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Managing Learning Organizations in Cross-cultural Context
Chapter Outline
The following story captures the evolution of management thought (adopted from Eczacibasi, 2000, p. 176).
What do you think has changed over the years in the management of workforce? Do you think these changes pose a threat or offer opportunities for organizations? Do you think management has become more challenging over the years? Has it become more rewarding for managers and organizations?
In this chapter we will briefly discuss the changes occurring in management thought and practices over the years. In todayās global competition ālearning organizationsā have the unique advantage of leveraging opportunities presented by cultural diversity. We will discuss the importance of taking the cultural context into account to enhance learning and navigate in the global arena.
Learning Objectives
ā¢ To appreciate the complexities involved in management of the workforce in todayās global environment.
ā¢ To review the evolution of management thought over the last decades.
ā¢ To identify the advantages of cross-cultural context for organizational learning.
ā¢ To review dimensions across which cultures differ.
ā¢ To develop awareness of caveats in interpreting cross-cultural differences.
As ubuntu, a popular South African concept, says āpeople are only people through other peopleā (Jackson, 2004, p. 28).
Most managers who are otherwise extremely competent in their functional specialty such as marketing, finance, accounting and so forth, often find that managing employees is a difficult and onerous task. This difficulty stems primarily from the fact that employee behaviour, by its very nature, is complex and generally unpredictable with any reasonable degree of certainty. To begin with, employee behaviours in the workplace result from the desire to satisfy a variety of needs and to achieve objectives which may not be congruent with those of the organization. Furthermore, although the manager must ultimately manage the individual employeeās behaviour, the forces that drive such behaviour cannot be fully understood entirely in terms of that individual employee because employees do not work in isolation. They need to interact with other employees and such interaction may occur in several ways.
Hence, to fully understand employee behaviour, managers also need to consider the complex, intricate web of interactions and influences generated by a host of interpersonal relations, intragroup relations and intergroup relations all of which might directly or indirectly affect the employeeās work behaviour.
Added to this complexity are those involved in managing in the global context. Globalization is simply defined as āmanifestation of increased complexityā (Lane et al., 2004, p. 4).
This book aims to present students and lifelong learners the complete conceptual framework of the relevant theories of organizational behaviour to provide a clear understanding of the processes underlying complex human behaviour at work ā their own behaviour and that of others, which they will one day be called to manage.
The chapters will discuss the following key content areas in managing people in organizations. In each chapter, the book will focus on one dimension of complexity, namely the cultural context and cross-cultural interactions. Each of the following content areas will be discussed in the context of ācultureā, allowing students to evaluate the applicability of the basic OB theories in ācultural contextā.
ā¢ Motivation (Chapter 2)
ā¢ Performance management (Chapter 3)
ā¢ Communication (Chapter 4)
ā¢ Conflict management and negotiation (Chapter 4)
ā¢ Leadership (Chapter 5)
ā¢ Teamwork (Chapter 6)
ā¢ Employee attitudes (Chapter 7)
ā¢ Workālife balance (Chapter 7)
ā¢ Organizational structure and organizational change (Chapter 8)
ā¢ Human resource management practices (Chapter 9)
ā¢ Ethics and corporate social responsibility (Chapter 10)
In each chapter, major theoretical frameworks introducing key concepts and processes will be presented. This is followed by a discussion of the applicability of these theoretical approaches in various cultural contexts. Why is a relatively in-depth treatment of the theories necessary? The need for a fairly thorough treatment came home to us when we discovered that whenever students had a good grasp of the conceptual framework, they were able to understand its managerial implications much better and utilize it in different contexts. This way, we hope to teach students how to fish, rather than giving them the fish. Such an understanding also enabled them to make much more sense of their own life and work experiences which, in turn, served to provide them with face validity of the theoretical model.
Management and Learning Organizations: A Developmental Perspective
The history of management thought reveals that scientific interest in behavioural issues in management started with Frederick Taylor and his scientific management movement. The implicit concern for these issues is evident in Taylorās (1911) four principles of scientific management, which were stated as follows:
1. Develop a science for each element of an employeeās work. This approach replaced the rule-of-thumb method which was quite common at that time.
2. Scientifically select and then train, teach and develop the workers. This was contrary to the prevailing norm that workers should train themselves as best they could.
3. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that work was done in accordance with the scientific management principles.
4. The work and the responsibility was restructured between management and the workers. Management now took over the work for which they were believed to be better qualified than the workers. This was a radical change, because in the past almost all the work and the greater part of the responsibility was borne by the workers.
The research of Taylor and his associate Frank Gilbreth, based on these principles, led to the popularization of time and motion studies and of incentive compensation systems in organizations. The psychologists of the period were also involved with problems of work methods and initiated research on industrial fatigue, accidents, and the development of selection tests and measurements for industrial use. In its theory regarding the nature of employees and organizations, the scientific management approach reflected the temper of the time in which it evolved. It embodied the view of the worker that had developed in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Workers were seen as lazy, greedy, selfish and uncooperative people who had a natural tendency to avoid work and responsibility.
Furthermore, such attributes were considered to be fixed and not amenable to change. Therefore, the only way to keep people working was through satisfying their basic needs and promising of financial rewards for good work (i.e., the āemployees have the stomach to satisfyā approach). The managerial implications of this view have been critically reviewed by Douglas McGregor (1960) who described such beliefs about human nature as Theory X.
The scientific management approach emphasized production efficiency as the only goal of organizations, and considered workers involved in the production process as little more than adjuncts to the machines they operated. The approach led to the programmed rigour with which work was designed; the workerās job performance instructions being spelt out in minute detail. It also established a clear-cut division of labour between managers and workers ā the managers specialized in planning and giving directions and the workers expected to follow these directions to the letter.
The assumption that employeesā only motivation was economic, the concept of āeconomic manā, led to strictly monetary incentive systems, which were contingent upon the actual productivity of the individual. Competition was fostered because the workers knew that to achieve greater financial rewards, they would have to produce more than the others. This system also fostered an individual work orientation to facilitate the measurement of individual productivity. Performance below the established standard was handled with the implicit threat of censure and ultimate dismissal. Thus the motivational system adopted by scientific management became known as the carrot and stick approach.
The total of thrust of the scientific management approach resulted in very rigid, formal ways of organizing work, with an exclusive emphasis on the physical needs of workers, to the detriment and neglect of other more human needs. The shift away from the Tayloristic thinking began when Elton Mayo and his associates at Harvard University started a series of studies on work behaviour during the 1920s. These studies came to be known as the classic Hawthorne experiments. The Hawthorne studies revealed (a) that work is essentially a group rather than an individual activity and (b) that needs for recognition, security and belonging to groups are more important in determining a workerās productivity and morale than the physical conditions of the work (i.e., the āemployees have the heart to appeal toā approach). These conclusions had such a profound effect on management thinking that they were instrumental in starting a new movement called the human relations movement.
The human relations movement emphasized the need for understanding the social environment as a determiner of work behaviour in the same way that the scientific management movement emphasized the need for understanding the physical environment. The popularity of the human relations approach as a solution to behavioural problems in industry came about as a result of the changing environment of that period brought about by the growth in the size of organizations and of the organized labour movement, social s...
