CCM

All business conducted today involves cross-border transactions as well as the same multinational companies are
located in different countries to leverage of location-specific advantages. This implies that organizational boundaries
are influenced by cross-cultural patterns. Culture describes an organized set of values, norms and way of behaving
that depends on the place where the person is embedded. Culture is shared by a community – from the nation to the
organization to the family – is learned and it is usually change-resistant.
At the organizational level, Ed Shein iceberg model is relevant because if the espoused values are enacted and
reflected in policies, managers and employees share the same way of behaving resulting in customer value
enhancement and competitive advantage. Organizational culture provides an identification ground for its members,
clarifies norms, and represents a form of control. It is also possible to have many sub-cultures.
A starting point to investigate a culture is represented by the models. The Hofstede model describes a culture on 5
dimensions: Power distance: degree with which the fact that power is unequally distributed is accepted,
Individualism or collectivism approach describing the degree with which social ties are strict, Level of uncertainty
avoidance describing the tendency to embrace uncertainty or to plan everything ahead, Indulgence or restrain
describing the tendency to allow gratification, masculinity or femininity describing whether the culture is infused
more with typical masculine characteristics or not and Long term orientation describing the level of attachment to
the past.
Another model is the Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness which stems from the Hofstede by
providing a wider range of dimensions to describe culture as well as providing a more practical description of the
impact of these dimensions of organizational practices and leadership. Its dimensions are power distance, human
orientation (femininity), uncertainty avoidance, institutional collectivism (relying on the state), in-group
collectivism (relying on a smaller circle), assertiveness, gender egalitarianism, future orientation, and performance
orientation. Each dimension is measured both in terms of values (how things should be) and in terms of practices
(how things are).

Eastern cultures tend to have a more holistic approach, to prefer collectivism, to be less deterministic while western
cultures use a more linear-logic approach, more individualistic and deterministic.

However, these models are limited for many reasons such as the fact they generalize a culture and that they assume
homogeneity within a culture while evidence showed heterogeneity. They still are a stereotypical view.
Leung and Morris provide another framework to understand culture: schemas and norms. According to the discipline
of social cognition, people activate different schemas shaped by their cultural backgrounds. Four main cognitive
processes – perceptual cognition, cognitive evaluation, dissonance, and behavioral intentions – influence managerial
attitudes. People, building on experience and prior knowledge, develop two types of cognitive structures: schemas
and scripts. Schemas are static views that allow people to categorize situations, thus reducing the complexity of
these letters. One example of schemas are the stereotypes. In fact, once the perception process has taken place, we
pass from social perception to social categorization. Stereotypes are the beliefs around the characteristics of a group
that are generalized to all members of it. This categorization is not necessarily negative, rather it can be a first best
guess especially concerning national stereotypes. However, stereotypes tend to be self-perpetuating.
Scripts are sequences of attitudes that are normally followed by people when facing a certain situation, an action
plan that is activated. This is composed by the role structure (the scripts describe what a person in a position is
expected to do), the temporal structure (how the sequences unfold overtime) and the cues (defining starting and
ending of episodes).
Cultural norms are expected patterns of behavior that are shared by the members of a group, in order to avoid
mistakes that may be harmful for the group. Norms can be prescriptive or descriptive where the first ones describe
what people should do because it is moral while the second ones describe what people actually do because it is
effective. Norms represent a turning point to understand cultures since they are linked to the distinction between
tight or loose cultures, and they are linked to motivation and leadership.
To develop cross-cultural awareness it is necessary to develop intercultural competence both on the individual level
(gain experience to develop a mindset and a set of skills to identify cross-cultural misunderstanding) and on the
organizational level (via international assignment).
Sensitivity is the ability to experience and sense cultural difference and it is not the natural outcome of cross-cultural
contact, rather it requires reflexivity. It can be developed passing from ethnocentric stages to ethnorelative stages,
these letters implying smooth integration and adaption to cultures.
Leadership may have different definitions and the figure of the leader varies according to the cultural context.
However, leadership effectiveness is reached when the leader is able to motivate his/her employees. There is no
comprehensive set of leadership styles, but western research has conceptualized 4 main leadership theories. The
trait theory infers that the leader is the great man, thus identifying the leader with personal individual features and
character traits like charisma, dominance, and emotional intelligence. Being personal, these traits are immutable.
The behavioral theory shifts the focus on what leaders actually do, thus allowing learning overtime. This theory also
identifies relationship-oriented behaviors (being supportive) and task-oriented behaviors (assigning tasks). The
contingency theory focuses on the context. It states that the leader’s personality influences the style but that the
contingencies moderate the link between the style and the leadership effectiveness. The implicit theory focuses on
the implicit prototype that each individual attaches to the figure of the leader. Then, a person is perceived as a leader
only if his behavior matches the prototype.
Since the characteristics attached to a leader are many, the GLOBE has investigated them coming up with 6 main
dimensions of leadership: charismatic (ability to inspire), team-oriented (implementation of a common goal),
participative (involve others in the decision-making), human-oriented (supportive and compassioned), autonomous
(independent), self-protective (face-saving).
Motivation is the willingness of individuals to exert effort towards a goal, to pursue something. Theories are divided
between content theories, describing what motivates employees (leveraging on the needs that people seek to satisfy)
and process theories, describing how to motivate people. As regards the content theories, the main ones are the
Maslow taxonomy of needs and the McClelland theory that shows three main needs that motivate people: affiliation,
dominance, and achievement. As regards the process theories, there are equity theory, goal-setting theory, and
expectancy theory. Equity theory focuses on the fact that people compare their reward with their effort. If they feel
to be under-rewarded, they restore the balance, either by asking more or by reducing the effort, in other words being
demotivated. The choice of how to restore the balance depends on the fact that people may be more (entitled) or
less (benevolent) sensitive to the equity principle. Expectancy theory states that motivation is the combination of
valence (V), instrumentality (I), and expectancy (E). People are motivated only if they perceive not only that a
certain behavior is expected from them but that this is also instrumental to achieve something and valued by the
employer, thus the accomplishment leads to a reward. Goal-setting theory states that employees are motivated by
goals that should be difficult and specific but achievable and that there should be feedbacks showing progress toward
the goal. A motivating job should give skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedbacks.
Communication has a central role in leadership, motivation and group management and it is even more complex
when cultural heterogeneity enters the argument. Communication happens when a sender transmits an encoded
message to the receiver that has to decode it. To do this, it is important that the parties share a good amount of
grounding information that stems from their respective frames of reference. Grounding is the amount of mutual
knowledge, beliefs and assumptions that allow the transmission to be effective and misunderstandings to be avoided.
The main sources of misunderstanding are selective perception (people tend to listen only what they want to listen),
information overload, emotions, national culture, and language.
When adding the cultural element, the communication style may vary. There are high-context communication
cultures (importance to the context and less on explicit message e.g. Japan-collectivist) and low-context
communication cultures (direct and explicit message e.g. Swiss-individualistic). Silence or verbal excess, the use of
praise (feedbacks) and non-verbal communication are important and vary a lot across cultures.
Negotiation is the process of maximizing one’s value where outcomes for each party are interdependent and
influencing the other party to offer more than initially proposed. Negotiation can help addressing conflicts, but
conflicts frequently arise in negotiations. Distributive negotiation is known as the fixed-pie approach in the sense
that the pie is distributed among the parties, but it cannot be expanded. Thus, increasing the pie for one party means
decreasing it for the other one. Integrative negotiation allows for the pie expansion and thus a win-win situation is
possible. When the parties switch the line of distributive compromise, they can reach a greater area of integrative
benefits. This needs trust and willingness to find a common ground. Finally, principled negotiation is a type of
integrative negotiation assuming that people separate themselves from the problem, give options, focus on the
interests rather than on positions, and insist on objective criteria. The win-lose tactic involves probing, managing
the minutes, forcing, and making the poker face while win-win tactic involves building trust, sharing information,
making multiple offers. The four typical stages of negotiations are relationship building, task-related exchange of
information, persuasion, and concessions/agreements. The emphasis on each stage differs across cultures. For
example, France and USA are competitive (persuasion) while Japanese are more about restrain and politeness
(concessions).
Conflicts originally have a bad meaning, but this changed over time and now they are also considered a source of
opportunity for the group. Conflict may be of four types; manifest (situation openly conflictual, disagreement is
observed), felt (emotional-affected situation, tension), perceived (opposite interests are perceived but maybe it is
just a misunderstanding), latent (relevant interests are naturally not aligned). In organizations, conflict be
distinguished between substantive conflict (disagreement on the task performed including viewpoints) and
emotional conflict (interpersonal incompatibilities). Intrapersonal conflicts are about the role inside a group while
interpersonal conflicts are about personal differences. Then, there are intraorganizational and intragroup conflict
that emerge due to leadership, control, and hierarchy issues. Consequences of conflicts are affective, cognitive, and
behavioral (low productivity). To handle well a conflict, practices need to be put in place. These practices refer to
conflict prevention, conflict management, and conflict resolution (reducing the source of conflict). In particular,
conflict management deals with balancing the satisfaction of the others’ needs with the personal concerns giving
birth to four settings: low concern for others and low concern of self means avoiding conflict as much as possible.
High concern for others and low concern for self means accommodate others. Low concern for others and high
concern for self means competing with the distributive approach. The last setting implies collaboration to reach a
compromise.
A group is not just a conglomerate of people, rather these people are interdependent from one another, work toward
a common goal and it exist interaction and influence among them. These characteristics allow to define who is a
member and who stays outside. Groups can be divided into task forces (time-bounded and project-specific group
whose members have strictly selected), crews (made of people that can master a specific task), organizational teams
(set of people with specific skills provided with tools and procedures to address the team’s task over a long period
of time). According to Tuckman, teams undergo 5 development stages.
- Forming: group members start to get to know each other → differences → conflicts
- Storming: disagreement concerning leadership in the group
- Norming: by solving conflict, they develop close ties and identify internal culture
- Performing: they work toward the goal
- Adjourning: the group disbands once its goals have been achieved
Effectiveness of a work group depends on how well the group uses its resources to accomplish its tasks. The output
must meet the quantity, quality, and timing asked by the organization. The processes employed by the group should
enhance the ability of the group members to work together and the group experience should contribute to the growth
of the members.
According to the IPO model, the inputs are represented by organizational inputs (organizational culture in which
the team is embedded), team inputs (characteristics of the group that have an impact of the process) and individual
inputs (expertise and knowledge of the members). The output is the performance of the group. In the middle there
is the process, namely the interactions, coordination and communication inside the group. Difficulties in the
processes can be exacerbated by cultural differences and geographical dispersion of the group. So, cross-cultural
groups may be the most effective as well as the least effective ones depending on whether the members leverage on
diversity or see it as an obstacle. Diverse groups can suffer lower performance than homogeneous ones (this is what
is stated by the social categorization model) but on the other hand diverse groups may be more creative thanks to
different perspectives (this is what is stated by the information/decision-making model).