Essay: Culture in the workplace

Since now the 90’s, with the begins of the globalisation as we know now, that is to say; liberalisation, circulation and accessibility of everything everywhere, we can now, in 2018, see the impacts of this one to every single thing. Nowadays, nothing is from only one part of the worlds and this is also applicable for people, just the fact to travel is now affordable for everyone and more destinations are available, By way of comparison: in 1980 number of people who took plane was 642Milion while in 2016 it was 3.696Bilion1.  Since this flux increase drastically, companies started to travel as well an implant themselves all around the world, and people did the same, so now it is not astonishing anymore to find people from all over the world in a workplace. But isn’t it complicate to mix all these nationalities together and are they really effective with each other’s.  So Diversity is now what we are interested about, and the reference in this area is Hofstede.
Hofstede was a Dutch social psychologist who dedicated his researches to the different cultures and more precisely into the work place. In the early 90’s, with Robert J House professor in the University of Pennsylvania, they decided to conduct a project which help to understand how different culture can work together. GLOBE is the name of this project born in 1991, which referred to Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness research.
Thereafter, advantages and disadvantages of working in a multicultural environment will be developed from our knowledges and experiences. Then, since GLOBE is working thought some clusters, as it would be explaining on time, we will compare countries with others in order to have a better understanding of these. And finally, how these last countries could work together (can they?).
The world is a place where all nation, culture and religions live. But if everyone could live together, it would be boring, so a lot of conflict exist since the dawn of time and it is never the same. So it is where the diversity starts to be not as easy as it seems. Because of all these people travelling and especially, in our case, for working, will have to work with different culture and since no one has the same, how managing something that can be normal for someone while it is actually not for the other.
“Normal” although is a really nominative word, it is always according to something or a situation, so it differs between culture. Using Norms instead normal change a lot in our mind, while actually it is the same and we should always think like that in order to not discriminate or misunderstanding some action.
Proceeding to advantage and disadvantage of a divers workplace, by starting by the disadvantages and the most obvious, different culture.
Culture is not the same to everyone and at work this can appear difficult to share, some usual act not anymore usual when people change location. Some are more conservative or collectivist while the workplace can be the invers, and it can be really difficult for people. So these behaviours can embarrass your co-workers, E.g.: Chinese or Indians use to burp loudly shamelessly because it is normal for them, but in western countries it really rude to do it in public.
Or behaviour toward hierarchy it’s even different in every country, As example Japanese are really hierarchic, the respect is very big between the top and the low position and relation are only professional, while in western countries most of the time respect is also here but they can have casual conversation with everyone in the workplace whatever the position. As part of culture we can include Languages, it can be a barrier for staff who are not from the country where they are working, and it may put them away from the rest of the staff, until creating a gap between them or even exclusion.
Another disadvantage can be forejudging and mistrust, people from different countries will obviously have idea about others nationalities because of some events, TV-shows, or … so they can apprehend situation and conversations and in fact avoiding the others by stereotyping them. For example, believing than all Muslim are all terrorist, while it is not the case, and minority should not take advantage on the majority. By the way, while Muslim was in the example, Religions is also a sort of disadvantage in workplace, because each religions has its own rules, meaning the work place should allow everyone to practice as their want (limit of reasonable) time for pray, Holidays, special period of the year.
Then, about the advantages, they are not in rest and they can be seen as more important than theses last advantages. Because for a lot of people, having diversity can only improve the company. Multicultural workers increase creativity so definitely improves productivity. Studies on the subject show that diversity in  teams emit more ideas, analyze issues from different perspectives, and are therefore less likely to think in groups. Group thinking is a phenomenon that describes the process by which individuals in a group tend to seek consensus (general agreement) rather than realistically defining the situation. This one is mostly found in a homogeneous group than in a heterogeneous group. The danger of such phenomenon is that the group may engage on a way where irrational or unwelcome decisions will be made even if the individuals in the group would have personally made another decision, all because of the mistaken perception of a group consensus.    After, Impact on the reputation of the company. Studies support that companies that demonstrate this openness to the world are more attractive especially for millennials, which would be the least culturally sensitive generations. In addition, this reputation for openness highlights respect for ethics, in particular through respect for workplace equity laws and the prohibition of discriminatory practices.
To overcome these various disadvantages, managers should know the prejudices that are widespread. In-depth training in diversity management is also essential to us as it brings employees to identify and appreciate differences. As a manager setting up team goals that will come to exceed individual differences, as well as advocate example that can be as practical as possible to the well work of the team.
In another hand, since now the 80’s and the increase in the number of foreign workers inside a same workplace some people like Hofstede start to conduct research about how is working multicultural workplace. In order to do this, he put in place a manner to classify by attribute, under the name of “dimensions”. These ones are divided between 6:
Power distance: Perception of hierarchy inside a country and workplace, either people are treated as same without too much different, or is there a huge gap between high and low difference. Authority is also part of these dimension, more the country is authoritative (May happen because of regulation, laws and government, but also of the culture and the religion), higher is the power distance, and vice-versa.
Individualism is how people act as individual or as groups, does two is better than one or the opposite? then it would be the opposite, Collectivism. This has a relation with freedom as well, how free are people to do what they want, and how can it be seen by others.
Masculinity versus femininity, is how dominant the male is into the country and workplace and the place of the woman in the same situation. It is associate to emotions and values in the manner of how would people react to what happen, like heroism, competitively, success are masculine attribute while caring for others, empathy, family oriented … are more feminine attributes.
Uncertainty avoidance is how would a society avoid risk, things not so sure of. So in a way, how do you trust you citizens, or how tolerant is the power toward what can happen. More is it high, more the control of the country is tight and strict, lower is it means that the country is more open-minded, free-flowing and tolerant (for develop countries at least. In undeveloped or developing, It can be seen as laxness from government as well)
Long term orientation can be seen differently either if it as rich or poor country. For Rich country, a short term orientation means respect of culture and old tradition, mainly found in Asia. While western short term would explain a continual change and the plan or usual within 5years, expect for some, so short term is chosen because everything keeps moving. Long term is for change which take time to be applies or for more pragmatic countries. While for poor countries, short term is mainly due to the low economy of the countries and uncertainty of future.
And finally indulgence it is like a resume of all these precedent dimensions. This is how much a society trust it’s citizen and how free of acting are they. While no indulgence, restraint, is the control of everything, no liberty.
These dimensions are measured on percent by a general comparison between workplace of a same country, then a particular attention have to be made with the following: It does not stipulate that everyone in the given country is working/acting in the same way, considerable differences exist between people as individuals. Even if, per example: with the « individualism dimension » it is also possible that the differences between individuals in one country would be bigger than the differences between the cultures of the country. Nevertheless, it is still useful because country scores based on the law of the big numbers, in fact of most of the people are more are less influenced by social control.
Ronen and Shenkar in 80’s, examined eight empirical studies that used value surveys or attitudinal data to cluster countries. Their analysis permits the confirmation of the existence of cultural clustering by countries, even if geographic divergence exists. There is existence of common cultural attributes, and this, indicate a dominant of clusters by countries and common dimension of attributes. All countries within a cluster are similar to one another and dissimilar to the others outside that cluster.
(Ronen, 1985)
So as example to illustrate these dimensions, Taiwan, Denmark, Syria, South Africa and France. Each are from different region and different clusters (groups of similarities due to geographical, situational condition, behaviour or…Culture)
Taiwan as a first example have a notable long term orientation and a quite low individualism, what is rational compared to their situation as developing country, tradition and social obligation are still playing a big part in the county. In the same time masculinity is not so high for an Asian country, certainly due to the collectivism, group are more important the gender.
Taiwan would be, according to these dimensions still really into tradition, they are not so demanding (power distance only at 59%) while Uncertainty avoidance and LT orientation are both high, which is most of the time not seen like this, either the plan with the tradition so they let things ongoing hence the uncertainty avoidance, or either they are tolerant and but the power distance plan to stay the same for long.
Finally, Taiwanese are seen as still traditional country with more handwork than office work, industrialise country, so for manufacturing and not for business establishment as finance…
 
Denmark is one of the most advance countries as part of norther’s countries (Nordic country for clusters segmentation).  At first sight, Danish look really efficient and reliable, and by taking the dimensions, these thoughts looked quite accurate. Equality is an important point in these countries a  nd can be notice with the low percentage in power distance, masculinity and high individualism.   People by being individualistic are seen each as a person and none as a group, that can make unique everyone either men or women, that’s make parity high and the respect of each high as well by the power distance quite low in accord with the high rate of indulgence.
So Denmark is a modern country and accept how the world changes and how it evolved. Equality and even equity would be big asset and can be one country where employee will have more freedom and more good relationship between staff. Quite cool environment and why not the perfect one for women.
Then, to contrast with these two countries, Syria will be the third example. As we all know, this country is at its 3/4 in the hand of ISIS, meaning that they adhere to the Charia, so no individual right, no liberty, oppressive, woman are objects, and so on. Dealing with this country is impossible, except for Arabic country such as Qatar which was until not so long, dealing with them. They are big costumer for guns and army equipment, right, but ethically, even if it represents a huge amount of money, countries
By taking dimensions, Power distance is very high, no indulgence, risk and parity are almost none existent. Individualism rather high for Syria, may be because of the ¼ of Syria not under ISIS, or because of the liberty of the powerful people to oblige citizens to listen what they say.. In fact, Syria is for the be a friendly workplace.
Then South Africa appear like an average country, power distance is not high certainly because of the situation of the country, still not totally recover of the apartheid. The white and black part, are somehow still existing, so the power is not really powerful. Then individualism make us think the opposite, while before groups were more represent than individual due to the history, it is even quite high for an Africa  country. Masculinity and LT orientation are not astonishing, it fit with the idea we have of this country and cyclically still in development, their uncertainty avoidance is 49, meaning that they control a minimum without letting future decide for their present, already quite hard. And that bring the indulgence rather high.  So Finally, as workplace, South Africa looks not so bad, but improvement about social norm and masculinity are still need improvement.
Finally, France represents Latin Europe and the balance between countries of the same cluster, like Switzerland and Portugal. As rather conservative, French are a bit pragmatic hence their high uncertainty avoidance and mid LT orientation. Individual rights are very important for Latin Europe countries where even if we are family oriented, it will, mostly, never affect our high perception of our self as individual. So egoism is part of Latin European. Power distance, even if a lot of institution exist to balance the power, is still quite high, hierarchy is important (in family like in work) in conservative society. Indulgence, is not really high but is not it’s a proof of reliability, like Denmark, because of a system of regulations.
Finally, thanks to these clusters and dimensions we can noticed that we likely trust develops and uncorrupted countries than from developing countries. Simply because of our education we are free to compare and have the knowledge of who to trust or not and make our proper opinion based on the data of these dimensions. And nowadays, it’s important to have an efficient authority to control business without being oppressive, and by still letting freedom some extend to the population.
On This last part, as previously announced, we will try to make these last 5 countries working together and imagine how it can match, or not.