A Brief Note On The American Workplace Values

meaning and provide them with rules for behavior in their organization, however culture does not necessarily imply uniformity of values. Often different values can be displayed by people of the same culture.

Various studies have looked into the relationship between a particular individual and how their values align with an organization or government (Graham, 1976), recent studies have begun to look into individuals in organizations whose values and culture do not

I have decided to compare the United States to Canada. The reason for this choice is due to Canada sharing our borders. I felt it would be interesting to see how another country so close to the United States may compare and differ to the culture of our country. Based on Professor Geert Hofstede’s comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture, the United States and Canada rank closely in almost all values surveyed.

In cultures throughout the world people find governance and inspiration through the distinct values, rules, rituals, and symbols that they have been led to believe and informed of through the organizations that they belong to or have been brought up within. While every group of people and organization have different values and rules and hold them to differing levels of importance , every group will have some that bear similarity, no matter how distinct and different the group may be, such as the Amish communities and the more modern society. Some organizations in the modern society have values that bear even more similarities with those in the Amish culture than others, for example some workplaces have a core value of humility which is the

Management Summary This Bachelor Thesis will yield insights in the applicability of motivational theories across cultures. Within a globalizing working environment this research will provide relevant information on how to motivate employees with a different cultural background. The research combines the theory of Hofstede’s four dimensions (Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism/Collectivism and Masculinity/Femininity) with two theories of

The IBM study of employees from the 70 countries was the basis for the dimensions and has been critized since there was only one company in the data set however, Hofstede’s belief was that using just one company would better reveal the national differences. According to the authors Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashalk (2009), he believed this because the IBM employees were the same in other respects like type of work, job descriptions, and education. This study has been stated to be the most comprehensive study of how values are influenced in the workplace (Itim International, 2012). Itim International, (2012) noted that Hofstede’s work established a paradigm in international economics, communication, and cooperation, from which Hofstede developed the first emphirical model of “dimensions” for national organizational culutre.

In examining the correlation between the manner in which we conduct business and the principles to which we personally ascribe, it is undeniable that we are inextricably impacted by our respective familial upbringings, social environments and academic influences. Because values play such an important role in our lives, being able to recognize, understand and articulate one’s own values set becomes critical in sound decision making. Additionally, the ability to identify an employer’s corporate

“Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations” (Baack, 2012). These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Culture plays a huge role in the guiding of the behaviors of employees of an organization. There are three stages of culture that interact with one another to influence the behaviors in the organization. These stages are: observable artifacts, espoused values, and enacted values.

Understanding employee values is extremely important for management as many companies consider employee’s to be their greatest asset. To create value it is important that employees’ values are congruent with organizational values (Pohlman, 1997). Decision makers have to recognize what each employee values and determine ways in which they can be incorporated into the organization to create the most success. Once firms find employees with values congruent to the organization it is a continuous process to ensure employee, customer and the organization’s cultural value remain harmonious. With this continuous

The works cited help to navigate corporate values through the knowledge of cultural context. Corporate values is often time directly correlated with the influence of the corporate culture. In fact, Greg Medcraft suggests corporate culture is created through the implementation of corporate value (2016, p. 456). This research seeks to help prove the notion that corporate values, translated to principles within the organization help to build a genuine perception which can motivate employees within an organization. Ickis (2016) writes research that shows the importance of acknowledging corporate values among a shift in cultural context, specifically in South America. Recognizing that culture shapes an organization’s values prove the importance or knowing the culture within which the organization is found, which is known as relatedness. Sokhartov and Folta (2015) discuss the connection of relatedness as the drive of corporate values. More simply put, or corporation’s relation to the culture within which it operates will influence the corporates values. This is simply another way to state what Medcraft argues in his

Dr. Hofstede performed a comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. In the 1970’s, as a Dutch researcher Dr. Geert Hofstede, collected and analyzed data from 116,000 surveys taken from IBM employees in forty different countries around the world. From those results, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions of differentiate cultures. These include: Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), Masculinity-Femininity (MAS), Individualism-Collectivism (IND), Power and Distance (PD). After a further study of the Asian culture by researcher Michael Bond in 1991, Hofstede added a fifth dimension in his theory, Long- and Short-term time orientation (LTO), also referred to as the Confucian Dynamism. His research has framed how cultural differences can be used in professional business transactions. Geert Hofstede 's dimensions analysis can assist the business person in better understanding the intercultural differences within regions and between countries.

When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.

The United States and China boast the two largest economies in the world but, despite this fact, these two countries have very little in common. At first glance, this may seem very obvious to most people but, what exactly is it that makes these two countries so different? How is it that such different perspectives and approaches can both lead to great success? Hofstede’s six dimensions of culture are an attempt to answer these questions and more. Dr. Geert Hofstede, studied employees of the computer firm IBM in over fifty different countries. When he examined his findings he found “clear patterns of similarity and difference along the four dimensions” (Manktelow, Jackson Edwards, Eyre, Cook and Khan, n.d.). The fact that he focused his research on solely IBM employees allowed him to eliminate company culture as a differentiating factor and “attribute those patterns to national and social differences” (n.d.). He used his findings to originally identify four dimensions, later expanded to six, that could “distinguish one culture from another” (n.d.). The six dimensions all on a scale from 0 to 100 are:

The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The

An individual’s effectiveness in the workplace often depends on his/her personality, attitudes and values, along with his/her motivation to succeed. Concurrently, the perception, attitudes and values of colleagues in the workplace play a role in determining the individual’s effectiveness. Understanding these characteristics of employees can be very crucial for organizations to operate successfully. At the same time, it is essential that employees understand the values associated with the organization in order to avoid any conflicting feelings toward the work they are employed to do. By recognizing and appreciating each other’s characteristics and constraints, employees and the organizations they are part of, form a highly-beneficial