Cultural Influence on Organizational Practice

The world we live in today is made up of many countries, each unique in their own way, each continually growing as they try to adapt to a rapid changing environment and economy. The way in which each country adapts to these changes relies heavily on the culture, traditions, customs and overall way of life of the given society (Wharton). When it comes to the global economy, every country has its own definition of what being successful really means and the leadership that leads to success is defined differently as well. The way in which a leader needs to adjust their strategies are dependent upon the individual culture they are working with. Within each culture, there are certain elements that can impact the success of an organization. I will be discussing what these elements are and how they can help or hinder the success of an organization.

Organizational structure has been set up to facilitate all goal achievements. It is a way to motivate their employees and get them to work together. It also helps its employees to follow the organizations goals, and work together as a team. In order to do this, they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company smoothly. A main foundation of every organization is to post their mission statement and goals everywhere so that their employees can see them. An organizational culture can consist of common shared beliefs and values that are established by the organization’s leader, and then communicated and reinforce through various methods, this helps shape employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding. Overall, organizational structure and culture can effect progress of many organizations in a positive and negative way.

I feel that we have a low power distance, because though we all have our specific roles, some holding more power than others, we all collectively voice our options and have a collective decision making process. We all work together and we all trust each other to do well.

Geert Hofstede’s framework is a referenced approaches for analysing culture variations. The dimensions conjointly illustrate the impact of the culture ingrained in society on the values of the members. They also describe the relationship between these values and behaviour and using a structure based on factor analysis. Hofstede conducts a study about the difference in cultural environments in the 1970s and 1980s. He surveyed more than 116000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work-related values. He also finds about the managers and employees vary on five dimensions national culture. These five dimensions are power distance, individualism versus collectivism, achievement versus nurturing, uncertainty avoidance and long-term versus short-term orientation.

Organisational Culture is defined as what the employees perceive and how this perception creates a pattern of beliefs, values and, expectations. Organisational culture differs from organizational climate. Climate refers to more temporary attitudes, feelings and perceptions of individuals (Schneider, 1990). Culture on the other hand is an enduring, slow to change, core characteristic of organisations which is an implicit often indiscernible aspects of organisations, climate refers to more overt, observable attributes of organisations.. Organisational culture is “the way things are” in the organisation rather that people’s transitory attitudes about them

Itideed, so much has been written that summary is all but impossible. The principles of organizational behaviour have long been acknowledged, and legions of authors have attempted to develop both a theory and practice of cross-cultural management. To quote in this paper the more salient works in the field would merely be redundant. The conclusion from studies on cross-culture management is that managers must analyze and become familiar with the hidden language of foreign cultures. Some key starting points include: perceptions of time, space, material possessions, and friendship; patterns of business agreements; religion, language, and tradition; educational levels; urbanization and minority patterns; features of social and business customs; crime rate and corruption levels; attitudes towards foreigners; and social structure. Although sociology and psychology, as fields of research and practice, have been entertained in connmunist countries, they have served mainly 'social-engineering ' purposes, in that they have been subordinate to pditical agendas. Relatively litUe attention has been paid to the impact of national culture detominants on organizational solutions. Even in the rare instances where local enqnrical studies of this sort have been performed, results have frequently been incommensurable with research in the West. A number of works (published before political/economic changes began in 1989) have dealt with issues of organizational culture in Poland

The formal reporting lines refers to the communication between directors, managers, and those employees under them in the organizational structure while the informal reporting line refers to the communication that occurs between health care professionals in the course of the decision-making process, i.e. nurse to physician discussing a patient. Informal communication also can be peer to peer regarding conflict, policy, or safety issues. If a decision is made between the peers, the formal reporting line can be entered in with the peers taking the information up the chain to the managers and directors. Often informal reporting becomes formal reporting. In my organization our formal reporting line starts with the unit charge nurse, proceeding to the team coordinator, the director

In contrast, a feminine community possesses tendencies that relate to supportiveness, care, empathy, and relationship-oriented traits (Elsesser & Lever, 2011). A male-dominated culture somewhat influences femininity. Notably, male leaders apply unconventional approaches in addressing organizational players compared to their female counterparts. For these reasons, the expectations of the two leadership types tend to differ, forcing societies to react differently to the two.

Generally, one’s power within a working environment is more restricted than the power within a friendship. Similarly, as a female and a visual minority, I feel that this does affect my relationship to power. In the next few paragraphs, I will be further explaining my thoughts on the different power relationships that exist and how my gender and culture directly affects my relationship to power.

The study examined the response of 25 females and 15 men with a mean age of 19.53 on two scales. The first scale was a 25-question questionnaire consisting of adjectives that described social impressions of power and norm violation, which was then rated on a scale from 1 to 7 with 1 being definitely not and 7 being definitely. The second scale asked participants to indicate the extent to which the power statements ‘‘This person is influential’’; ‘‘ . . . has a leadership position’’; ‘‘ . . . is in charge of subordinates’’; ‘‘ . . . enjoys considerable authority’’(Van Kleef et al., 2011), applied to the person depicted in the scenario.

Power distance is the way cultures create levels due to power, authority, prestige, status, wealth, and material assets.

Every organization operates and functions in a different way. Rather it be the employees, the structure, or the products and services they provide, each organization will have their own unique way of performing tasks and reaching their goals. All organizations have a set of values and norms by which they go by, which sets them apart from other organizations. These values and norms are part of an organization’s culture. According to the textbook, organizational culture is “the set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers, customers, and other people outside the organization” (pg. 179). Culture is one of the key ways an organization can increase its effectiveness. Organizational culture shapes and controls behavior within the organization. It influences how people respond to a situation and how they interpret the environment surrounding the organization. Therefore, an organization’s culture directly affects its performance and position within the competitive environment. With that being said, an organization with a well-established culture will tend to be more successful than an organization with a poor culture. Employees often spend 40 hours or more per week at their work place, which means organizational culture not only affects their work lives, but their personal lives as well. In attempt to better understand organizational culture, I will take a look at Chick-fil-A, a fast food restaurant

Rizescu, M. (2011). Orgainzational Culture Influences on the Organization's Functionality. Revista Academie ForTelor Terestre. 1( 61): 75-82.

A social gender orientation acts as a social-regulating thrust to lead others. In a collectivist culture, there is a social desire that a man ought to be a leader as opposed to a lady though in an independent culture there is not a huge contrast in gender orientation desires about turning into a leader. Accordingly, men are more prone to rise as the leaders of independent work groups in a collectivist culture. However, both men and women have a comparable probability of turning into a leader in a maverick culture (Peng & Cheng, 2016).

Power/Distance (PD), “refers to the degree of inequality that exists- and is accepted- among people with and without power. A high PD score indicates that society accepts an unequal distribution of power, and that people understand “their place” in the system. Low PD means that power is shared and well dispersed.” (www.mindtools.com) As an example from the article, Myers goes on to say, “there were basically four levels: VP, director, manager, and worker bee. You only talked to people at your level.” SK Telecom boasted that