Main Issues Affecting International Managers

The substantial part of the article concentrates on the way companies and their managers should embrace contemporary multinational market. The author claims: “Adaptation strategies are better suited to opportunities opened by the shift in the locus of teh global growth. (..)Western markets must compete in big emerging markets like China and India. But they can;t forcé their way in.” That is why, it is critical to pay careful attention to political, economic, or cultural diversity. Ghemawat is skilled in giving pieces of advice to those who underestimate the importance of countries differences and similarities. He also says: “I propose that every MBA gradúate – and presumably every global manager – have a mínimum body of globalization related knowledge, including (..)an understading of how differences between countries can influence cross-border interactions; awareness of the benefits of teh additional cross-border integration’.

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.

Hofstede defined the culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from that another”. His five types of cultural dimensions are the most popular in many cultural area studies, include: (1) power distance; (2) individualism vs. collectivism; (3) uncertainty avoidance; (4) masculinity vs. femininity; and (5) long-term vs. short-term orientation. These dimensions offer an insight towards behaviors and standards in the cultural context which are useful for many motivators to explore the people in different culture. The text suggested that countries with high uncertainty avoidance will lead to more job security, whereas people with low uncertainty avoidance (for example, U.S.) are motivated by new ideas and innovation. People with high power distance are motivated by relationships between subordinates and their boss, while people with low power distance are motivated by team work and relationships with their peers. On the other hand, individuals from high individualism are motivated by opportunities and autonomy; collectivism (for example, Japan) suggests that motivation should be done with group goals and support. Individuals from high masculine culture are comfortable with the tradition and division of works and roles; in a feminine culture, the motivators help people through flexible roles and work

The most famous researcher of prevailing cultures in different countries goes by the name of Geert Hofstede. “He conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture” (). With the help of his research team, Professor Geert Hofstede created a model of national culture consisting of six dimensions. “The cultural dimensions represent independent preferences for on state of affairs

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.

Power distance is defined as ‘the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally’ (Hofstede 1991, p.28). Global brands, luxury items and expensive

understand cultural differences. Viewing culture as a set of assumptions and deep-level values regarding relationships among humans and between humans and their environments, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck proposed four basic value orientations, which can be further divided into sub dimensions to capture the complex cultural variations across societies. The major orientations in their model are human nature (evil, mixed, good), man-nature relationship (subjugation, harmony, dominant), social relation with people (hierarchical, collateral, individual), human activity (being, becoming, doing), and time sense (past, present, future). The cultural orientation framework has been adopted by researchers to explain variations of HRM practices across countries (e.g., Aycan et al., 2007; Nyambegera et al., 2000; Sparrow & Wu,

According to McSweeney (2002a: 96), these assumptions are “too crude and implausible to underpin Hofstede’s emphatic empirical claims” . Following the thread of his argument we come across a situation where assuming that an IBM employee, whether in a developed USA head office or a new opened branch office in Pakistan, will possess the same identical organizational and occupational culture does become hard to encompass. In response to this argument, Hofstede acknowledges that considerable differences exist at the “organizational level” (1991: 93), yet it redefines the entire organizational culture as a mere set of “shared perceptions of daily practices” (1991: 182-3), therefore distancing from the early-stage value-based definition. According to McSweeney (2002b), this is only a failed attempt to deliver a straightforward concept and definition of organizational culture.

Culture exists in all organisations whether it is in a small organisation or a big multinational organisation. Between organisations, culture may differ based on national cultures and time zones and this is what creates a different identity in each organisation. “Culture always mirrors the mutual perception that comes from the lessons people learn as they adapt and survive together over time. Thousands of interlocking routines interweaved together the fabric of the firm and translate timeless knowledge into timely action on a daily basis” Hooijberg, R., Lane, N. and Lief, C. (2012). The culture of an organization represents predefined policies/practices, which guides the employees on how things are usually done and what to prioritise

Recently,globalisation,with its numerous impacts on world productio,consumption, trade,employmet,communication and technology, has chanbed the world environment for business,resulting in enhaced competition,emerging opportunities as well as threats and risks.Managing business organisations effectively has been more important,complicated and challenging. Business nowadays has go adapt multivariate technologies or strategies in-order to compete and survive successfully. Therefofe it is important for managers to examine critically the opportunities and risks,poised to businesses in order tohelp them in appropriate decision making process Most studies and literatures suggest that the overall benefigs as aresult of globalisation,outweighs its cost.

The world offers significant business opportunities for every company, however, opportunities are accompanied by significant challenges for managers. Managing global operations across diverse cultures and markets represents a big challenge and opportunity for companies. To compete in the global market and be successful, companies must learn the strategies, policies, norms and technology necessary to conduct international business. The opportunities for global expansion are numerous, and attaining success is a matter of developing the right strategy to win local markets and its consumers.

Hofstede (1993) believes that since companies are spreading their business in global stage the core issue which comes out from this is how they should manage various national and regional differences. “There is something in all countries called ‘management’, but its meaning differs to a larger or smaller extent from one country to another” (Hofstede G. H., 1984).

A Dutch Social psychologist, Geert Hofstede carried out research studies on cross-cultural groups and organizations. He defined culture as a collective programing of the mind that makes the members of one group different from those of another group. His studies were instrumental in the developing of a systematic framework that is used in the assessment and the differentiation of organizational and national cultures. The framework was designed to show how a society’s culture affects the values of the members, and also, how the values relate to their behaviors. Hofstede was born on October 2nd 1982 and was an employee of IBM. At IBM International, Hofstede worked as a trainer in management and also as a manager of research on personnel. It is at this point, when he made a transition into psychology from engineering. He was highly recognized through his work on developing the cultural dimensions theory. His work was found useful by scholars and practitioners who took interest in the relationships between different cultures. His position in IBM International gave him opportunities to interact with and study different cultures around the world. This is because IBM had over 70 subsidiaries in different countries around the world. Hofstede travelled and conducted surveys and interviews in different parts of the world regarding people’s behaviors in their workplaces and how they interacted.

As trade increases hyper-competition grows forcing organizations to go global. By a company going global it requires them to rethink strategy and reform (Ananthram and Pearson, 2008). Global organizational structure is the way a company aims to merge local preferences with global strategy. The definition of global strategy is “strategic choices that have the characteristics of being globally uniform or integrated,” (Yip et al., 1997) such as standardization of products, uniform marketing, and competitive moves, but all globally (Townsend et al., 2004; Zou and Cavusgil, 2002; Bayraktar and Ndubisi, 2014). Global strategic strategy is a way to adjust to globalization. Globalization is “the economic and social process by which economies and communities grow inextricably interdependent “(Jhirad et al., 2009). The recent financial crisis (Das, 2010), large amount of poverty, and climate change are all problems that show how the world is globally connected because all countries impact each other (Jhirad et al., 2009).

The power of distance dimension describes how equal people are within the culture (MindTools, n.d.). Some cultures people know where they stand in the power ranking, while in other cultures people are considered more equal in how much power they have (MindTools, n.d.). Australia scored a low 36 on the power distance dimension (The Hofstede Centre, n.d.a). Managers in the work place have an “open door” policy. The managers rely on their employees just as much as the employees rely on their managers (The Hofstede Centre, n.d.a). In Australia both managers and employees get the same information from the organization and all participate in projects.