CROSS CULTURAL

MANAGEMENT

The Praxis of Cross-cultural

Management
Fredric William Swierczek

The term praxis is used in this article to identify corporation, the national differences in this material
the specific relationship between theory and could not be due to either occupation or employer
practice in cross-cultural management. It denotes but had to be due to nationality, to the mental
a commitment on the reflection of the programmes that people brought with them when
assumptions and values underlying theory, starting to work for this employer.
practice and research within this field. It also Subsequent statistical analysis showed that the
implies a commitment to a more informed differences among countries reflected the existence
practice of cross-cultural management based on of four underlying value dimensions to which every
society has to find its particular answers (Hofstede,
this reflection and oriented to the mutual 1984, p. 83).
understanding of participants in cross-cultural
situations. This paper provides a framework for predicting
For the purpose of this article three problems of cultural integration, but it leaves many
perspectives of cross-cultural management are questions unanswered... (Hofstede, 1985, p.355).
considered, along with examplars (specific
streams of theory, practice and research which Another example of this universal orientation is
illustrate these perspectives). The choice is not Kanter (1991) based on 12,000 managers in 25
inclusive and is intended for purposes of countries. Her summary of this study is:
dialogue:
If there is a single message from the survey results
For organizational science to continue to develop, it is this: change is indeed everywhere - regardless
we recommend that scholars explicitly address of country, culture or corporation. But the idea of a
cultural assumptions. Through this reflection, corporate global village where a common culture
scholars will develop an appreciation of the cultural unifies the practice of business around the world is
conditioning of organization theories (Boyacigiller more dream than reality (Kanter, 1991, p. 152).
and Adler, 1991, p. 278).
This view considers the potential of a convergent
transcultural identity for management and
The Universal Perspective organization, and rejects it. The implication is that
The first stream of theory, practice and research there are a variety of different cultures of business
can be described as universal. It is most and because of this there can be no cultural
associated with Hofstede (1980) and his five universals.
categories which are well known (power distance,
individual-collective, uncertainty avoidance,
masculinity-femininity, Confucian dynamism). The Particular Perspective
There are very few authors who can approach this
range of countries or this sample size for a cross- At the other end of this spectrum is the particular
cultural study. Hofstede is used as one exemplar stream which focuses on specific cultures like
for the perspective as illustrated by the following Japan, China, France or the US and on specific
quotes: aspects of management like decision making,
leadership or communication (Kelly et al., 1987).
As I always compared employees in similar Perhaps this is the most prevalent type of study
occupations and, besides, the individuals were all in cross-cultural management because it is based
employed by subsidiaries of the same multinational on one culture-monocultural analysis. Three
illustrations show this approach. For example, the
uniqueness of French management has a specific
Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1994, pp. 14-19,
© MCB University Press, 1352-7606 cultural basis:

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 VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1
1994

Management in France, we learned is considered a
"state of mind" rather than a set of techniques.
According to executives like Michel Lafforgue,
directeur general technique at L'Oréal, the
successful development of executives depends on
creating a distinctive shared identity, a sense of
belonging to the French managerial class (Barsoux
and Lawrence, 1991, p. 58).
Another example is the failure of US approaches
to adapt managers to the demands of a global
operating environment:
The growing international competition that
American firms face has increased the need for
firms to become more competitive by improving the
cross-cultural management aspects of their
businesses. Unfortunately many American firms
have not been successful in selecting, retaining, and
developing effective managers for assignments
requiring cross-cultural management skills (Black
and Porter, 1991, p. 100).
Yet another illustration is based on Japanese
management which reflects a revisionist point of
view, that is, analysing the myths of the Japanese
approach which have been fashionable for ten
years or more:
Management philosophies in Japan are wonderfully
elegant, but they are not quite what Americans have
read about. Nor are they quite what Japanese
companies say they are in their training manuals for
American employees or their pronouncements for
the press. Often these are riddled with fashionable
but extreme nihonjinron (Japanese identity)
writings about how unique Japanese culture is and
how this uniqueness carried over into managing
(Sullivan, 1992, p. 86).
This type of perspective concentrates on
highlighting the underlying qualities of a
managerial culture, why it is unique, and what
implications it has for practice.
universal or culturally specific, this book focuses
on the crucially important questions of when and
how to be sensitive to national culture (Adler,
1992, p. 6).
In this stream there is an important commitment
to the practical consequences of the understanding
of cross-cultural management. The most
significant types of consequence are failures or
blunders. This is represented by the second
exemplar - Ricks:
Cultural differences are the most significant and
troublesome variables encountered by the
multinational company. The failure of managers to
comprehend fully these disparities has led to most
international blunders (Ricks, 1993, p. 2).
His approach is a very good example of an
inductive or bottom-up approach because it
concentrates on specific performance in
international business situations and draws
general lessons for managers.
Theory, Practice and Research
Each of these streams has different implications
for theory, research and practice. Figure 1 shows
these relationships. Hofstede's, for example,
began as a research study and has gradually
become the most acknowledged theoretical
perspective. Despite many criticisms concerning
his assumptions, methodology and
generalizability, the basic dimensions of culture
are valid and help to clarify the implications of
culture on management (Yeh, 1989; Triandis,
1982).
Where there is a problem is that the research
agenda of Hofstede has been rigidified. The
concepts are no longer researched but are

Middle Range Perspectives

Two examplars are used for this perspective
which is a blend of global views with practical
monocultural examples. Adler (1992) represents
this view and is an excellent example of a
deductive or top-down approach. She draws on a
variety of theories, perspectives and research and
explores it in a variety of cross-cultural situations.
Focusing on global strategies and management
approaches from the perspective of people and
culture allows us to examine the influence of
national culture on organizational functioning.
Rather than becoming trapped within the most
commonly asked, and unfortunately misleading,
question of whether organizational dynamics are

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 CROSS CULTURAL
MANAGEMENT
accepted as they are and used as the basis for
research into confirming the presence or the
influence of these dimensions in a particular
culture or related to a specific issue in
management (Dorfman and Howell, 1988). In the
past Hofstede has considered many implications
of his cultural features on management and
organizational practice (Hofstede, 1985). In
general these are thoughtful and increase the
manager's sensitivity to problems which will
develop throughout cross-cultural experiences. In
practical situations in specific countries and
specific areas like technology transfer, negotiation
or conflict, the results may not confirm the
expectations based on the assumed cultural
differences and are often the reverse of
expectations (Swierczek, 1990, 1994).
At the middle range, Adler's (1992) work or
Ricks' (1993) usually provides a kind of mirror
for the manager with which to evaluate the
manager's success or failure in cross-cultural
situations. In this sense it is a blend of theory and
practice. There is a difference between the two
approaches. Adler uses practical examples to
evaluate theory, often with negative implications
for the theory. Ricks uses the practical
experiences of failures or mistakes to enhance
performance. Neither of these authors fits a
quantitative research perspective very well. Adler
has set very high standards for cross-cultural
research, which are very hard for anyone to
accomplish (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991). Ricks
does not seem to care about the broader research
implications for his work. He seems content to
concentrate on the practical implications only.
At the particular level of cross-cultural
management are usually detailed examples of
nationality-based management, for example,
Japanese or French or comparing nationalities, for
example Japanese to American, etc. Some of
these studies have been well developed
methodically. Some of them are descriptive and
often appear to be more about stereotypes than
cross-cultural analysis.
For the best of these studies there is a value
because they explore in depth the characteristics
of different cultures as they relate to some
specific management or organizational issues.
The least useful of these studies relate to
descriptions or limited case studies. They also
have a potential research use if a number of
different cases can be assembled to provide a
reasonable base for comparative studies.
Where the particular approach may not be as
successful as the universal or the middle range
perspectives is in theory development. In general
there is too much diversity in terms of topics and
16
not enough coverage in terms of cultures or
subjects.
All these cross-cultural management
perspectives lean towards theory and prediction as
indicated by the following quote:
A key element in the process of management
anywhere in the world is being able to anticipate
future actions of colleagues and competitors. Much
of the research reviewed and analyzed in this article
addresses this issue through the metaphor of
cognitive style. Often, when we have trouble •
understanding and predicting the future behavior of
our colleagues, peers or competitors, we attribute
these difficulties to language problems or to
idiosyncrasies in their behavior. But these
predictions and understanding problems may arise
from lack of appreciation of the thought processes
manifested by foreigners in our managerial
environment. Part of our inability to understand or
predict the future behavior of our peers, colleagues,
and competitors may be caused by our inability to
understand how they are modelling the world and
what kind of causal dimensions they use to see the
world (Adler et al. 1986, p. 313).
This emphasis on explanation and prediction may
be the wrong focus for cross-cultural management
because of the wide variety of values and cross-
cultural situations which managers will face. A
more appropriate focus would be on
understanding the impact of these values and
adapting to new situations.
Cross-cultural Management: Praxis
In this section an example is presented of how to
move from the particular to the universal and
from practice to theory by following a praxis
approach. It considers a wide variety of
experiences of managers in cross-cultural or
multicultural situations and from their responses
tries to draw theoretical and practical perspectives
from those situations and specific interactions
which occur in conflict, negotiation or leadership.
A case study entitled Pacific Project Management
is used as an example. The details are included in
Figure 2. It features a foreign manager opening a
representative office in Vietnam for a large
international telecommunications corporation
wanting to develop a joint venture. There are two
key features to the case. The first is the inward
cultural viewpoint of the manager which
emphasizes only his perspective. The second is to
examine what the Hofstede perspective would
indicate, which could be the cultural problems in
this case.
Figure 3 shows graphs of three cultural gaps
which are simplified versions of Hofstede's
 VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1
1994

People only do well

what the boss checks most

Pacific Project Management Company has opened a representative office of a large international
telecommunications corporation planning to open a joint venture in Vietnam operating a cellular telephone
system with a potential manufacturing operation.
There is a beautiful brass plaque on the desk of Van Allan, managing director of Pacific Project
Management - Vietnam. It reads: People only do well what the boss checks most. This is Van Allan's
philosophy. It is a summary of his whole work experience and he believes it is the best way to manage
especially in developing countries such as Vietnam.
He often says if we do not show them how we want it done, they will never do it our way. They have no
concept of our way of doing things. They cannot even imagine it.
Consequently, he develops very explicit accounting codes to be used for financial management but the
company has a cash-flow problem. He spends time looking for equipment to buy and comparing prices
while essential activities go undone. He delegates more tasks to be done by Vietnamese staff with short
deadlines but does not hire new staff. Staff work harder but he does not acknowledge their efforts.
Van Allan has a Vietnamese counterpart engineer, representing the potential Vietnamese joint venture
partner, whose opinions he respects. The counterpart tries to describe the situation in Vietnam. He tries
very often and of course the situation in Vietnam changes constantly and not everything is easy to work
out. Van Allan thinks: it shouldn't be this way. They should change.
His counterpart also tries to tell him about how important relationships are in Vietnamese culture. Van
Allan knows relationships are important, but relationships are for after work. Get the job done first then we
can have a good time. Details first, relationships later. No details, no success.

Figure 2.
Pacific Project Management Company

(1985) originals. The first gap, based on power
distance and individual/group orientation, is very
dramatic between Vietnam and potential foreign
partners such as the USA, France or Switzerland.
Vietnam has a very similar profile to other Asian
countries.
Concerning a primary focus on managing
uncertainty, there is still a gap but it is not very
severe for partners with Anglo-Saxon cultural
features, but there is a bigger gap with cultures
like France, Japan or Switzerland which have an
emphasis on minimizing uncertainty. When the
focus turns to the achievement (masculine)
emphasis or the affiliation (feminine) emphasis,
the cultural gap increases again but not as severe
as that with power distance and group orientation.
From the theoretical perspective Hofstede's
Cultural Features have a very prescriptive value
because they do alert managers to what would
indicate very important sources of cross-cultural
problems. Understanding Hofstede would also help
prospective managers in cross-cultural situations to
be able to evaluate their own cultural values,
understand the values of others, and avoid
stereotypes.
From the research perspective, a project
conducted over the past few years is used as an
illustration. The initial description of this research
was in Swierczek (1991). The original concept of
this research was to explore how Asian managers
viewed the issues of leadership. The research
began with a very qualitative approach.
Participants were asked to describe a manager from
their past experience whom they considered was
their best or worst leader. These patterns of best
and worst were developed into a survey
questionnaire and samples were identified from
East Asia: China, Taiwan, Korea; South-East Asia:
Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and
Burma and from South Asia: India, Pakistan,
Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The sample for
each country is a minimum of 100. This represents
a group of managers of around 1,500.
Table I presents some of the early findings of
this research (Swierczek, 1993). Five important
dimensions were identified through factor
analysis. Each dimension has a total score of five
points.
These results confirm that the relationship style
of leadership, related to motivating and problem
solving are very important to Asian managers even
more so for managers in South-East Asia. Vietnam
is considered to be part of this region. The results
indicate that a directive approach will not be
appropriate in Asia, and particularly not in
Vietnam.

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MANAGEMENT

From the practical perspective, these results
should alert new managers in cross-cultural
situations in Asia that they should develop a new
understanding of appropriate leadership styles and
that they should adapt their style to fit the new
context. The other practical dimension is to use
the case and other similar examples in preparing
managers who are going abroad to understand the
impact of not developing a cross-cultural
awareness or the skills needed to adapt to new
management situations.

South-East
East Asia Asia Conclusion
This article has considered the implications on
Relationship oriented 4.10 4.27a theory, research and practice of three perspectives
Task directed 3.17 3.44 on cross-cultural management including the
Motivating 4.24 4.35 universal, middle range and the particular. Each
Ambitious 3.58 3.70 perspective could provide useful studies in cross-
Responsible 4.09 4.51 a cultural management, but the strengths and
Manipulative 2.22 2.35
weaknesses of each of these streams need to be
Problem solving 3.96 4.14
considered. An alternative perspective - that is,
a
Significant at < 0.05
praxis - is advocated which would consider the
Source: Swierczek (1993) relationship of theory and practice and emphasize
developing the understanding and adaptation of
managers encountering new cross-cultural
Table I.
situations.
Comparing Styles of Leadership

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1994
References and Further Reading
Adler, N. (1992), International Dimensions of
Organizational Behavior, PWS-Kent, Boston, MA.
Adler, N., Doktor, R. and Redding, G. (1986), "From
the Atlantic to the Pacific Century: Cross Cultural
Management Reviewed", 1986 Yearly Review of
Management, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 295-318.
Barsoux, J.L. and Lawrence,P.(1991), "The Making
of a French Manager", Harvard Business
Review, July-August, pp. 58-67.
Black, J. and Porter, L. (1991), "Managerial Behavior
and Job Performance: A Successful Manager in
Los Angeles May Not Succeed in Hong Kong",
Journal of International Business, Vol. 22,
pp. 99-113.
Boyacigiller, N. and Adler, N. (1991), "The Parochial
Dinosaur: Organizational Science in a Global
Context", Academy of Management Review,
Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 262-90.
Dorfman,P.and Howell, J. (1988), "Dimensions of
National Culture and Effective Leadership
Patterns: Hofstede Revisited", Advances in
International Comparative Management, Vol. 3,
pp. 127-50.
Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture's Consequences:
International Differences in Work-related Values,
Sage, Beverly Hills, CA.
Hofstede, G. (1984), "Cultural Dimensions in
Management and Planning", Asia Pacific Journal
of Management, Vol. 1 No. 2, January, pp. 81-99.
Hofstede, G. (1985), "The Interaction between
National and Organizational Value Systems",
Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 22 No. 4,
pp. 347-57.
Hofstede, G. and Bond, M. (1988), "Confucius and
Economic Growth: New Trends in Culture's
Consequences", Organizational Dynamics,
Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 4-21.
Kanter, R. (1991), "Transcending Business
Boundaries: 12,000 World Managers View
Change", Harvard Business Review, May-June,
pp. 151-91.
19
Kelly, L, Whatley, A. and Worthley, R. (1987),
"Assessing the Effects of Culture on Managerial
Attitudes: A Three-culture Test", Journal of
International Business, Vol. 18, Summer,
pp. 17-31.
Rehfield, J. (1990), "What Working for a Company
Taught Me", Harvard Business Review,
November-December, pp. 167-76.
Ricks, D. (1993), Blunders in International Business,
Blackwell, Oxford.
Storey, J. (1991), "Do the Japanese Make Better
Managers?", Personnel Management, pp. 24-8.
Sullivan, J. (1992), "Japanese Management
Philosophies: From the Vacuous to the Brilliant",
California Management Review, pp. 66-86.
Swierczek, F. (1990), "Culture and Negotiation in the
Asian Context: Key Issues in the Marketing of
Technology", Journal of Managerial Psychology,
Vol. 5 No. 5, pp. 17-24.
Swierczek, F. (1991), "Leadership and Culture:
Comparing Asian Managers", Leadership and
Organizational Development, Vol. 12 No. 7,
pp. 3-10.
Swierczek, F. (1993), "Comparative Leadership in
Asia", working paper, Asian Institute of
Technology, School of Management.
Swierczek, F. (1994), "Culture and Conflict in Joint
Ventures in Asia", International Journal of
Project Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 39-47.
Triandis, H. (1982), "Review of Culture's
Consequences: International Differences in Work
Related Values", Human Organization, Vol. 41
No. 1, pp. 86-90.
Yeh, R. (1989), "On Hofstede's Treatment of
Chinese and Japanese Values", Asia Pacific
Journal of Management, Vol. 6 No. 1,
pp. 149-60.
Fredric William Swierczek is Associate Professor
at the School of Management, Asian Institute of
Technology, PO Box 2754, Bangkok 10501,
Thailand.