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Are Western Management Concepts (Like Hrd) Applicable Worldwide?

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Are western management concepts (like HRD) applicable worldwide?
“Every aspect of a firm's activities is determined by the competence, motivation and general effectiveness of its human organization. Of all the tasks of management, managing the human component is the most important task because all else depends upon how well it is done.”(Likert 1967). Although this quote has already over 40 years of age, the core statement has not changed in any way. Still, managers have to focus on the people working in their companies, need to take differences among them into account and especially when it comes to managing in various countries, cultural, natural and unavoidable differences have to be taken into consideration ( Hofstede 1987). Regarding …show more content…

First of all, Hofstede (1987) explains his idea of the four dimensions that show the main and dominant value patterns that exist among 50 countries worldwide: 1.Individualism vs. Collectivism, 2. Large vs. small power Distance, 3. Strong vs. weak Uncertainty Avoidance and 4. Masculinity vs. Femininity. Each dimension is “related to some very fundamental issues in human societies, but issues to which societies can produce different answers”(Hofstede 1987, p.12). This sentence makes it already clear, that whatever is related and connected to those dimensions can be seen in a different way depending on what kind of society you are looking at. In his studies he lays his focus on differences between the US, the Dutch and the South East Asian, particularly Indonesian, dimensions and to what extend the term HRD differs because of those dissimilarities. Hofstede (1987) demonstrates very well that each of the mentioned countries differs a lot when it comes to the four dimensions. Whereas South East Asia is living in a world of Collectivism and has a large Power Distance, the US and the Netherlands are more individualistic and have a small Power Distance. Masculinity in the US is very high where in Indonesia there is a good balance of Masculinity and Femininity (Hofstede 1987). You see that there are existing dissimilarities among the dimensions and if we now take into account

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