Power Distance Essay

Cross cultural conflict can also be a factor in the workplace. The United States is an extremely diverse place, as a conglomeration of people from different races, religions, cultural backgrounds, personalities, educational experiences and learning styles. This diversification leads to more women, various ethnic groups, and immigrant workers working together in a more diverse tapestry of associates even when the corporation is located and operating only in the United States. In increasingly diverse corporate America, doing

Individualism is length in which individuals feel independent as to when they are a members of a larger whole. Individualism makes an individual who they are. For example; an individual’s sense of humour is part of an individual’s individualism. Power distance is the extent that the less powerful members of a business accept, which means they also think that power that is being distributed around the organisation is equally. Masculinity is the extent in which the use of

According to behavioral theories of communication and decision-making the rational solution to a problem is not always the best answer. Therefore, when diversity creates controversy, which inhibits the development of an organization, the organization is forced to adopt other useful tactics that would result in positive outcomes. This document will focus on several aspects of cross-cultural conflicts; A)

Those that go into the business world quickly recognize that each work environment they find themselves in can be total different from another. This can especially be said even of environments within the United States, from region to region. There is definitely a disparity of workplace environments from country to country. Not only can culture drive a varied atmosphere, but the diversity of the personnel making up that environment can equally create a challenge that a leader must be prepared to manage. Recognizing that special care needs to be placed on communication and perception skills is crucial in our present professional domain. Managers of today need to employee tools from the psychological and sociological field to be successful. Having a deep understanding in the differences in culture and diversity in the workplace is critical, especially when debating about accepting a position overseas or assigning an employee to an embedded position abroad. With a broad knowledge of cultural differences and diversity, success as a manager and the stability of a positive work environment can be achieved and maintained without unnecessary effort and focus.

To begin with, we have to distinguish the important values and attitude of different two communities. One stereotype is that power and status are important in the male-community, but cooperation and networks are significant in the female-community. For instance, in childhood, boys often fight with their peers and try to win in order to show stronger power and higher status than others. Otherwise, girls rarely quarrel with friends; rather they make a community and cooperate with one another for certain purposes. Also, men are living in hierarchical life and continuously struggle to defend their status in society, whereas women like to show intimacy and similarity. Moreover, men value independence and create distance, while women tend to make close relationships

* The case looks at differences in cultural values and beliefs of Polish and U.S managers employed in a joint venture in Poland.

A 2014 bush fire in Parkerville, Western Australia has left some residents battling a power company after it was discovered the power pole that caused the blaze was affected by termites. Did you know that as a land owner you are responsible for maintaining the health of power poles on your property? If you never inspect your power poles for termites before, now is the time to do so before the summer hits, the ground dries up and the fire risk increases.

The phrase seperation of powers does not allow one particular person to have too much power or control. The United States Constitution provides a way to keep one from gaining too much power by creating the three branches of government. Each branch has its own duty, but they also work together to assure that the basic rights of Americans are protected. However, in order to maintain and balance the power within the branches, they have to use what is called, checks and balances. These branches of government are legislative, executive, and judicial, each with its own responsibilities and power.

Globalization and technological advancement have dictated the need for managers to deal with multiple ethnic groups with different culture in their day to day interactions. According to Kulkarni (2012), cultures play critical roles in individuals, including values, beliefs, humor, worries, fears, hopes, opinions, attachments, and anxieties.

As the demographic changes throughout the country shape the infinite amount of social environments. Now more than ever will there be an emergence of new contexts for cross cultural problems. This contexts are brought about by passages of legislation like the Civil Rights Act, changes in economic uncertainties and a plethora of other issues. Although some of these issues are older than others they all require a revisiting in order to prevent and resolve employee problems. This is due to the fact that these new issues and recurrences will always find their way into the workplace as individuals interact with each other, and share ideas or opinions.

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.

The importance of understanding cultural, ethnic and gender differences by managers and professionals in a business setting is essential to make the work environment comfortable. In every culture there are basic standards of thinking, and acting and these cultural differences strongly influence workplace values and communication. What may be considered acceptable and natural in the workplace for one person may be unacceptable for another person. People from diverse cultures bring new ways of thinking, creativity and language skills needed to survive in today’s work force. In many

Fook, J.. (2003). Social work, Critical theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (pp. 45-

I had basic knowledge of the Gofstede national cultural dimensions – Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Individualism-Collectivism, Masculinity-Femininity, and Long term-short term orientation; however, I have never viewed them as a helpful tool to analyze cultural differences related to conflicts at a workplace. For example, every time I used to e-mail or call the Mexico office with questions about planning assumptions, the second in command finance staff member would never give me an answer and would always say that I should speak to the manager. This looked strange to me because an identical position holder from a US office would always give me an answer followed by a detailed explanation. I simply thought that the Mexican lower rank staff members were incompetent and that I was better of contacting someone higher in the ranks right away; however, if I had looked up national cultural dimensions for Mexico, I would have found that Mexico, different than the U.S., is a very hierarchical society. It is

The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The