Western or "Americanized" cultures are exposed around the globe through popular movies, television shows, fast food chains, books, clothing, and other consumer goods. These pop cultural items bleed into indigenous cultures and change local beliefs, values, and traditions; thus the historical cultures are changed or infused with the dominant culture.
Globalization and Cultural Domination
Cultural domination is one result of globalization. This theory refers to the dominant culture imposing beliefs, values, knowledge, and other cultural social norms onto the other country. A major example here is the Western culture domination over a global environment. The United States is a major capitalist society and therefore shapes values, identities, and perception around the world. As proven in the following example, with great power comes great responsibility.
As companies like McDonald’s move into countries like China, they are influencing the current cultural traditions in their wake. For instance, in China it was not acceptable for children to buy food with their own money; instead they were expected to eat what was placed in front of them. Traditionally McDonald's in Western countries would market to children with toys and happy meals, and they followed the same approach in China. Chinese children began wanting to select their own food when going to McDonalds, and after some time had passed, this has now become a new socially accepted practice (Lim, 2013).
Globalization and Divergence of Cultures
Cultural divergence is another result of globalization. As more and more opportunities for cultural exchanges take place, promotion for tolerance and diversity acceptance are happening. In this theory, a global society is the outcome where ideas are freely exchanged and appreciated, as cultures merge together to form a new inclusive culture. For example, when McDonald's expanded into China, the Chinese culture did not celebrate children’s birthdays. As McDonald's continued to market to children and birthday parties, these celebrations have now become a new custom with Chinese children with the celebration of birthdays (Lim, 2013).
Impact of Globalization on Dominate and Divergent Cultures in the Workplace
As we have seen above, dominant and divergent cultures are powerful theories in shaping society; these societies influence individual’s beliefs, values, and behaviors in the workplace. If dominate cultures are present in an individual's society, these individuals could become highly protective of their beliefs when it comes to workplace policies. Managers must look to adapt and work with all individuals to ensure common ground or a divergent culture is the outcome.
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
Hofstede’s Dimensions of the Basic Human Condition
To successfully manage a global workforce we must understand some basic human conditions. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, developed a cultural dimension standard through analyzing data from a survey of IBM employees across 76 nations (Moskowitz, 2009). What he proposed from this study was four dimensions of the basic Human Condition: power distance, collectivism vs individualism, femininity vs masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. Later Hofstede would add two more dimensions: long-term vs short-term and indulgence vs restraint. The table below shows Hofstede’s Dimensions and the different values seen in the workplace influenced by cultures.
| Hofstede Dimension | Values in the Workplace |
| Power Distance | The degree in which employees are comfortable influencing upwards versus accepted power inequality. |
| Collectivism vs Individualism | How a personal need or goal is prioritized versus the good of society, group, or team. |
| Femininity vs Masculinity | Masculine societies have different rules for genders, less in feminine cultures. |
| Uncertainty Avoidance | How comfortable people are with change. Low UA employees are good at handling change while high UA wants the status quo. |
| Long-Term vs Short-Term | Long term planning, sustainability management, and planning for the future versus no planning or short term planning perspective. |
| Indulgence vs Restraint | Having fun and enjoying life versus regulations, structure, and strict social norms. |
Eight Dimensions of Organizational Culture
In reviewing these cultural dimensions further, research gave way in the 1990's for Hofstede and Bob Wisfisz to set these dimensions in an organizational culture setting. To help further align corporate strategy, management context, and organizational culture, The Eight Dimensions of Organization Culture were created to aid leadership focus. These organizational cultural dimensions help management show relationship between strategy and culture. The table below reviews all eight organizational culture dimensions and values in the workplace (Hofstede, 1990).
| Dimensions of Organizational Culture | Values in the Workplace |
| Internally Driven vs Externally Driven | Employees perceive their tasks towards what is best for the customer (customer relationship) vs just meeting customer requirements; results orientated (customer satisfaction). |
| Means-Oriented vs Goal-Oriented | How work is carried out vs what specifically needs to be done. |
| Easy-Going Work Discipline vs Strict Work Discipline | Loose internal controls, structure, and discipline vs. strict work discipline, cost driven, rules, driven. |
| Local vs Professional | Employee identifies with boss or part of the family vs identifying with a profession and working for an organization (lawyer, doctor, accountant). |
| Open-Systems vs Closed-Systems | New employees are easily welcomed and fit right in with the organization vs closed off groups that are hard to break into. |
| Employee-Oriented vs Work-Oriented | Employees feel as though personal problems are taken into account and organizations take responsibility for employee welfare vs employees feel pressure to perform at their own expense. |
| Degree of Acceptance of Leadership | Level of employee acceptance or followership of leadership style. |
| Degree of Identification with your Organization | How the employees identify with the organization. Employees can identify with many goals and values of the organization. |
Strategies for Management using Organizational Cultural Dimensions
Work in and within the confides of your current cultural environments- No culture is all bad or all good. As managers you must work with your culture effectively to understand, recognize traits and constants, and determine what conditions will help or hinder performance.
Change the behavior and the mind will follow- It is common knowledge that if you change the behavior the mind will follow.
Focus on critical behaviors- Concentrate on changes to those few critical behaviors that will have the most impact on the performance and practice of the most number of people.
Use your informal leaders- Leadership does not always mean a formal position or title in the company. Therefore, star performers, change agents, or others that are viewed as a leader should be enlisted to influence the behavior of others.
Don’t allow formal leaders any slack- Leadership must be seen as up front and center, this includes your formal leaders of the organization.
Link behaviors to objectives- Offer evidence of cultural objects through tangible, well-defined examples.
Demonstrate quick response- Do not let items fall by the wayside or take months for employees to see you take action.
Use Cross-organizational methods for communication- Ideas can spread across departments and functions as well as top-down and bottom-up.
Align efforts to behaviors- Match new cultural directions with existing cultural components.
Continues management of cultural situations- Actively monitor, manage, care for, and update cultural incentives.
Globalization and Diversity
Globalization has and impact on all areas of business and certainly has given rise to the impact of diversity as many organizations look to expand into a worldwide market. As organizations strive to be competitive in the global markets, companies have had to create new roles, responsibilities, and new jobs in order to meet these challenging fast pace demands.
New Roles of HR Management
Globalization has brought about changes through technology and the ability to communicate on a global scale with a click of a button. Organizations have had to create new roles to deal with these changes and many of these new roles are typically housed in the areas of human resources management. The new scope of HR management, no longer in the boundaries of payroll and personnel management, are now up front and center as an inclusive strategic partner during executive strategy sessions discussing diverse issues that impact policy, procedures, activities, recruitment, socialization, training and development, evaluations, rewards, motivating, and protecting employees, to name a few.
New Responsibilities
Globalization has given rise to organizations being under pressures to keep up with external and internal demands. Updating of technology, socio-cultural demands, and global economies have given way to "new ways of doing business." For example, work-life balance (a socio-cultural demand) and the technology ability to meet virtually have given companies an economically efficient and effective tool while still meeting market demands. However, this has added new challenges and responsibilities to evaluate effectiveness and expected organizational outcomes. Managers are now responsible for a group of individuals that are spread across the globe adding to the potential challenges of a team with additional diverse issues such as time changes, language, or cultural views on work times in this virtual environment.
New Jobs
Globalization has given way to new jobs that impact diversity in the workplace. Areas such as outsourcing gives organizations the ability to remain competitive in a global marketplace. Outsourcing is a standard practice for many organizations that are on an international or global market arena. The advantages for organization that outsource range from lower labor costs and other resources costs, as well as access to the newest technologies. Even though the English language has been adapted as a universal language and opened up the ability for more English speaking countries to join the global stage, this still leaves some challenges for non-English speaking countries and English/non-English teams working together.
A Global Impact on Corporate Values and Culture
Business leaders understand the importance of strong corporate cultures and values. It is known that companies with strong cultures are more successful and achieve higher adaptability of changes (Mukkelli, 2015). Alignment of corporate culture and business strategies help to give organizations long-term success.
Globalization adds a new piece to the alignment strategies. Leaders of multinational organizations now have more employees outside of their home country and in some cases more so than within their home countries. This means that management must consider everyone’s different cultural backgrounds when working with them.
Legal and Compliance Issues
Globalization has increased the level and significance of corporate governance. Laws and regulations do not always transcend international borders or countries. International laws have aided in some areas of new polices, however, much of the burden of corporate governance for international companies falls internally. For example, healthy working environments is mandated by all governments around the world, but what are the levels of these healthy working environments? It would be up to the sponsoring organization to ensure the safety of the employees and environments for their workers.
