Lecture 7 slides Flashcards
(25 cards)
Theoretical framework of Hartnell et al?
Task culture → influence via task clarity and focus
Relationship culture → influence via teamwork and participative action
Similarity perspective
*Positive impact of similarity (Attribution Theory and Social Identity Theory of Leadership)
* Negative impact of dissimilarity (Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Social Identity Theory of Leadership)
Dissimilarity perspective
* Positive impact of dissimilarity: Path-Goal Theory
* Negative impact of similarity: Substitutes for Leadership Theory
What did the results find Hartnell et al?
With a high task culture, and low task leadership, the firm performance was higher or the other way round.
With a low relationship culture and high relational leadership, firm performance was higher or the other way round.
How can culture be deciphered using qualitative research?
Researcher can be an outsider or insider. Outsider-> potential partner resulting in action research (understanding how things work in organization)
Insider-> helper/consultant leads to clinical research (focus on helping, exploring challenges and work together towards improvements)
3 levels of organizational culture
- cultural artifacts (visible and tangible structures and processes, difficult to interpret, lily)
- espoused values (not tangible, up in the air, may transform to basic assumptions)
- shared basic assumptions- cultural DNA (unconscious, taken for granted truths, theories in use)
Are behaviours suitable to unlock the 3 levels of org culture?
- Are observable, hence artifacts
▪ → however, difficult to interpret as such - Are indicative of unwritten rules and values (= of culture)
→ to what extent aligned with ‘written’ or published rules
and values?
What is the macro and meso culture impact?
- meso: organization is part of the industry or profession
- macro: larger ethnographic and national culture
What is the role of language and context?
words, jargon, or ways of communicating stand out. High context culture: implicit, intensive, close ties, avoid public conflict, responsibility is with a top leader of a group. Low context culture: explicit, superficial, loose ties, conflict in public and responsibility shared between group members
Reality
External, physical, social
Moralism vs pragmatism
Information
Time
Orientation
Horizon (related to language)
Mono vs polychronicity
Space
Body language
Symbolic space
Distance
What is part of being human?
Definition: what does it mean to be human?
Essence: good- bad or in between?
Motivation: specific needs
How should workers be rewarded and punished
People tend to adjust their behaviour to what is expected of them
What are the relations to the environment?
Being orientation: nature is powerful, humans must fit in, fatalistic
Being in becoming orientation: harmony with nature, development
Doing orientation: nature can be influenced, environment is malleable, pragmatic
Levels of human relationships?
Level -1
* No or negative relationship
* Inequality, exploitation, no trust
Level 1
* Acknowledgement & civility
* Transactional trust, politeness
Level 2
* Being ‘seen’ as a unique person
* Honor commitments & personal
relationship
Level 3
* Strong emotions
* Love and intimacy, active support
How did Hofstede study national cultural dimensions?
- Geert Hofstede; Dutch social psychologist
- Research on ‘values’ at IBM global
- > 116.000 employees at the time
- Presence in 67 countries; 40 were initially included
- many different languages
- In the periods 1967-1969 and 1971-1973
- Forced choice items about “work”
Culture
the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others
Cultural dimensions
- power distance is how equal or unequal people are
- uncertainty avoidance is comfort with change
- individualism/collectivism
- masculinity/femininity is compete or care
- long vs short term orientation (extra)
- indulgence vs restraint (extra)
How does uncertainty avoidance look like in orgs?
Low
* Rules are disliked
* Easy handling of ambiguity and even
chaos
* Tolerant about and interested in deviant people or ideas
* Uncertainty is a fact of life to be accepted
High
* Rules are needed
* Need for clarity and structure to be able to function
* Intolerant about deviant people or ideas, they are a threat or danger
* Uncertainty is a fact of life to be fought
Individualism-collectivism
Collectivism
* Always keep harmony ,
opinions are determined by the
group
* Other people are identified by
group membership
* Relationships prevail over
tasks
* Your group protects you in
exchange for loyalty
* Breaking norms leads to shame
Individualism
* Always give your opinion, it
is healthy and expected (i.e., if
you don’t speak up, you agree)
* Other people are individuals
* Tasks prevail over
relationships
* You need to take care of
yourself and your direct
family
* Breaking norms leads to guilt
How does Hofstede measure national cultural differences?
- Data collection
o Sample representativeness - Construction original dimensions
o Hindsight, data collected for different purposes, construct validity, definitions - Addition of new dimensions in a later stage
- Country boundaries as cultural boundaries
- Cultural differences within countries
- Old data, Western data, measurement instrument
- first attempt at comparing national cultures
- large data set, supplemented with more large datasets
- replicated in many other studies in other organizations and industries
- huge impact and highly influential
Matched sampling in original data set
o individual values are influenced by national culture (NC),
Professional/Industry culture (P/IC) and organizational culture (OC)
o measuring a person’s values = NC + P/IC + OC
o Comparing 2 respondents (NC1 + P/IC + OC) – (NC2 + P/IC + OC) = NC1
– NC2
Vaarna et al hypotheses
How and why do national and organizational cultures create positive and negative organizational outcomes in international acquisitions?
* H1a - Social identity theory
* H1b - Salience of OC vs NC
* H2a - Complementarity of knowledge
when differences are large
* H2b - Incompatibilities in beliefs and
difficulties in evaluating when
differences are large potential
advantages
* H3 – integration leads to changes
* H4 – integration requires interaction
* H5 – social factors determine
willingness to share resources
Method of Vaarna et al
Finnish companies that bought related non-Finnish companies of a
certain size (based on turnover)
* Surveys, timing, response rate, source
Measures – validities and reliabilities in Table III:
* Perceived organizational cultural differences
* Distances between the nine national dimensions from GLOBE practices scores
* Operational integration based on various integration activities/consequences
* Social conflict with self-made scale based on interviews
* Knowledge transfer with self-made scale
What are the findings of Vaarna et al?
National cultural differences and organizational cultural differences are related to knowledge transfer. National cultural differences are negatively related to social conflict.
Social conflict is negatively related to knowledge transfer. Operational integration is positively related to knowledge transfer.
what are the next steps?
- Explanations for unconfirmed Hs
Based on limitations; specific sample, causality, etc. - Support better practice For international M&A’s More in general? How can these findings also be useful in practice?
