Intercultural management

Sonal.jainniv-catholille.fr = Thomas,DC = Cross-cultural management. Essential concepts.

Presentation + written assignment: everything is on Icampus

3 Keys elements:
● Management a Culture
● Role of the global manager
● Global Management challenges

I. Culture: French culture

It can be a definition of what represents the culture: food, music, monuments, history,
behavior, frog, tradition, non-verbal language, religion, sports, philosophy, education …
=> Every people have their own definition of culture. It’s something that is share between
people = generation to generation.

Global Definition: “Culture consists of patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting,
acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of
human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists
of traditional ideas and especially their attached values” (Clyde Kluckhohn, 1961).
Working definition of culture is a set of knowledge structures consisting of systems of values,
norms, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral meaning that are shared by members of a social
group and embedded in its institutions and that are learned from previous generations.

Culture is a different way to share beliefs, norms, … that defines a group of people. It’s not
something that can be modified overnight, it takes time to change a culture.
It could be really anything, for example: way to dress, way to integrate personal belongings
on your desk at work. Everything needs to be understood beforehand, in order to have a
good way of managing your team.

What defines the culture of the organization in the video?

- really competitive environment
- they’re all stopping and watching what the first one is doing, all happy when they
have a contract, teamwork
- lots of pressure
- interesting – they sell share
- very competition environment
- stimulating
- only men = no women
- formal dress code = they all wear suits
- stressful - aggressive
- intensive working condition = not optimal
- help each other = solidarities
- atmosphere is nice
Other impression:
- pressure and negotiation could be tough
- it might not work in France
- they only work for their own interest -> they’re more concerned to sell than to be
beneficial to the client
- organization structure – hierarchy on sellers (senior and junior)
- pushing one another – collaboration – but competitive too
- open office, lack of privacy
- pressure on the doctor
- symbols: men dominated – formal dressed (junior: shirt / senior: suit)
- quite young maybe in their thirties

II. The cultural iceberg

In the video we could only see the artifacts (the top of the iceberg). Then in the second layer,
you understand the values and therefore you understand better the artifacts (the behaviors).
And the third layer is the internal culture and nature of the group.
Culture can be an organisation or a country. Most parts of the culture understand the rule,
what is accepted and what it isn’t.
Example: wash your hand before eating …
Each member of the particular group understands the basic value of why they are doing
some stuff and not some other. Doesn’t mean they all know everything. They accepted it

How people to a particular group accepted some stuff.

III. Frameworks

1) Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck Framework

It has been a foundation for several years. They put five questions for a society: this last one
can choose three different possibilities.
With these different questions you can understand what your expectations of your
organization are, if you don’t work on this type of exercise it cannot work properly, and you
would not understand the culture of your environment.

Example for Americans -

Example = in US = the important here is to know that = doesn’t mean that the other criteria is
abandoned or not important = it’s just question of preference
3 solutions for each problem and they have to choose one = one is the priority but the other
are important too.

2) Hoftede’s study (1967-1973)

Trompenaar’s Dimensions: someone worked 10 years for this chart. Only pb the data are
privates because lots are confidential so we can only have access to the results.
Working for IBM from 1917 – 1973 = in 50 countries → he collected data from each country
He created these 4 parameters and then a 5e → evaluate the performance of the countries
- Indi
- Power distance = people accept and expect hierarchy. Difference between a leader
and a follower
- Masculinity/femininity not = between male and female = decision base on facts and
logique = decision base more on relationships. Negotiation.
- uncertain avoidance = process with organisation
- long term orientation = 2 types long and short. Short = people prefer living for the
day

⇒ Hofstede has a website and actualises often.

Difference with the website:

Power distance = the Vitesse that country accepts authorities = never challenges them.
Even if you disagree you follow the decision of the top management.
Click on read more = detail report = not focus on the organisation more focus on the
population in general

3) Schartz value survey

Their study yields seven value orientation that are labelled as follows.
● Egalitarianism:​ recognition of people as moral equals
● Harmony: ​fitting in harmoniously with the environment
● Embeddedness: ​people as embedded in the collective
● Hierarchy: ​unequal distribution of power is legitimate
● Mastery: ​exploitation of the natural or social environment
● Affective autonomy: ​pursuit of positive experiences
● Intellectual autonomy: ​independent pursuit of own ideas

4) The last one: Global Study

It is an extension of Hofstede work, it’s one of the largest projects ever with 170 researchers
they collected 17000 interviews. They work on the study and create 2 parameters.
Introduce gender egalitarianism = what is the level of equalities = high or low
 IV. Social Cognition

1) Mini case study = read the case

● Analyse the situation

- To different cultures that need to work together. But there is a misunderstanding
between the two.
- Mistakes have been made by an employee and she says nothing to the boss. But
since this mistake = the situation between these 2 people is weird
- 2 people = Todd (US) and Chungmin (Korea)

● Use Hofstede to identify the culture difference

- Don’t react in the same way
- The Koreans take everything they do to hear, and especially their mistakes. She care
about the opinion of his boss
- The boss didn’t have the right reaction and the right wording: too early, wrong setting
(cafeteria)
- Korean culture is more strict

Criteria:
Uncertainly SK = 85% et US = 46%
Indulgence = SK = 29 and US = 68
Individualism: SK = 18 and US = 91 (opposite = why Todd has difficulties to understand the
behaviour of Chung)
Power distance: 60 / 40
⇒ The last two are the most important

● State what went wrong

- Lack of discussion, communication
- Differences way of communicate between these 2 cultures. In us, make a mistake is
not a problem but in SK, when you made a mistake, it’s a big problem
- Different ways of communicating
- Point something is more important in SK
- Cafeteria = in front of other => the main reason why she wasn’t happy = US more
collective culture = impolite and disrespectful

● If you were in the place of one of the parties – what you would have done differently
- The wording of the sentence
- Should provide better guidance and advice
- Implementation of training to adapt to cultures
- More discussions

Todd​:
- Learn more about Korean culture
- Try to solve the issue together in an office
 - Explain her in a way that she can understand what went wrong
- Todd wanted to solve the problem but he makes it worse
- He uses his American ways to address the problem = et a recommence = He use the
American way to resolve the dispute

2) 2 interesting theory’s:

Social Cognition
⇒ concept = psychology
How we develop mental representations and how our mental representations influence the
way we process information about people and social events.
These representations are called schemas when they define a category or script when they
contain a behaviour sequence. As human beings we create different categories and then we
describe these categories (script = how we feel about it). What do you think about a word, for
example fish = family holidays for one, food for other, pet for other…? This category can be
based on everything = people, skin colour, smell…
Two types of social cognition, often referred to as type 1 and type 2 cognition (Khaneman
2011).
Type 1: ​family
Type 2: ​don’t have an off information = something new.

Schemas: the 4 principal’s types

1991 = Fisher and Taylor says that we can categories human being
1) Person schema =How you describe someone
2) Self-schemas = what is your expectation, behaviour that you like or you expected
from other
3) Role schemas
4) Event-schemas = what did you have / your experience related to the event

Why are we categorising people in our brain? The objective of categorising?

- experience and circumstances understanding = to make quick decisions in the
future.
- social identity (name, age, profession, nationality…)
 - to predict members behaviour – what is acceptable and unacceptable
- Survival of group
- It helps to create care value for the group = culture

Stereotype​:
Stereotype is closely related to the idea of schemas and are a categorization of the
characteristics and behaviour of a set of individuals
- resistance to next information
- Stereotypes are complex and difficult to evaluate
- Social dominance

Example: ​French are lazy, drink wine / Indian love spicy food
Stereotype (limited information) same ideas as categorizing

Social dominance theory – hierarchy:

- Different groups
- What to expect from other
- recognize people by country
- Quick decision
- Simplify our understanding of other group / culture

1) Situational cues = have to understand the context. Understand what is happening.

2) Your Behaviour = depend on the understanding of the situation. Type 1 or type 2.
Type 1 : plus à l’aise avec la situation
Type 2: be more careful about what you say
3) Identification of behaviour = can be difficult to say if someone is upset or not.
4) Causal attribution = the expectation = Todd expected that Chm to have an opened
conversation
5) Response behaviour and attitudes = situation. Todd a mal géré la situation