The Cube of Strategic Management

The Distinctive Advantage of Organizations

Mihai Putz

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429673726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The Cube of Strategic Management: The Distinctive Advantage of Organizations is a trans-disciplinary book that introduces the author's new business model of the geometrization of management. The author advocates that strategic management has to shift to include a science and technology perspective, to not only support business administration but also to make this scientific perspective an inherent part of management strategy building. The book spans the fundamental and the theoretical aspects and advances this new management model in response to the current and future 21st-century synergic interconnection needs in addressing management and marketing post-modern strategies.

The book is a quintessence of the historical theories of the various 8th fold ideas of management (Taylor, Drucker, Peters & Waterman, Covey) and applies them in an innovative new way. The author uses the cube and its 8 corners for the first time to represent 8 forms of the strategic management way of business, in that the 8 corners of a cube represent the competitive advantage of (any) organization.

CHAPTER 1

Cross-Cultural Management by Eight-Fold Matrix of Social Versus Personal Values: Lessons from Generation-X

ABSTRACT

The transcultural scenery on the society, organization, and at the individual level, may be unified, from the differences/associate dimensions perspective, on the eighth degree unfolding. By appropriate adapting of the anthropologic–societal model for an organization, from Hofstede to Meyer, one may formulate the aim of the total management of quality alongside with generalizing/reformulating the individual–psychological profile to the generational (sociological) one. Thus, the premises for a comparative analysis are offered, by means of a transcultural qualitative–phenomenological matrix, as a basis/guide for a quantitative substantiation (through scores based on a hypothetic interview). Also, for a correlated analysis, whenever possible, one may estimate the degree in which the cultural model is realistic, while choosing between the second culture manifestation level on personal–generational, professional and societal–national manifestation forms. The application on the generation-X is unfolded by the 8D-phenomenological correlations with the societal and organizational environment; the model can be extended on the other generations too, as well as, on the multigenerational aggregate system, once referred to as the societal, or organizational context. All the efforts should conduct to an appropriate multidimensional strategy for communication, promotion, employment within organization, public relationship, etc.

Motto:

“Lt. Joshi: ‘The World is built in a wall that separates kind. Tell either side there’s no wall, you’ve bought a war. Or a slaughter.’”

—Blade Runner 2049 (2017) © Alcon Entertainment, Columbia, Free Scott, and Warner Bros. Pictures & Co.

1.1 Introduction

In the global and complex world at planetary level, individual–organization–society interaction is crucial, for both personal life and the well-being of the economy and society in general. In this context, psychology—at the individual level, with sociology—at the level of organizations, and anthropology—at the societal/nation level intertwines to various levels of significance and on various cultural dimensions (within the so-called “second culture”), creating a cross-cultural “landscape.” Here, the term “transcultural” also signifies (Nicolescu, 2007; David, 2015):

• between-cultural levels (individual–organization–society)
• through-cultural levels (intralevels)
• beyond-cultural levels, in the sense of synergy between levels (including their correlation).

For these cultural levels, the current status is as follows (Fig. 1.1):

• The individual (psychological) level: It is manifested through the so-called OCEAN acronym (Mc Crane and John, 1992), openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—also called the Big Five individual behavioral traits; to these, the sixth dimension emerged precisely from the participation of the individual, in organizations and society, as a kind of feedback from higher individual levels, which influence their behavior, attitude, and in a smaller degree even the character; it is due to Hofstede (2007) and refers to addiction to others.
• The social (anthropological) level: It manifests equally to every individual, inherent part of a society, or nation. With even stronger influences than the organizational ones (those related to the place of the profession), they are due to the profound elements related to birth, language, family education, myths, traditions, etc., being much more powerful than organizational culture (temporary or easily transformable, changed, abandoned, etc.). At this level, Hofstede’s works (on statistical basis) are the most influential, imposing four, five, and finally six cultural differences at the social or national level reflected in the appropriate cultural dimensions: the distance to power, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, avoidance of uncertainty, to which the long-term orientation versus short one was also added. The Confucianism and subsequent indulgence versus constraint associated with dependence on others value completes Hofstede’s cultural landscape (Hofstede et al., 2010). However, these dimensions have recently been reformulated and extended to 8-dimensional (8D) perspective of cross-cultural management, which are as follows (Meyer, 2014):
  • communication (in a high and low context, taken from the American anthropologist Edward Hall);
  • assessment and criticism (constructive, frankness, or implicit-diplomatic approach);
  • power of persuasion (through algorithms and specific-analytic, or holistic global synthesis arguments, e.g., European analytical thinking vs. Asian holistic thinking, etc.);
  • leadership (respect and deference to authorities, correlates with distance to power);
  • decision (consensus-oriented, according to the hierarchical organization, correlates with collectivism vs. individualism, e.g., the Germans decide hierarchically, the Americans in work groups; the Japanese are both strongly hierarchical and strongly consensual);
  • trust and truth (in the governing bodies and the organization of the society as a whole, combining the emotional trust, “with the heart,” with the rational one, “with the head” in the rules and traditions of society, with a tendency toward mutual trust);
  • conflict and misunderstanding (the contradiction is healthy, the way to progress, the dubito ergo sum, the mechanism of social revolutions, the change of the “class struggle,” respectively, the tolerance for divers and new, correlate with the avoidance of uncertainty);
  • time programing (correlated with the monochronic/chromatic and polychronic/polychromatic time in Hall’s classification, respectively, with short- and/or long-term orientation, in Hofstede’s dimensions).
• Organizational (sociological) level: It is the most “volatile” and in the change of the cultural level, being tributary to economic conceptions in a certain historical period (less than what it really defines, anthropologically, a society/nation). It is subjected to local and global changes and depends on the internal and external conjuncture of the organization (forces, resources, latent potentials, changing national and international political laws and systems, competition, technological and climate changes, etc.). Values and cultural differences/dimensions can be diverse, for example, income inequality, respect for the elderly, political violence, number of laws and directives, expert confidence, xenophobia, rapid leadership (vehicles and decisions), well-being, fast speaking (but also thinking and decision-making), close ties with the family and organization (seen as an extended family), the personal assumption of authority and truth (frequent use of the word “I”), the pressure for economic growth (and profit), low/high percentage of women in organizations (and in management), exchange rates, investing in poor areas, adaptation to changing reality, concern for social obligations (wise business), pride of the organization, isolationism, sports activity, diet at work, professional Internet, security at the organization level, etc. Although many of these cultural variables correlate among them, and with dimensions in the social or anthropological category, one may seek to the essential reduction of these values or cultural dimensions. To this aim, let us focus on the total quality management of an organization; accordingly, an organization (core) values’ reduction can be performed and one may distinguish the 8D ones (Detert et al., 2000):
  • the basis of truth and rationality in the organization (management by facts, realities, scientific data, logical and strategic models, etc.);
  • nature of the time and the time horizon (very short-term operationalization; medium and long-term planning);
  • motivation (see Maslow’s pyramid with adapted variants, adjusting errors, misunderstandings, and conflicts);
  • stability versus change/innovation/personal development (strategy through differentiation, diversification, risk taking, education/continuous improvement, optimization of production cycles, etc.);
  • orientation toward work goals–team workers (productivity, management through objectives, through projects, etc.);
  • isolation versus collaboration and cooperation (promotion, alliances, subsidiaries, investment strategies, disinvestment, niche business, etc.);
  • control, coordination, and responsibility (internal rules and procedures, product- vs. process-oriented management, common values and qualities of product and human resources, etc.);
  • strategic orientation and focus on the inside/outside of the organization (human resources, diversity vs. homogeneity, competition forces—consumers, suppliers, substitute products, other public or private organizations, etc.).

Having been exposed to the three transcultural levels, with their dimensions, some fundamental problems can be solved. Especially, the cognitive and methodological analyses are relevant for the organizational strat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• About the Author
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Postface: An Imaginary Dialogue on Cubic Strategic Management
• 1. Cross-Cultural Management by Eight-Fold Matrix of Social Versus Personal Values: Lessons from Generation-X
• 2. The Strategic Cube of the Distinctive Advantage: An Epistemological Approach
• 3. The Strategic Cube of the Distinctive Advantage: Networks with Catastrophic Surfaces
• 4. Strategic Innovating Paths for the Distinctive Advantage: The Changing Management Faraway from Equilibrium
• 5. Scientific Entrepreneurship by the Strategic Double Cube of Competitiveness: Knowledge Transfer
• 6. Business Strategies by the Multinodal Logistics within the Cubic Network of Distinctive Advantage
• 7. Risk Management in Nanotechnology Projects Toward Eight-Fold Ws
• 8. Clustering in and out Strategies of the Prisoner Dilemma in the Cube of Distinctive Advantage
• 9. Strategic Innovation in the Organization Governance: The Eight-Folding of the Mission Balance
• 10. Global Strategies in the Knowledge Economy: The Case of R&D Sustainability in the European Union
• 11. Cubic Management of Inclusive Scientific Change
• Index