The Interaction between

Organisational Culture and

National Culture
Organisational and Professional Cultures and
Diplomacy. Malta, 13-15 February 2004

Marie-Thérèse Claes
ICHEC Brussels Business School
UCL University of Louvain
marietherese.claes@ichec.be
 Overview of the presentation
• The multiple spheres of culture
• Globalisation: a controversial concept
• Globalisation and the intercultural challenge at
organisational level
• Three new concepts in organisational culture
• The future direction of ICC
Changing global environment
(Kurbalija)
Globalisation
Information Technology
Knowledge Society
Learning Society
Transnational management

ICC no longer seen as management of

cultural differences in the popular sense
 Conceptual shift in ICC

• The need for ‘a conceptual shift from a

hierarchical perspective of cultural
influence, compromise and adaptation to
one of collaborative cross-cultural
learning ’ (Bartholomew and Adler, 1996)
 Why this conceptual shift?
• The anthropological conception of culture
in terms of national culture does not take
into account that national culture is not
easily distentangled from organisational and
professional culture
 Why this conceptual shift?
• Intercultural training uses a narrow concept of
culture and cultural difference, and doesn’t
handle the interplay of the different forms of
culture
• Intercultural training focuses on behavioural
(communication) skills, especially negotiation
• ‘culture shock prevention industry’
 Multiple Spheres of Culture
or ‘interfaces’ (Saner)
National/regional
Professional

Functional

Industry

Company
 National Cultures
(Hofstede)

• Country clusters:
– Anglo
– Germanic
– Nordic
– Latin European
– Latin America
– Arab
– ...
 Regional Cultures
• Geography: east-west, north-south
• History: Québec
• Political and economic forces
• Climate
• Religion
• Language
 Industry Cultures
• Banking vs high-tech:
– dress codes, behaviour, innovation, interaction
• Sources of competitive advantage
– financial, human, intellectual
• Rates of technology change
• Nature of product/ market:
– protect patents vs standardise
• Regulation & state intervention (subsidies)
 Differences in Industry Cultures
• Nature of decision -making: degree of risk vs
speed of feedback (payoff)

bond trading biotechnology

degree of risk
high

retailing Accounting
consultants low

high low
speed of feedback
 Industry Culture and National
Culture
• USA = entertainment industry (music, film)
• Japan = hardware
 Professional Culture
• Education: generalists vs specialists
• Appropriate training
• Selection: ‘right’ schools
• Socialisation: proper behaviour
American MBAs
British accountants
German engineers
French cadres
 Professional cultures and
Diversity
• ‘Professional cultures create a kind of
thinking’ (Tanovic)
• Diversity: attract and value people with
diverse educational, professional, cultural
backgrounds.
• Difference (diverse groups) as a resource to
tap into (Saner, Kurbalija)
 Functional Cultures
• Nature of task: production / finance
• External environment: stakeholder demands
• Time horizon: strategic requirements change
– 1950s: production line managers
– 1960s: financial executives
– 1970s: legal experts
– 1990s: entrepreneurs
– 2000: MNC, corporate diplomats, good governance
 Functional and national culture
• Which functions are valued:
– Finance: # 1 in Britain, # 5 in Germany
– The Netherlands: sales
– France: marketing
– Germany: R&D (bottom in Britain)
 Corporate Culture
• Values and beliefs of the founder
– Anita Roddick and Body Shop
• Strong leaders: Percy Barnevik and ABB
• Administrative heritage
– Ford: vertical integration, centralised control
– General Motors: mergers, diversification
• Nature of product/ industry:
– telecommunication vs cosmetics
• Stage of development: organic vs structured
 Corporate and National Culture
• LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy):
French refinement and elegance
• IKEA: low-cost, home-assembly, unfussy:
Scandinavian egalitarian and pragmatic values
• BMW, Audi: German engineering
• Tokyo Disneyland: Japanese drive towards
perfection (courtesy, efficiency, cleanliness…)
 Globalisation: a very
controversial concept

• civilisation-friendly sense of connectedness

(thanks to TV, IT, tourism, etc)

• Western (American) economic hegemony

over the rest of mankind
 Globalisation in practice
• Worldwide intensification of competition
rather than globalisation of markets
• IT-supported world-wide quest for
resources (networking)
• Resources: human capital, technical know-
how, physical assets, access to mandarins
anywhere
 Globalisation: five key
management tasks
• Providing services to create stakeholder value
• Developing a learning support structure
• Monitoring and controlling
• Realising multicultural synergies
• Allocating resources: especially into networks
 Globalisation at the
organisational level
Key competencies at the organisational level:

 developing pathways to resources: networking

mediating knowledge from anywhere
developing organisational learning
Global manager: new concepts of
operational functions

• Champion of international strategy

• Cross-border coach and mediator
• Intercultural mediator and change agent

(Barham and Heimer, 1998)

 Global management: ‘new’
dispositions

• Handling cognitive complexity

• Emotional energy
• Psychological maturity
• Applying intelligence and tact

(based on: Barham and Heimer, 1998)

 Communicative tasks in
the global economy
• A relationship- supporting activity
(intra- and interorganisational bonding
processes) involving:
– Multi- task exchange process
– Intercultural knowledge sharing, networking
and collaborative learning.
 Intercultural communication
• Far more than ‘effective communication’ across
linguistic and cultural boundaries
• A form of knowledge for identifying and restricting
the undesirable effects of noise
• A form of cross- cultural networking behaviour for
creating productive interpersonal exchanges of ideas
and experience
(Holden, 2001)
 International Negotiation
• Conceived mainly in terms of ’language’ use in
discrete episodes, less so in terms of recurrent
encounters which underpin relationship
management, interactive networking and
organisational learning processes.
• An intercultural blunder of less importance than
common goal: ‘both of us tried to help our team
win’ (Nicolae)
 Four crucial points about
international communication

• 1. Connectivity is more important than what

is communicated
• 2. Communication activities are future-
oriented, goal- related (personal,
professional and organisational), and
increasingly electronically mediated
 Four crucial points about
international communication
• 3. Communication activities involve
continuous acts of translation and
negotiation
• 4. More nationalities, cultures and
languages are in articulate communication
now than ever before in human history:
mainly to link organisations together.
 The role of intercultural
communication
• Intercultural communication facilitates
collective acts of knowledge sharing, group
learning and networking
• It is concerned with reducing noise
• It appears to inform acts of translation and
negotiation about contextual meaning and
future arrangements
 Three new concepts in
organisational culture

• Participative competence
• Interactive translation
• Atmosphere

(Holden, 2001)
 Participative competence
• Adeptness in cross- cultural
communication in multicultural activities
• Ability to contribute equitably to common
tasks
• Ability to share knowledge and
experiences and stimulate group learning .
 Interactive translation

• A form of cross- cultural work, in which

participants negotiate common meanings
and common understandings and learn how
to be able to work in multicultural teams
Why translation and negotiation?
• Two kinds of translation activity are taking
place:
 a cognitive, literal process as a personal
experience and a personal and shared
experience of interpreting situations
 joint translation/ interpretation process about
future cooperation and today’s crisis
 Atmosphere

• Pervasive feeling, based on past experience

and in anticipation of future activity
• An outcome and determinant of
participative competence and interactive
translation
 The important point about these
concepts
• They identify more with organisational
processes than with ’culture’
• They are not prescriptive
• They see culture as dynamic, not static or
deterministic
• They do not contradict traditional notions of
intercultural communication, but extend them
 The future direction of ICC
• Global networks can inflict on mankind
new forms of alienation (non-recognition,
Baldi)
• Future of ICC studies lies in the study of the
global interactive networks
 The future direction of ICC
• Be conscious of the power and
unpredictability of the ‘non-globalised
economy’, ie the non-Western world, and
the sharp sense of real or percieved
injustices in the access to, control and use
of the world’s resources
References
• Barham, K. and Heimer, C. (1998). ABB The dancing giant.
London: Financial Times/Pitman
• Bartholomew, S. and Adler, N. (1996). Building networks and
crossing borders: the dynamics of knowledge generation in a
transnational world. In: Joynt, P. and Warner, M. (eds).
Managing across cultures: Issues and perspectives. London:
International Thomson.
• Ghoshal, S. and Bartlett, C. (1998). Managing across borders.
London: Random House
• Holden, N. J. (2002). Cross- cultural management: A knowledge
management perspective. Harlow, UK: Financial Times/
Prentice Hall
• Schneider, S. and Barsoux, J-L. (2003). Managing across
Cultures. Financial Times/PrenticeHall.