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The Impact Of National Culture On Business Culture

Decent Essays

According to the text, each national culture constrains and guides the development of business culture. In any society, business is closely interwoven with the values, norms and beliefs of a culture as a whole. The impact of national culture influences all aspects of work and organizational life including how managers select and promote employees, lead and motivate their subordinates, structure their organizations, select and formulate their strategies and negotiate with other business people (Cullen & Parboteeah p 47).
The cultural conflicts that emerged in the U.S.-Polish joint venture can be examined through the lens of Hofstede’s model of national culture. The table below summarizes the dimensions of national cultural differences …show more content…

Poland’s very high score on Uncertainty Avoidance (93) reflects its desire to maintain rigid codes of belief and behavior. Poles are intolerant of different behavior and ideas, they believe that laws are very important and should be followed and experts are always correct. Poles prefer formality, titles and signs of status to demonstrate their authority over subordinates. U.S. managers, on the other hand, regard the status symbols as counterproductive and meaningless. Finally, the U.S. managers were far more informal in their communication style, comfortable with openness and equality in their business relations and very trusting in the underlying goodness of people. In contrast, by their national culture, Poles are distrustful and fearful of bosses who wish their employees well and are suspicious of the positive feedback commonly used by the U.S. managers to recognize achievements both publicly and privately.

According to the text, regardless of the speed and depth of globalization large differences in national culture persist and no multinational manager can succeed without a deep understanding of the national culture in which they do business (Cullen & Parboteeah p. 24). The potential for conflict, misunderstanding and miscommunication is enormous because customs,

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