The Affect of National Culture on Human Resources Essay

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.

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 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

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

Geert Hofstede conducted different studies for business culture; most of the comprehensive studies are based on how the values in the workplace are influenced by culture. This paper briefly describes how the Hofstede four dimensions of national cultures distinguished between two countries. The four dimensions that Hofstede discovered were: Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, and Uncertainty Avoidance. He used four dimensions to show the difference between each country culture. It shows how cultures are different by 1) less powerful members of institutions and organization within countries. 2) acknowledge people`s hard work 3) the society will be driven by men or women can do anything a man can do. 4) Issues people face in the organization within the society. The four dimensions of national culture were based on research being done by Geert Hofstede. On the basis of these national culture dimensions, countries used these methods to compare the different values with countries around the world.

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.

Cultural values can be defined as standards that are considered acceptable or unacceptable to a particular culture. I examined two research articles, one comparing the cultural values of Polish and Turkish employees and the other comparing Indian and U.S. value orientations. I choose these articles because they gave a good representation of almost all our global business cultures. India with its Asian influence; the U.S., which is distinctly western; Poland with its European influence; and Turkey with its Middle Eastern influence. These two articles come together nicely to give an accurate representation of what’s important to the culture and how those characteristics influence employees in the work place and how managers can better communicate with their global employees. Furthermore, I choose this topic out of personal interest and from my experience working in an international department this past year.

• Power distance - The degree to which a society expects there to be differences in the levels of power. A high score suggests that there is an expectation that some individuals wield larger amounts of power than others. A low score reflects the view that all people should have equal rights.

This dimension deals with the fact that all individuals in societies are not equal – it expresses the attitude of the culture towards these inequalities amongst us. Power Distance is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept

The Power Distance - Power distance describes the degree of equality between different people within a particular society or group. Also described Hofstede, as: “power

Power Distance – inequality of power distribution, although this culture is thought to be extreme, there are situations that it is in between.

Among the list of things for managers to consider when dealing with multinational employees is Geert Hofstede’s work in Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Hofstede’s work discusses the four “Value Dimensions” which include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity and how these four aspects of national value systems play a critical role in influencing relationships between employees with different social values. As intelligent managers who wish to expand their businesses across many borders, they must be highly aware of the differing social values in order to find ways to overcome these hidden cultural barriers. A wise approach to bridge the gaps between cultures is for

In the last decades, small national companies have grown in amazing scale all around the world. Companies that once were family owned have become huge multinational corporations. Corporations, which by the side of globalization, have expanded all around the world. International business has become one of the most important areas of business due to the need for companies to expand to markets outside their borders. Companies have had the need to adapt to another cultures and business systems. At the same time the way human resource management works has changed. Multinational corporations have had to adapt to new human resource requirements in order to be more effective and efficient. The business

Hofstede conducted research on IBM employees in 40 countries and discovered that the cultural values strongly influenced relationships both within and between organisational divisions. Four of the significant cultural dimensions that Hofstede defined have been examined by many researchers. Understanding the way these dimensions influence culture is of increasing importance for both global leaders and those managing a diverse workforce.

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).