Hr Issues Handled by Japanese Organizations Based on Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

This report examines cultural and institutional factors of Mexico and how they can impact global HR management and practices. Specifically, by analyzing Mexican culture based on Hofstede’s dimensions, economy, labor legislation, union and employment tradition we reached the conclusion that the features of Mexican culture (high power distance, strong collectivism, high level of masculinity and uncertainty avoidance) and institutional factors have a strong impact on management styles and HR practices of business in Mexico and may arouse some challenges for global company and their expatriates, especially those from countries that bear different cultural features and institutional conditions. In order to minimize the potential conflict between Mexican local employees and expatriates, parent companies need to provide trainings (culture assimilation, country condition, etc.) before sending anybody to Mexico. Also, whether the expatriates should put more effort to disseminate home country (headquarter) culture or to adjust to local culture depends on the company’s strategy in terms of being localized or standardized around the globe.

It is hypothesized that cultural differences in behaviour will mean differences in HRM practices within different cultures but those within the same cultural cluster will be similar whereas those in different clusters will be dissimilar. Employees and managers from different cultures take decisions in different ways – the processes, behaviours and values are not the same. People have different value orientations as a result of individual psychology, life-stage and generation and assumptions about behaviour determined by cultures are linked to a variety of organisational behaviours.

Masculinity culture represents a preference towards high achievement, assertiveness, and material rewards for success which display similar characteristic of men. Society is largely more competitive. Countries with masculinity culture such as Japan and Mexico value assertiveness and competitiveness. U.S. is also somewhat a masculine society where individuals highly focus on achievement, strike for success and are motivated by opportunities. IBM’s studies revealed that (1) women’s values are less concerned among societies than men’s values; (2) men’s values from one country to another have a dimension of assertive and competitive that are different from women’s values that are modest and caring. Germany scored a 66 and U.S. scored a 62 on masculine

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.

Japan is strongly collectivistic versus the United States being individualist. (textbook) Japanese culture focuses more on family and their community around them.

The Japanese like to be accurate and will not take risks and make bad decisions as it will reflect badly on them. Compared to the USA where they will take risks with willpower to achieve the highest possible end

With a score of 95 in masculinity, society in Japan is more driven by achievement and success as a team, perfection in material production, or material services. Unlike Japan, the United States is driven more by achievement and success as an individual. The culture in the United States is to measures one’s success by the car and houses that person lives in or drives. When it comes to uncertainty avoidance, Japan’s value doubles that of the United States. Major factors that impacts Japan’s uncertainty avoidance factor are natural disasters. With the threat of being the victim of numerous earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons the people of Japan must be ready for any kind of

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:

The culture and society of Japan consists of many similar ideas to the foundation that the Western civilization was built upon. Influences that have impacted Japan include; industrialization, continued modernization, and the shift toward a democratic political government. Even with both societies being founded on identical concepts, the major differences are the way the society functions. Japan has been heavily influenced by both China and America and has made their own culture by combining these ideas along with their own traditional ideals. Just as any other country, Japan is no stranger to gender roles, gender stereotypes, and workplace inequalities and the ideas Japan was built upon plays a big role in the way all of these forms of discrimination

According to the video on YouTube, the Japanese work ethic appears to be modeled on a system that structures itself on hard work (OMF International). Aside from that, there appears to be an intense dedication that the workers have towards their jobs and their economy as well. I thought it also to be interesting around a minute into the video where Mr. Orr talks about the social attitudes and altruism of the Japanese people towards their community.

Culture in Japan is so pristine that it cannot be compared to American society. Most of the Japanese practice one of two religions, Shinto and Buddhist, whereas in the United States, hundreds of religions are practiced. The linguistic aspect of Japan is spoken so beautifully that rarely does one hear the language being broken. There are several values within Japanese culture, yet harmony is their main fortune. This thinking has guided all civilization to work as one instead of focusing on a single individual. The Japanese are aware of the age and status on fellow citizens to show respect. It is believed that everyone must value those who are older with a higher status.

While there are many various global issues that affect the International Human Resource Management to run efficiently, there are two key concepts that play a major role in understanding how to approach them with cohesive and a well coherent strategy; they are the International Human Recourse Management Strategy and Understanding the Cultural Environment. In the International Resource Management strategy, many companies will do their research in finding companies that offer the

Human resource management functions in multinational companies are incredibly complicated by the need to adapt policies and procedures related to personnel, to differences between the countries, which is one of the branches. In particular, the countries cultural differences, differences in economic development and legal systems may require an international company adaptation programs of hiring, firing, training and remuneration for

Japanese people well known for their working culture, good examples of which are: “lifetime employment”, devotion, hardworking, overtimes. In order to understand Japanese working culture we need to look deeper in their culture, history and the way their children are raised.

Globalisation, as an integrated and independent world economy, has contributed to the rapid expansion of international trade and world’s economic growth (Paik & Vance, 2006; Mutsuddi, 2012). The increase presence of global firms is shifting domestic HR towards global HR in addition to carry out a wider span of HR responsibilities (Losey, Meisinger & Ulrich, 2005; Rao, 2010; Jie, 2011; Mutsuddi, 2012). The generation of cross-border labour market also had brought human resource management into an international context (Mutsuddi, 2012).