Cultural Diversity : Cultural Values, Globe, Huntington Model And Hall 's Cultural Framework

Competing in global markets entail many factors and centralization of its human resource practices is certainly vital to improve global competitiveness and empower employees for global assignments. To achieve success in global marketplace, the challenge of all businesses regardless of their size is to understand global corporate cultural differences and invest in human resources which includes selecting and retaining talented employee, training and development whilst encouraging employees to be innovative and creative. Employees selected to work in foreign locations should be prepared beforehand with adequate cross-cultural training. For an organization to be successful in the international marketplace, it must be concerned with this fit from both an internal and

As a citizen of the United States our country consist of cultural diversity in the workplace, church, schools, and etc. It is very unique because people get the chance to meet other people learn interesting things such as food, beliefs, and their country. For instance, as a student there has been much insight learning various information on religions and their beliefs. Even if a person is a Christian and the other person is Buddhism, there should be an open mind to learn about a different religion, but not practicing unless a person is willing to do so. Having a diversity culture gives the opportunity for people to communicate and interact with one another, and also the chance to accept people’s nationality rather than discriminated. “A nation’s

Managers in human relations needs a variety of skills and knowledge to help their firms succeed in the global marketplace. They need to cope with the initial shock that often accompanies working and living in a different culture. Also, they can become more effective through learning the language of the host country and interpreting accurately the work values of their foreign counterparts. The following traits may be associated with candidate’s who are likely to succeed in international contexts, such as, flexibility, sensitivity to culture differences, business knowledge, culture adventurous and a desire for their views. Before doing business with people from different cultures, managers can familiarize themselves with research that describes important cultural differences in work values. There is four dimensions on which different cultures can be compared, which includes of power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity/femininity.

In the current era of globalization, the new economic and political reforms has made it evident and clear that leaders of organization not only need to build trans- global competence, but there is also a need to build cross cultural competence. Cross- cultural competences is known to be enhancement of flexibility and awareness for having the capability and ability for thriving and surviving across the global era as a business organizations (Jonsen, 2010).

The second approach is constituted by Hofstede, who makes various researches to compare work-related values across employees working for a multinational corporation IBM in a total of 65 countries. Using the information obtained with these researches Hofstede produced a comparison between national cultures on five dimensions:

Global expansion, Global Leadership, Global Trends, are all important topics in this growing business world, it is crucial to be a leader who is effective in the comprehension of cultural variances between their native country and the countries they are interesting in working with. Businesses know that it is important to have a leader who has the ability to work in diverse work environments (Murmu, 2014, p67). Furthermore, adding to the need of leaders who can identify, understand and correctly address different issues that can arise when doing business globally, such as, culture, religious conviction, and society within each country they wish to conduct business in. The avoidance of making the error of operating under the assumption that all

In order to form a leadership that keep on with the passage of time, international leaders and managers ought to demonstrate likely competences in cross-cultural cognizance and practice. It is vital they recognize the value of leadership and managerial potentials, and to grow and sustain effective leadership approaches and methods for abiding diversity management (Ulrich and Smallwood, 2012). The conjecture emerges is that successful and effective international leaders and managers holds key to solve the secret of working with diverse workforce and dealing with them for the purpose of organizational development in order to enhance competitiveness.

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.

Thus, ILTs is based on the culture in which one lives and the socio-cultural environment has a profound impact on leadership. Ayman & Chemers (1983) study on leadership behaviours of Iraqi managers, the result shows different factor structures for Iraqi, European and US samples. They concluded that the overall evaluation of leadership function wasn’t of overt leadership only but also on evaluation of cultural backgrounds. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore on people’s perception of an ideal Leadership and to examine whether ILTs has a structure or whether the descriptive items within ILTs are random and unrelated.

Infusing a specific culture(s) into one’s leadership, by far, is one of leadership’s greatest challenges. It could be said that culture dictates how leaders lead. In the culture of leadership itself, a leader must understand the context of what is happening around them and how information flows from one audience to the next (Barrett, 2014). Time, language, power, spirituality, tradition, and whether or not a specific culture is driven by collectivism or individualism are also to be considered within that culture of leadership (Barrett, 2014). Understanding these concepts drives how we lead, do business, and communicate with others within the melting pot of our own country and people of foreign lands. Culture shapes the leader’s ideals, personality traits, work values, and to a point, determines the pattern of leadership towards a specific culture (Wibbeke, 2014). It is by knowing other cultures that allows leaders to effectively lead and to connect the dots of differences that impact strategy (Soo, 2012, para. 2).

An Organization success depends on how employees, leaders, groups, and individuals work together. Now a company is usually ran on a set of foundations that have been laid out in terms such as, but not limited to, values, beliefs, norms, language, and habits. In order to have a successful working environment, one must reach out to get to know their employee beliefs, values, most importantly get to know their employees personalities. Happy leaders, lead happy workers, who in turn are more dedicated, and willing to put the work in to make the company a success. In order to maintain a successful running business, you must learn to train, and maintain happy employees. In this paper we are going to look at Geert Hofstede, social psychologist and foremost authority on global and organizational cultures, and how he defines six dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism, masculinity, Uncertain Avoidance, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence and how all these dimensions tie into a successful business. I intend to give you the two countries that I choose to compare using the Hofstede Six Dimensions of culture, to show you have different cultures impact their work relationships.

Professor Hofstede has studies that show how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. Today’s leaders often encounter employees and peers that come from different cultures. Looking into these studies helps find valuable information that can be used for effective leadership. Recognizing, accepting, and altering leadership styles based on these differences will make everyone’s job easier and mostly importantly the company will thrive.

In times of rapid globalisation and economic development growth, the environment of business has become more and more complicated as a huge number of firms want to globally expand their businesses. Subsequently, the managerial implications of cross-cultural management is the challenge of this development. As Abbe (2007) states, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the global markets. Culture is the “software of mind” that can influence people’s patterns of thinking and behaving.

In broad leadership affects performance but different approaches to leadership may be required in the overseas operations of multinational organizations. Because some nations may only recruit and promote those individuals that fit the national, culture bound leadership model. This research will therefore investigate the cultural sensitivity of HSBC in particular the employees of HSBC in Hong Kong. The practical implication of this research would be to analyse the effect of culture on leadership skills in multinational organisations.

Many opportunities are associated with a culturally diverse workplace and global expansion may have potential to provide just such a diverse work group. Cross-culturalism in business can provide leaders and employees with a wonderful opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In addition, “the more opportunities for business leaders to interact with people from different cultures, the more likely they will be to have positive attitudes from different cultures and identify, learn and apply diverse culturally-appropriate business behaviors” (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012, p. 614). Culturally diverse environments offer a multitude of benefits including “the variety of perspectives, skills and personal attributes” (Matveeve & Nelson, 2004, p. 254). Moreover, multicultural teams have potential to “generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks” (Matveeve &