CROSS CULTURAL MANAGEMENT

Cross Cultural Management in Organizations

Cross Cultural Management in Organizations

Cross Culture

Cross-cultural communication tries to gather relatively unrelated areas such as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its base is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. His burden is also produce some guidelines with which people of different cultures can better communicate with each other (geert-hofstede.com).

Regardless of the context in which to analyze the culture, there is unity of opinion about its effect on people's behaviour, its social, founded on ideas and cognition and its development as a result of learning processes, likewise the Two approaches to culture (social and organizational) agree on the identification of its constituent elements: patterns, symbols, and values, based on which it has developed a wide range of scales of measurement.

Among the scales measuring social culture is particularly noted for their cultural character those developed by Schwartz (1992) and Hofstede (1979). The contribution of the scales of Schwartz (1992)) focuses on the generality of the construct, and the validity of the instruments developed as they have been tested in several samples around the world. Likewise, the contribution of Hofstede (1979) lies in the understanding of social phenomena that are common to all cultures. And while Hofstede (1991) noted that the model of cultural values and its five dimensions are useful in the analysis of values in social contexts, their model and / or any of its dimensions has been used to analyze values in organizational contexts.

The development of intercultural competence is a long process whose end result is extended in time and goes beyond what would normally be achieved in the training sessions, which are always limited by time and budget issues. Success depends in part upon motivation and cultural sensitivity of the participants. Socialization in multicultural environments is also relevant, as people with previous experience living or working in other countries or in different societies, has in principle a greater cross-cultural knowledge that they have lived exclusively in monoculture societies. It is also good to have a certain curiosity about the different. But it is important to know that everyone, including the most closed and resistant, with proper training and once they have been confronted with certain situations and stimuli, can improve your communication skills and gain flexibility and tolerance.

Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede analyzed 70 countries and simplifies complex socio-cultural patterns of conduct in five simple indicators (geert-hofstede.com):

Power Distance Index (PDI)

The index of power distance refers to the degree of acceptance in the less powerful members of a culture, power differences and inequality. The PDI will be greater to the extent that these differences in social and hierarchical structures (such as companies, institutions or families) are more pronounced and generally accepted.

Individualism (IDV)

The IDV define the level at which individuals are integrated into society and the feeling of belonging. In a society with a high IDV, for example, individuals tend to worry about themselves and their immediate families, while in a very collectivist society, group ...