Hi All..
I am a student of PGDBA specialising in HRM. Planning to do a project on the topic cross cultural issues in HR, can anyone please help me out in providind information pertaining to the topic & also the companies where I can do. I am residing in Bangalore.
Soumya
From India, Bangalore
I am a student of PGDBA specialising in HRM. Planning to do a project on the topic cross cultural issues in HR, can anyone please help me out in providind information pertaining to the topic & also the companies where I can do. I am residing in Bangalore.
Soumya
From India, Bangalore
Hi Soumya,
THE CROSS-CULTURAL ISSUES IN HRD
For our purposes let's define culture as the way in which each of us is programmed to behave in the environment. Cultures are like icebergs; some features are apparent to anyone not in a fog, while others are deeply hidden. Above-the-surface features include overt behaviors:
how people -
dress
eat
walk
talk
relate to one another
conduct themselves during public ceremonies such as weddings or funerals.
Also included are such things as social distance.
Other aspects are so far below the surface that they are hard to recognize. We may see evidence of these aspects, but we usually can't pinpoint them precisely and usually don't have a clue where they came from.
They are hard to define even for our own culture because we take them in with our mother's language. This might include such things as:
how we encode and retrieve information
What is justice?
Music?
Proper parenting?
Beauty or ugliness?
What meaning is attached to "teaching" stories?
What does being well educated mean?
What constitutes status?
OTHER ISSUES INCLUDE
-DIFFERENT ASSUMPTIONS
-USE OF LANGUAGE
-INAPPROPRIATE DELIVERY MEDIUM
-CULTURAL SPECIFICITY
Communication
Miscommunication across cultural lines is usually the most important cause of cross-cultural problems in multinational cos.. Miscommunication can have several sources, including:
• differences in body language or gestures. The same gesture can have different meanings in different parts of the world. For example, Bulgarians shake their heads up and down to mean no. In addition, the way people count on their fingers is not universal: The Chinese count from one to ten on one hand, and eight is displayed by extending the thumb and the finger next to it. The same gesture is interpreted as meaning two in France and as pointing a gun in North America.
• different meanings for the same word. Like gestures, words can have different meanings or connotations in different parts of the world. The French word "char" means Army tank in France and car in Quebec. The word "exciting" has different connotations in British English and in North American English. While North American executives talk about "exciting challenges" repeatedly, British executives use this word to describe only children’s activities (children do exciting things in England, not executives).
• different assumptions made in the same situation. The same event can be interpreted many different ways depending on where one comes from. For example, although the sight of a black cat is considered a lucky event in Britain, it is considered unlucky in many other countries. Dragons are viewed positively in China, but negatively in Europe and North America.
These examples illustrate dissimilarities between cultures that are both large and simple in the sense that they focus on a single cultural aspect that keeps the same meaning regardless of context. As a result, such variations in communication will often be identified on the spot. By contrast, subtle or complex differences are often identified much later in the communication process, when corrective action requires considerable effort and money. Sometimes, this realization takes place so late that there is not enough time to address it, resulting in a missed deadline.
In extreme cases, miscommunication can lead to casualties. For example, a few years ago, a plane crash in the northeastern United States was caused--at least in part--by miscommunication between the pilot and air traffic controller. The plane was running short on fuel. But somehow the pilot did not manage to communicate the urgency of the situation to the air traffic controller, who put the plane on a holding pattern because of airport congestion. The plane then crashed when it ran out of fuel.
Approaches to Problem Solving
The approaches used by engineers of different cultural backgrounds to tackle the same technical problem are likely to differ widely. The type of approach used to solve engineering problems is often a reflection of what is emphasized in educational curricula leading to engineering degrees in various countries. In France and Greece, for example, engineers tend to emphasize theoretical or mathematical approaches over experimental or numerical ones. Other countries, such as Canada and the United States, tend to favor experimental or numerical approaches.
Although there is no absolute "right way" to approach technical problems, issues are likely to arise when engineers with different inclinations work together to solve them.
On a practical basis, the approaches used by engineers in different countries can also depend on the types of resources available. For example, high labour costs and the availability of skilled workers make process automation and the use of heavy equipment valuable in developed countries, while using large numbers of unskilled workers may be a preferred approach in some developing countries.
Cross-cultural Differences & Engineering Firms
Cross-cultural issues also arise at the organizational level, because companies in different countries organize their daily business differently. Some of the most noticeable differences include the:
• relative hierarchy of departments. The relative power of the various departments within a corporation is often a function of the country where the corporation has its headquarters. For example, the manufacturing departments of German-based companies have influence over their marketing and sales counterparts that many Canadian and American manufacturing departments can only dream of. German manufacturing departments are often able to limit the number of products offered to a few options, thereby optimizing production and improving the quality of the products offered. By contrast, Canadian and American manufacturing departments tend to follow the lead of marketing and sales departments, which tend to favour a larger number of product options since this increases the probability of attracting a broader group of customers.
These differences in the way products are manufactured and marketed create the need for different approaches to selling products and services. The same type of argument cannot be used to win customers in North America and Germany – whether through sales presentations or general marketing efforts. While North American customers look for flexibility and response speed in the products and services they purchase, German customers want durability, reliability, and quality.
• way information is shared and distributed. The way information moves within a company varies significantly from country to country. For example, in Germany, the flow of information tends to be fairly compartmentalized. Information flows within departments along hierarchical lines, and does not flow easily within a given hierarchical level or from department to department. In addition, Germans tend to share information with only those people they believe need to know the information. In Canadian companies, information tends to move within departments and to cross departmental boundaries more freely. It also tends to flow along the lines of communication networks used by individual employees. As a result, when working with German engineers as suppliers, partners or customers, Canadian engineers are likely to receive less information than they would generally expect. A Canadian engineer supplying products or services to a German company may not receive all of the information he or she believes is necessary to fulfill orders or complete projects on time, resulting in either missed deadlines or incomplete orders.
• hiring process. Cross-cultural differences are fairly significant in this area. For example, people interviewed for positions in France will be asked personal questions that are considered illegal in Canada, such as their age, marital status and number of children, while German interviewers routinely ask candidates for the profession of their parents.
More importantly, there are significant differences in the types of skills that companies in different countries look for in candidates. In France, for example, large corporations expect their engineers to work for them throughout much of their careers. They therefore tend to hire graduate engineers who appear to have long-term potential and create jobs for these engineers. As a result, large French companies tend to emphasize specific technical knowledge less and soft skills more than Canadian ones.
HOW TO MANAGE CROSS CULTURAL ISSUES
Here are a few tips that will help avoid miscommunication:
• Clarify: When in doubt, ask; if not, ask anyway. It’s important to ensure that your foreign colleagues have understood everything you meant to say and nothing else. Ask them to feed you back what you have told them in their own words. This will help you discover and address any major misunderstandings.
• Get into the details: Although it’s often tempting to agree on general principles and leave details to further discussions for brevity’s sake, this can create major problems at later stages. Indeed, an agreement on general principles may turn out to be empty, if it is not tested through negotiation on the finer details.
• Summarize: The time taken to summarize the decisions made during a meeting and to issue minutes to all participants is often a good investment. It helps to prevent future challenges of decisions reached at meetings and to ensure that action items agreed to at meetings are actually implemented.
• Simplify: Use simple words that are easily understood and be consistent. Using synonyms can confuse your non-Canadian counterparts unnecessarily, particularly if they are not native English speakers. For similar reasons, technical jargon should be avoided where possible and explained clearly when it must be used.
Cross-cultural training organizations can also shorten the learning curve by delivering training to companies in a timely and targeted fashion. The necessary cross-cultural information should be shared with all employees involved in international ventures, rather than being limited to those who have already had experience with them. Cross-cultural training organizations are experts in the area of cross-cultural relationships and can provide training on many topics, including how to:
• do business in a given country or region;
• make presentations in a given country of region;
• select the right people for international assignments;
• prepare employees for expatriate assignments; and
• improve the productivity of multinational teams.
*BUILDING A SHARED CULTURE
*BUILDING AN UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE
*IDENTIFY / USE THE RICH POINTS IN EACH CULTURE.
*CONCENTRATE ON THE THINGS YOU KNOW.
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS FOOD PRACTICES
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS DRESS PRACTICES
*SHOWING PATIENCE ALWAYS
*SHOWING GOOD MANNER ALWAYS
*SHOWING SENSE OF HUMOR ALWAYS
*SHOWING TOLERANCE ALWAYS
*SHOWING RESPECT ALWAYS
I think i ahve cleared your doubts....
Regards
Ankit
09869851356
From India, Mumbai
393THE CROSS-CULTURAL ISSUES IN HRD
For our purposes let's define culture as the way in which each of us is programmed to behave in the environment. Cultures are like icebergs; some features are apparent to anyone not in a fog, while others are deeply hidden. Above-the-surface features include overt behaviors:
how people -
dress
eat
walk
talk
relate to one another
conduct themselves during public ceremonies such as weddings or funerals.
Also included are such things as social distance.
Other aspects are so far below the surface that they are hard to recognize. We may see evidence of these aspects, but we usually can't pinpoint them precisely and usually don't have a clue where they came from.
They are hard to define even for our own culture because we take them in with our mother's language. This might include such things as:
how we encode and retrieve information
What is justice?
Music?
Proper parenting?
Beauty or ugliness?
What meaning is attached to "teaching" stories?
What does being well educated mean?
What constitutes status?
OTHER ISSUES INCLUDE
-DIFFERENT ASSUMPTIONS
-USE OF LANGUAGE
-INAPPROPRIATE DELIVERY MEDIUM
-CULTURAL SPECIFICITY
Communication
Miscommunication across cultural lines is usually the most important cause of cross-cultural problems in multinational cos.. Miscommunication can have several sources, including:
• differences in body language or gestures. The same gesture can have different meanings in different parts of the world. For example, Bulgarians shake their heads up and down to mean no. In addition, the way people count on their fingers is not universal: The Chinese count from one to ten on one hand, and eight is displayed by extending the thumb and the finger next to it. The same gesture is interpreted as meaning two in France and as pointing a gun in North America.
• different meanings for the same word. Like gestures, words can have different meanings or connotations in different parts of the world. The French word "char" means Army tank in France and car in Quebec. The word "exciting" has different connotations in British English and in North American English. While North American executives talk about "exciting challenges" repeatedly, British executives use this word to describe only children’s activities (children do exciting things in England, not executives).
• different assumptions made in the same situation. The same event can be interpreted many different ways depending on where one comes from. For example, although the sight of a black cat is considered a lucky event in Britain, it is considered unlucky in many other countries. Dragons are viewed positively in China, but negatively in Europe and North America.
These examples illustrate dissimilarities between cultures that are both large and simple in the sense that they focus on a single cultural aspect that keeps the same meaning regardless of context. As a result, such variations in communication will often be identified on the spot. By contrast, subtle or complex differences are often identified much later in the communication process, when corrective action requires considerable effort and money. Sometimes, this realization takes place so late that there is not enough time to address it, resulting in a missed deadline.
In extreme cases, miscommunication can lead to casualties. For example, a few years ago, a plane crash in the northeastern United States was caused--at least in part--by miscommunication between the pilot and air traffic controller. The plane was running short on fuel. But somehow the pilot did not manage to communicate the urgency of the situation to the air traffic controller, who put the plane on a holding pattern because of airport congestion. The plane then crashed when it ran out of fuel.
Approaches to Problem Solving
The approaches used by engineers of different cultural backgrounds to tackle the same technical problem are likely to differ widely. The type of approach used to solve engineering problems is often a reflection of what is emphasized in educational curricula leading to engineering degrees in various countries. In France and Greece, for example, engineers tend to emphasize theoretical or mathematical approaches over experimental or numerical ones. Other countries, such as Canada and the United States, tend to favor experimental or numerical approaches.
Although there is no absolute "right way" to approach technical problems, issues are likely to arise when engineers with different inclinations work together to solve them.
On a practical basis, the approaches used by engineers in different countries can also depend on the types of resources available. For example, high labour costs and the availability of skilled workers make process automation and the use of heavy equipment valuable in developed countries, while using large numbers of unskilled workers may be a preferred approach in some developing countries.
Cross-cultural Differences & Engineering Firms
Cross-cultural issues also arise at the organizational level, because companies in different countries organize their daily business differently. Some of the most noticeable differences include the:
• relative hierarchy of departments. The relative power of the various departments within a corporation is often a function of the country where the corporation has its headquarters. For example, the manufacturing departments of German-based companies have influence over their marketing and sales counterparts that many Canadian and American manufacturing departments can only dream of. German manufacturing departments are often able to limit the number of products offered to a few options, thereby optimizing production and improving the quality of the products offered. By contrast, Canadian and American manufacturing departments tend to follow the lead of marketing and sales departments, which tend to favour a larger number of product options since this increases the probability of attracting a broader group of customers.
These differences in the way products are manufactured and marketed create the need for different approaches to selling products and services. The same type of argument cannot be used to win customers in North America and Germany – whether through sales presentations or general marketing efforts. While North American customers look for flexibility and response speed in the products and services they purchase, German customers want durability, reliability, and quality.
• way information is shared and distributed. The way information moves within a company varies significantly from country to country. For example, in Germany, the flow of information tends to be fairly compartmentalized. Information flows within departments along hierarchical lines, and does not flow easily within a given hierarchical level or from department to department. In addition, Germans tend to share information with only those people they believe need to know the information. In Canadian companies, information tends to move within departments and to cross departmental boundaries more freely. It also tends to flow along the lines of communication networks used by individual employees. As a result, when working with German engineers as suppliers, partners or customers, Canadian engineers are likely to receive less information than they would generally expect. A Canadian engineer supplying products or services to a German company may not receive all of the information he or she believes is necessary to fulfill orders or complete projects on time, resulting in either missed deadlines or incomplete orders.
• hiring process. Cross-cultural differences are fairly significant in this area. For example, people interviewed for positions in France will be asked personal questions that are considered illegal in Canada, such as their age, marital status and number of children, while German interviewers routinely ask candidates for the profession of their parents.
More importantly, there are significant differences in the types of skills that companies in different countries look for in candidates. In France, for example, large corporations expect their engineers to work for them throughout much of their careers. They therefore tend to hire graduate engineers who appear to have long-term potential and create jobs for these engineers. As a result, large French companies tend to emphasize specific technical knowledge less and soft skills more than Canadian ones.
HOW TO MANAGE CROSS CULTURAL ISSUES
Here are a few tips that will help avoid miscommunication:
• Clarify: When in doubt, ask; if not, ask anyway. It’s important to ensure that your foreign colleagues have understood everything you meant to say and nothing else. Ask them to feed you back what you have told them in their own words. This will help you discover and address any major misunderstandings.
• Get into the details: Although it’s often tempting to agree on general principles and leave details to further discussions for brevity’s sake, this can create major problems at later stages. Indeed, an agreement on general principles may turn out to be empty, if it is not tested through negotiation on the finer details.
• Summarize: The time taken to summarize the decisions made during a meeting and to issue minutes to all participants is often a good investment. It helps to prevent future challenges of decisions reached at meetings and to ensure that action items agreed to at meetings are actually implemented.
• Simplify: Use simple words that are easily understood and be consistent. Using synonyms can confuse your non-Canadian counterparts unnecessarily, particularly if they are not native English speakers. For similar reasons, technical jargon should be avoided where possible and explained clearly when it must be used.
Cross-cultural training organizations can also shorten the learning curve by delivering training to companies in a timely and targeted fashion. The necessary cross-cultural information should be shared with all employees involved in international ventures, rather than being limited to those who have already had experience with them. Cross-cultural training organizations are experts in the area of cross-cultural relationships and can provide training on many topics, including how to:
• do business in a given country or region;
• make presentations in a given country of region;
• select the right people for international assignments;
• prepare employees for expatriate assignments; and
• improve the productivity of multinational teams.
*BUILDING A SHARED CULTURE
*BUILDING AN UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE
*IDENTIFY / USE THE RICH POINTS IN EACH CULTURE.
*CONCENTRATE ON THE THINGS YOU KNOW.
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS FOOD PRACTICES
*UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS DRESS PRACTICES
*SHOWING PATIENCE ALWAYS
*SHOWING GOOD MANNER ALWAYS
*SHOWING SENSE OF HUMOR ALWAYS
*SHOWING TOLERANCE ALWAYS
*SHOWING RESPECT ALWAYS
I think i ahve cleared your doubts....
Regards
Ankit
09869851356
From India, Mumbai
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