Chapter Fifteen

International
Organizational
Behavior
Thomson South-Western 1
Wagner & Hollenbeck
5e
 Chapter Overview
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– International Dimensions
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Masculinity-Femininity
• Individualism-Collectivism
• Power Distance
• Short-Term/Long-Term Orientation
– Effects on Organizational Behavior
• Cultural Trends: Four Scenarios
• Organizational Effects
• Cross-Cultural Differences
– Managing International Differences

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 Introduction
 With multinationalization
and globalization come
differences in nationality
and culture that can have
major effects on micro,
meso, and macro
organizational behavior
 Today’s managers must
take international
differences seriously if they
expect to compete and
succeed in global markets
3
International Dimensions
 Dutch researcher, Geert Hofstede,
discovered that most differences
among national cultures were
described by four cross-cultural
dimensions:
– Uncertainty avoidance
– Masculinity-femininity
– Individualism-collectivism
– Power distance
 In later research, Canadian
researcher Michael Harris Bond,
uncovered a fifth dimension
– Long-term/short-term orientation
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 Uncertainty Avoidance
 The degree to which people are
comfortable with ambiguous situations
and with the inability to predict future
events with assurance is called uncertainty
avoidance
 People with weak uncertainty avoidance
feel comfortable even though they are
unsure about current activities or future
events
 People with strong uncertainty avoidance
are most comfortable when they feel a
sense of certainty about the present and
future 5
 Masculinity-Femininity
 Hofstede used the term  Together, the
masculinity to refer to the extremes of
degree to which a culture masculinity and
is founded on values that femininity delineate
emphasize independence,
aggressiveness, the dimension of
dominance, and physical masculinity-
strength femininity in
 Femininity according to Hofstede’s analysis of
Hofstede, describes a cross-cultural
society’s tendency to differences
favor such values as
interdependence,
compassion, empathy, and
emotional openness
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 Individualism-Collectivism
 According to Hofstede,
individualism-collectivism
is a dimension that traces
cultural tendencies to
emphasize either satisfying
personal needs or looking
after the needs of the
group
 From the viewpoint of
individualism, pursuing
personal interests is seen
as being more important
and succeeding in the
pursuit of these interests is
critical to both personal
and societal well-being
 The collectivist
perspective
emphasizes that group
welfare is more
important than
personal interests
 The members of
collectivist national
cultures tend to ignore
personal needs for the
sake of their groups,
ensuring group
welfare even if
personal hardships
must be endured
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Power Distance
 Power distance is a
dimension that reflects the
degree to which the members
of a society accept differences
in power and status among
themselves
 Power distance influences
attitudes and behaviors by
affecting the way that a
society is held together

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 Short-Term/Long-Term
Orientation
 The dimension of short-term/long-term
orientation reflects the extent to which the
members of a national culture are oriented
toward the recent past and the present versus
oriented toward the future
 The short-term orientation supports immediate
consumption and opposes the deferral of
pleasure and satisfaction
 A longer-term orientation favors the opposite
strategy, that is, doing what is necessary now
whether pleasant or unpleasant, for the sake of
future well-being 9
 Effects on Organizational
Behavior
 The five-dimensional model based
on the research by Hofstede and
Bond does not lack for critics
 Nonetheless, the model is the most
comprehensive cross-cultural
framework currently available and
it can stimulate useful insights into
ways in which organizational
behavior varies from one national
culture to another

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 Cultural Trends:
Four Scenarios
 For an in-class project, use the five
dimensions of Hofstede and Bond’s model
to explain the four scenarios described in
the text, pages 514-517, which deal with
the following topics:
– Feelings about progress
– Tendencies toward confrontation or consensus
– Locus of control
– Status and social position

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 Organizational Effects
 The four scenarios illustrate how the
Hofstede-Bond five-dimensional model can
diagnose differences in national culture and
help identify some of the cultural roots of
everyday customs and behaviors
 To understand how these cultural differences
can influence organizational behavior,
consider first the national culture of the
United States and its effects on American
theories and practices
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 Cross-Cultural Differences
 To further understand how
the differences highlighted in
the Hofstede-Bond model can
influence behavior in
organizations, consider the
various areas of
organizational behavior as
practiced in organizations
throughout the world

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 Cross-Cultural Differences:
Decision-Making and Motivation
 On an Israeli kibbutz (a  Japanese motives and
self-contained motivation are influenced
community) decision by the relatively strong
making is shared among collectivism that
the adult membership characterizes Japan’s
 Japanese organizations national culture
are well known for their  Collectivist loyalty is
use of ringisei encouraged in large
Japanese firms by the nenko
 In contrast, Korean
system of wage payment
organizations seldom
use groups to make  Seniority is the single most
decisions important factor in
determining a Japanese
worker’s compensation
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Cross-Cultural Differences:
Work Design
 Jobs in the Swedish
automotive industry are
organized not around the
assembly-line processes
commonly found in the
United States and elsewhere,
but instead according to the
principles of reflective
production

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 Cross-Cultural Differences:
Leadership
 Consistent with cultural proclivities favoring low
power distance, mangers in Sweden often do not
supervise employees directly nor do they issue
direct orders to coordinate work activities
 Groups and committees fulfill leadership
functions in many Swedish firms
– Works council: composed of worker
representatives who are elected by their peers and
management representatives who are appointed by
top management
– Special-interest committees: composed of worker
and manager representatives who provide the
works council with advice on specific issues
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 Cross-Cultural Differences:
Organization Structure
 The structures of family  The kinds of
businesses in China dependence relations
reflect the ideology of and communication
patrimonialism, which patterns formed in
brings together the
elements of paternalism, Japanese organizations
hierarchy, mutual create a latticework
obligation, structure of vertical and
responsibility, and horizontal relationships
familialism that grow among the company's
out of the Chinese managers
national culture’s high
collectivism and power
distance
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 Cross-Cultural Differences:
Organizational Change
 In general, national
cultures that are highly
supportive of
organizational change
tend to have low power
distance, high
individualism, and low
uncertainty avoidance

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 Managing International
Differences
 Diagnosing and understanding the primary
features of national cultures are critical to
success in the management of international
organizational behavior because this
represents the first step toward determining
whether familiar management practices must
be reconfigured before being used abroad
 Certain trends seem to support the
convergence hypothesis, which suggests that
national cultures, organizations, and
management practices throughout the world
are becoming more homogeneous 19