Business Across Cultures Culture for Business Series_11 docx

We offer our thinking based on the logic of reconciliation to explainand discuss how the role of the HR manager in the twenty-first cen-tury is to reconcile major dilemmas caused by cult

sphere), the world has also recognized another major shift due to theinternalization of business Despite this, as has been noted before,the majority of the tools and methods used by HR professionals stillowe their origin to an Anglo-Saxon mindset Typical of these are theinstruments used for recruitment and selection MBTI and JTI(Myers-Briggs and Jung Type Indicators) are the most frequentlyused Americanized tools applied in business to assess personalitytype Over 8,000 companies use the HAY system for job evaluationworldwide Originally developed by Colonel Hay for evaluatingjobs in the American army, it later became extended into the mostpopular evaluation instrument for international businesses Andlately we see the enormously popular Balanced Scorecard, devel-oped by Kaplan and Norton, that initially helped many NorthAmerican firms to measure important perspectives of businessbeyond the simply financial.

But what have these Americanized perspectives done for (and to)non-American organizations? Obviously there was an era whenglobalization was taken literally “It works in the US, so let’s export

it to the rest of the world,” was the main principle Generally thisapproach has failed In fact, it has only worked in organizationswhere the corporate culture dominated the local or national cultures(the Hewlett Packard “way” and McKinsey are obvious examples),and also perhaps in organizations where the product was very dom-inant – such as Coca-Cola, Disney and McDonalds

But the majority of US-based organizations faced resistance where a

US logic was just too much for the local environments to bear When

an R&D culture believes that one of the three main perspectives ofthe HAY system (knowledge required to perform) is being given alower weighting than another perspective (such as accountability),should we just adjust the weightings in order to keep the most tal-

ented researchers? Again, when the financial perspective in the US isseen as important compared to the customer perspective in Japan,should we assign a different weighting in the respective cultures torebalance the scorecard? We have observed counter movementswhere HR practices were decentralized Too many local (and legal)differences hindered a single, global approach It may have worked

in a multi-local environment, but when the organization becomesinternational or transnational, the multi-local approach fails

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

We offer our thinking based on the logic of reconciliation to explainand discuss how the role of the HR manager in the twenty-first cen-tury is to reconcile major dilemmas caused by cultural differencesacross national boundaries and organization cultures Some further

examples and complimentary discussion are also given in Did the Pedestrian Die? by Fons.

THE ROLE OF HR AND CORPORATE CULTURE

In Chapter Four we described the different meanings assigned toorganizational relationships We delineated four major typologiesdescribing different organizational logics or corporate cultures: theFamily, the Eiffel Tower, the Guided Missile, and the Incubator Inthe period between 1980 and today, we have observed many West-ern (Guided Missile) organizations that have sought to imposeWestern (or rather Anglo-Saxon) HR systems on organizational cul-tures that were based on entirely different assumptions The resultwas either “corporate rain dancing” or complete ineffectiveness ofthe intended outcome What do we do with a pay for performancescheme in a Family culture? And what about a formal job evaluationsession in an Incubator culture? Or the encouragement of team

working in a highly individualistic and achievement-oriented ture? Does HR research from US and Anglo-Saxon thinking transfer

cul-to other cultures?

We will therefore offer reasons why the effectiveness of systemsmight be jeopardized when crossing cultural boundaries, the dilem-mas that can arise and how they can be reconciled

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Recruitment over many years has left many organizations staffed bypeople comfortable with the old ways of working, or old paradigms.The greater the need for global change, the greater the likelihoodthat new blood will be required, not simply to replace wastage andretirement, but to bring in new key skills Selecting the right personfor a post is a key decision for HR and various tools and systemshave been developed to support the decision-making process There

is considerable pressure on HR to make good decisions in ment On the one hand to get the right person, on the other to avoiddiscrimination On the one hand so the appointee can do the currentjob well, on the other hand to grow the job in the future HR faces awhole series of such dilemmas

recruit-Similarly, organizations have to retain their best staff and preventany brain drain or loss of key skills (and knowledge) to competitors

Do organizations invest in training, only to lose their existing staffwith enhanced skills and knowledge to the employment marketplace?

Because attracting and retaining staff is one of the key tasks of HRprofessionals, it has been developed to include a wide range ofmethods of selection and related procedures, supported by consul-tants and headhunters Surprisingly little attention has been given to

Munich-based Amadeus was faced with such a dilemma As theorganization that operates the Airline Seat Reservation manage-ment system (originally for Lufthansa but later for Air France andother major carriers), it had very important key staff trained to ahigh level in the particular and very specialist IT software technol-ogies to support access to VLFADB (very large and fast accessdatabases) – namely thousands of concurrent online reservation

or booking enquiries from any travel agent or check-in deskacross the world To cope with the very high hit rate, special soft-ware and computer languages are required, not the more commonUnix or Windows technologies On the one hand these IT special-ists were highly valued because of their specialist knowledge but

on the other they perceived (like all IT specialists) that they werefalling behind in their employability because they had noup-to-date transferable competence in IT Most didn’t even knowabout the fundamentals of Windows software So on the one handthey felt secure and valued when working for Amadeus, while onthe other hand theirs was the only employee in the world usingthe particular VLFADB software and thus they had no other place

to go Should they leave and work in the more common Unix orWindows arena – and thereby be more secure in the generic ITmarket place?

Amadeus reconciled their dilemma by training their IT staff inWindows and Unix even though they didn’t need such skills andknowledge for their work with the company At first sight thismight have made the IT personnel immediately leave to exploittheir generic knowledge, but in practice they remained even morefaithful to Amadeus as the only employer they knew that wouldkeep their skills and knowledge up to date

a very much under-researched issue – the image of the organization

to the job seeker or potential employee

We all recognize that the old model of employment with a majorcorporation as a job for life is no longer true, even in Japan Miningour database generates evidence supporting the proposition that theyounger generation – from 20–30 years old – have become moreouter directed, more affective (prepared to show their emotions),have a shorter time horizon and want to work more with others inteams This is not surprising when we realize that they too have rec-ognized that the old model of lifetime employment with onecompany is dead These young, generation X, high-potentialemployees, and the even younger baby-boomers, have a greaterself-confidence in their own individual abilities Their preferencehas shifted away from the task-oriented Guided Missile to the per-son-oriented Incubator work environment Their rationale for careersecurity is based on maintaining a set of personal and transferablecompetencies It is their “employability” rating, based on their con-temporaneous skills profile, that drives them, not the old notion ofcorporate security from an employer of long-standing repute or pro-tection by their trade union

What might make a large organization attractive to a young, tious, and talented employee now? On the demand side, organiza-tions of the old economy find it increasingly difficult to attract goodcandidates There is a tension between the image of these companiesand the ideals that young, talented people have in their heads Thepower-oriented Family culture and the role-oriented hierarchicalstructures of the Eiffel Tower still dominate in both perception andreality The big players realize this and are doing their best torespond

ambi-The global corporate mindset appears to be bland (“it’s all the same

everywhere”), static and seems not to offer the freedom to developone’s own persona As a consequence, this is not attractive to gener-ation X In addition, young, talented, recently graduated baby-boomers now prefer to work locally It is clear from our consultingand research evidence that ultimately only those organizations thatreconcile the dilemmas are and will be successful in the employmentmarket.

Young graduates are attracted to organizations that have reconciledthese corporate cultural opposites These are organizations that his-torically have a dominant Guide Missile or Eiffel Tower culture yetstill seem to attract talented staff by reconciling the tensions betweenfree choice and deep learning opportunities, between downsizingand economies of scale, and between image and reality

RECRUITMENT PROCESS AND CULTURE

How often does an exiting job holder, about to leave, write the jobspecification for his or her successor? Or how often does someonefrom HR write a person specification based on the present job holder?Don’t we all recognize this? Don’t we all look for the same character-istics that we value ourselves, consciously or unconsciously?Indeed, recruitment is simply a sophisticated way of cloning This isthe origin of professional tools to offer objectivity in assessment TheMyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) instrument is the mostwidely used personality inventory in history HR professionals havedepended on it when clients need to make important business,career, or personal decisions Last year alone, two million peoplegained valuable insight about themselves and the people they inter-act with daily by completing the MBTI® instrument.5

In Myers Briggs terms, there are observable differences in

personal-ity between different countries For example, the most predominanttype in British management is ISTJ (I ntroverting, Sensing, Thinking,

Judging), whilst in American management it is ESTJ (Extroverting,

S ensing, Thinking, Judging) There is evidence from Korean MBTIresearch that Koreans tend to be more introverted than extrovertedwhen the American norm is applied to interpret their score Becauseintroverted people are relatively pervasive in Korean society, mostorganizations, including educational institutions and companies,encourage their members to be more extroverted in public situa-tions, and many evaluate an extroverted person more favorably.Therefore, there is a possibility that in assessment centers, supervi-sors gave higher performance ratings to the extrovert than to theintrovert Perhaps a more important question of individual differ-ences is whether people are more similar to themselves over timeand across situations than they are to other cultures, and whetherthe variation within a single person across time and context is lessthan the variation between people But this all assumes that suchinstruments are based on etic constructs and not emic ones (seechapter 6) – that is, that they have the same meaning universallyacross cultures

If the most frequently found manager is the ISTJ (the introverted,sensing, thinking, and judging type) is this “chicken or egg”? Butwhat about these methodologies when the applications go beyondthe environment in which they were developed? Suppose the cul-ture likes the extroverted, sensing, intuitive, perceptive type? So, if aculture believes in judging rather than perceiving, should they justselect their people accordingly? The internationalization of recruit-ment has clearly shown that other types are more dominant in othercultural environments And what about trying to assess whether aperson can survive in other cultures? Obviously the Myers-Briggsfans find solutions in the team and the complementarities of types,

or they refer to the fact that the types are only preferences but that all

is potentially within the individual But why were the naires designed on mutually exclusive values in the first place? It isbecause our Western way of thinking is based on Cartesian logic andforces us to say it is “either–or”, not “and–and.” This is in contradic-tion to what Carl Jung had in mind in the first place when heconstrued the underlying conceptual framework behind MBTI.How can we extend MBTI by slightly adjusting the instrument andthe way of thinking that forms the context of its applications andthereby make it a jewel of an tool far beyond any cultural prefer-ence? Of course certified MBTI specialists know how to best use theinstrument for the purpose for which it was designed But it is alsoused by many others for recruitment and the allocation of assign-ments

question-In a situation where the culture in which people are being recruitedhas a slight preference for the Sensing, what could be done whenone is facing an environment where Intuiting is the preference formaking a successful career?

Research has sought to correlate these scales with different job

cate-Figure 7.1 The traditional MBTI bi-polar scales

gories and functions Thus, there is evidence to suggest whichdominant type best fits a marketing role and which type is foundmost often amongst successful managers However, with the inter-nationalization of business, we are suddenly confronted with someinteresting dilemmas challenging this principle.

Our fundamental concern with all instruments like the classic MBTI,16PF and the like is that each dimension is based on the single-axis

continuum MBTI logic asks if you are Sensing or Intuiting The

more you identify yourself as Sensing, the less you must be of theIntuiting type When seeking to apply the MBTI typology, or indeedany other associative model in an international context, we find thatadhesion to the extremities of each scale is constraining AlthoughMBTI professionals do talk about combining the variety of prefer-ences in teams and organizations, one cannot derive this approachfrom the MBTI instrument as it is based on forced choice bi-modelquestions

We have to remember that much of this type of research owes its gin to Anglo-Saxon or, more specifically, North American thinking,even though it has been exported across the world When we begin

ori-to incorporate other types of logic, such as Ying–yang or Taoism, wesoon realize that we have been restrictive in basing the profiling onbi-modal dimensions Let’s apply this thinking and new logic to theMyers-Briggs scales Note, however, that we are simply using MBTI

to illustrate our ideas for multi-dimensional thinking, rather thanseeking to criticize MBTI per se

To test the preference for thinking or feeling the following question

is asked:

When I make a decision I think it is most important:

a To test the opinions of others.

we have a dilemma between the seemingly opposing orientations of

Thinking or Feeling.

We would extend the options to include a means of evaluating theindividual’s propensity to reconcile this dilemma:

When I make a decision I think it is most important:

c To be decisive through the continuous testing of opinions of others.

d To test the opinions of others by showing decisiveness.

Those who answer “c” are starting from a Thinking orientation, butaccount for the Feeling of others They have successfully reconciledthe opposites This process involves starting from one axis andspiraling to the top right (a 10,10 position on Figure 7.3), at whichpoint the individual has integrated both components

Figure 7.2 Thinking–feeling linear scale

Similarly, those who answer “d” are starting from Feeling but ing towards Thinking, and again integrating the two seeminglyopposite orientations (Figure 7.4).

spiral-In our extended prototype model of MBTI, which we call the ITI(Integrated Type Indicator), we use our own questions that repre-sent the two extreme opposing values for each conjugate pair.However, we also add the two additional choices that represent theclockwise and anti-clockwise reconciliation between these extremes(see Figure 7.5)

By combining the answers from a series of questions in thisextended format, we can compute a profile that reveals the degree towhich an individual seeks to integrate the extreme dimensions

Figure 7.3 Reconciling from a thinking orientation

Figure 7.4 Reconciling from a feeling orientation

Each variable is scaled from 0 to 10 by combining responses to these

extended questions A typical ITI profile could then be I9e3N6s2T9f1P8j7

as opposed to a more normal one of simply INTP.

Then the overall propensity to reconcile equals

[(Introvert × Extrovert) + (Sensing × Intuiting) + (Thinking ×

Feeling) + (Judging × Perceiving)]/ 4 = %

that is, [(9 × 3)+(6 × 2) + (9 × 1) + (8 × 7)]/4 = 26%

The significance of our Integrated Type Indicator approach is that itenables us to determine the propensity for the individual to recon-cile dilemmas as discussed throughout this book In practice we useour own ILAP (InterCultural Assessment Profiler) based on our ownwork rather than challenge the authority or ownership of MBTI Asexplained in chapter 10, this is also based on multiple choice ques-tions, which include options that reconcile the dilemmas – and thiscan serve as the basis for recruitment for international leaders andmanagers

Figure 7.5 The Integrated Type Indicator profile