MVBE

Team 13
 NAVIGATING THE CULTURAL MINEFIELD

• By Erin Meyer
• Effects of cultural differences on business
• Stereotyping people from different cultures on just one or two dimensions—the Japanese are
hierarchical, for example, or the French communicate in subtle ways
• A tool called the Culture Map - made up of eight scales representing the management behaviors
 THE CULTURE MAP
Communicating
• In low-context cultures, good communication is precise, simple, explicit, and clear. Messages
are understood at face value.
• Repetition is appreciated for purposes of clarification
• In high-context cultures, communication is sophisticated and layered.
• Messages are often implied but not plainly stated.

Evaluating
• This scale measures a preference for frank versus diplomatic negative feedback.
• The French, for example, are high-context (implicit) communicators relative to Americans,
yet they are more direct in their criticism.
• Spaniards and Mexicans are at the same context level, but the Spanish are much more frank
when providing negative feedback.
Persuading
• The ways in which you persuade others are deeply rooted in your culture’s philosophical, religious, and
educational assumptions and attitudes.
• A Western executive will break down an argument into a sequence of distinct components(specific
thinking) , while Asian managers tend to show how the components all fit together(holistic thinking).

Leading
• This scale measures the degree of respect and deference shown to authority figures.
• Placing countries on a spectrum from egalitarian to hierarchical.
• Is based partly on the concept of power distance

Deciding
• Measures the degree to which a culture is consensus-minded.
• Often assume that egalitarian cultures will be the most democratic, while the most hierarchical ones will
allow unilateral decisions.
• Germans are more hierarchical than Americans, but more likely than their U.S. colleagues to build group
agreement before making decisions.
Trusting
• In task-based cultures, trust is built cognitively(from the head) through work.
• If we collaborate well, prove ourselves reliable, and respect one another’s contributions, we come
to feel mutual trust.

Disagreeing
• A little open disagreement is healthy. (American business literature)
• But different cultures have different ideas about how productive confrontation is.
• This scale measures tolerance for open disagreement and inclination to see it as either helpful or
harmful to collegial relationship.

Scheduling
• This scale assesses how much value is placed on operating in a structured, linear fashion versus
being flexible and reactive.
• It is based on the “monochronic” and “polychronic” distinction formalized by Edward Hall.
 “COMPARING MANAGEMENT CULTURES:
ISRAEL VS. RUSSIA”

• Similarities - both value flexible

scheduling, both accept open
disagreement, both approach
issues of trust through
relationship.
• Big gaps - Russians strongly value
hierarchy, whereas Israelis are
more egalitarian.
 4 RULES!

• Rule 1: Don’t Underestimate the Challenge

• Rule 2: Apply Multiple Perspectives
• Rule 3: Find the Positive in Other Approaches
• Rule 4: Adjust, and Readjust, Your Position
 VALUES IN TENSION ETHICS
AWAY FROM HOME
 Cultural differences are the various beliefs, behaviors, languages, practices and expressions
considered unique to members of a specific ethnicity, race or national origin
 Code of Conduct is a set of rules that members of an organization or people with a particular
job or position must follow
 Code of ethics is a set of principles that is used to guide the organization in its decisions,
programs, and policies
 the principles that can help company to work through the maze of cultural differences and
establish codes of conduct for globally ethical business practice
 What happens when a host country’s ethical standards seem lower than the home country’s
 COMPETING ANSWERS

 Cultural relativism :No culture’s ethics are better than any other’s, therefore there
are no international rights and wrongs
 Ethical imperialism :directs people to do everywhere exactly as they do at home
 Absolutism: the concept that ethical rules are the same everywhere
 BALANCING THE EXTREMES: THREE
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
 Respect for core human values, which determine the absolute moral threshold for all
business activities.
 Respect for local traditions.
 The belief that context matters when deciding what is right and what is wrong.
 DEFINING THE ETHICAL
THRESHOLD: CORE VALUES

 Western and non-western culture

 respect for human dignity
 respect for basic rights
 good citizenship
 CREATING AN ETHICAL CORPORATE
CULTURE
• 90% of all Fortune 500 companies have codes of conduct.
• 70% have statements of vision and values.
• Many companies don’t do anything with their codes of conduct; they simply paste them on the
wall.
• Companies like Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Lockheed
Martin, however, follows their codes of conduct.
• Bribery in a code of conduct is unacceptable is useless unless accompanied by guidelines for gift
giving, payments to get goods through customs, etc.
 CONFLICTS OF DEVELOPMENT & CONFLICTS
OF TRADITION

• Many activities are neither good nor bad but exist in moral free space.
• Moral free space - there are no tight prescriptions for a company’s behavior.
• When countries have different ethical standards, two types of conflict commonly arises:
• Conflict of relative development - arises because of the countries’ different levels of economic
development.
• Conflict of cultural tradition - arises because the home and host’s different cultures generate
conflicting norms on the issue the manager faces.
 THE PROBLEM WITH BRIBERY

• Bribery is widespread and insidious.

• Bribery undermines market efficiency and predictability.
• Bribery undermines essential social and economic systems.
 GUIDELINES FOR ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

• Treat corporate values and formal standards of conduct as absolutes.

• Design and implement conditions of engagement for suppliers and customers.
• Allow foreign business units to help formulate ethical standards and interpret ethical issues.
• In host countries, support efforts to decrease institutional corruption.
• Exercise moral imagination.
 ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICAL
CULTURE: REAL OR
IMAGINED?
By, Susan Key

This research assesses the efficacy of the existing measure of organizational ethical culture
for identifying the ethical status of organizations on a this continuum
 THE DERIVATION OF CULTURE

• Anthropologists define culture as "patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and
transmitted mainly by symbols
• Hofstede identified norms and culture as the building blocks of culture.
• Trevino (1986) has found that cultures which are more democratic are associated with an
increase in ethical behavior including a greater willingness to take individual responsibility for
behavior.
• To understand the norms that influence the actions of its members, organizational culture has
proven to be a difficult concept to quantify and measure and is same in the case of ethical
culture.
 ETHICAL CLIMATE VS CULTURE

• Victor and Cullen derived a multi-dimensional approach provides a rich description of

organizational ethical systems but did not prove how ethical an organization's practices are.
• Trevino along with 2 others differentiated ethical climate from ethical culture and said that that
earlier model is not capable for measure
• Ethical climate is a normative construct which measures organizational members' perceptions of
the extent to which the organization's normative systems are consistent with a number of
normative ethical theories.
 METHODOLOGY
• Ethical climate questionnaire of 18 items was used which is modified by referring to the ethics
code
• Sampled individuals from different organizations and collected 295 samples in total (201+94)
• Survey has been conducted in Midwest and southeast cities
• The respondents needs to be currently employed full time, have administrative or professional
work duties and have been working for their current organization for at least one year
 RESULTS
• The results do not reveal agreement among group members rather they evidence similar ranges
from unethical to very ethical within each organization.
• The result suggests that the ECQ-M may not measure the ethical culture of an organization but
may measure individual perception about the ethical aspects of an organization
• Raise some concerns about the power of the ECQ to measure organizational ethical culture as
defined
• Raises question about dichotomous labels for corporations, such as ethical or unethical, or
simply good and bad
• Ethical culture scores were correlated with employee dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement.
• Individual perception is likely to color an employee's views about how ethical an organization.
This may in turn influence their behavior. Thus, how you treat employees may be critical in their
estimation of the ethics of an organization, and this perception may guide their behavior
THANK YOU..