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HW 6: CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE
Introduction
A good culture is an important factor in a successful business. If a company has a good culture, it can significantly affect not only the employee’s performance, but the performance of the company as a whole. Most companies these days already have a defined culture. For example, Wal-Mart’s culture is that they strive for excellence by having “everyday low prices.” They set their culture of excellence and then work as a team to achieve that. With FedEx, it is “quality driven management,” meaning that FedEx’s main focus is on conducting management that drives high quality. There are many different concepts/values of culture that will be discussed in this paper: individualism vs. collectivism, power
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For example, in many Asian cultures, it is considered best practice if everyone understood their hierarchy in society and behaved accordingly. Chinese business culture dictates what exactly one should call their superiors, and any variation of this is considered rude and disrespectful. Supporters of power distance believe that the lower must always obey the higher and the higher must be the one to protect the lower. However, in today’s society is it not enough to be a low power distance leader or a high power distance leader. It is important to have flexibility in your ability to manage up and down the cultural scale (Meyer, …show more content…
& Bachrach, D. 2015, p. 114). Cultures who adopt low certainty avoidance usually tend to be more receptive to change versus cultures who adopt high certainty avoidance. People in the high certainty cultures tend to shy away from innovation and follow a more “by the rules” type approach and are afraid of change. For example, say a manager was working on a new strategy for the entry of a new software. A recent survey stated that there is only a 55% probability of success. A manager with low certainty avoidance (manager 1) will want to go ahead and introduce this software to the market despite the 55% chance, while a high certainty avoidance manager (manager 2) will not risk introducing the new software to the market to play it safe. While manager 1 risks introducing his product to the market for the sake of innovation, manager 2 would rather wait until the market becomes more volatile and the success chance returns a higher probability.
Achievement vs. Nurturing Orientation Achievement vs nurturing orientation, also known as ‘Masculinity vs Feminity,’ is a competitive versus cooperative view of conducting business/working with people. Achievement oriented people tend to be more goal driven and competitive. Whereas, nurturing oriented people are more easy going, and enjoy working alongside other people (‘OB Mod 2a—Personality
Each organization big or small has its own values, ways of doing things and assumption that it operates in. The principles and ethics that exist in each of these companies are the baseline through which the company operates its affairs. This is what can be called as that organization’s culture. The culture in existence has an impact on the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency (Keyton, 2011). The basis of setting the most appropriate culture of a company is not only to move or increase the profitability but also to make the stakeholders happy and satisfied. One aspect of that is the employee or the human resource the firm who put their expertise in the firm and add a bit of creativity and innovativeness to move the products. Chick-Fil-A operates in a competitive industry thus it requires all the stakeholders.
Just as there are cultures in larger human society, there seem to be cultures within organizations. These cultures are similar to societal cultures. They are shared, communicated through symbols, and passed down from generation to generation of employees. Many definitions of organizational culture have been proposed. Most of them agree that there are several levels of culture and that these levels differ in terms of their visibility and their ability to be changed.
As we learn from the case study, the Lincoln Electric Company is the largest global manufacturer of machines for welding, which are used in all kinds of construction projects. This means that the company has a large global presence and many employees, so its culture affects thousands of its workers. Even though it is now 2014, the company still has a large market share and very satisfied employees, so clearly the culture leaves employees satisfied and motivates them to work hard for the company.
The first of the four dimension of Hofstede’s theory of national culture is power distance. Hofstede stated that, ‘the essential issue involved, to which different societies have found different solutions, is human inequality’ (1980; 92). An outstanding aspect of inequality is the amount of power each individual exercises or can apply over others with power being illustrated as the amount in which an individual is able to impact other individual’s thoughts and performance (Hofstede, 2015). Within societies, inequality in power is expected. This inequality in power is typically characterized in hierarchical employer-employee relationships. Power distance, is the degree that less powerful members of organizations inside a nation anticipate and
Organizational cultural is the system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members, while organizational structure is an expression of social and economic principles of hierarchy and specialization (Kinicki, 2015). Both the culture and the structure of an organization are important things for management to understand in order to successfully set and achieve an organization’s goals. Companies who excel in highly competitive fields can attribute their successful economic performance to a cohesive corporate culture that increases competiveness and profitability. This culture is best utilized in an organization that has the necessary structure to allow its employees to coordinate their
Chapter sixteen in our textbook highlights the benefits of organizational culture and what it can do for any company with a strong culture perspective. In fact chapter sixteen-three(a) speaks widely on how a strong culture perspective shapes any organization up well enough to perform better than any of its competitors who do not balance any organizational culture. If not mistaken after viewing SAS institute case they are well on track with facilitating a high performance organization culture. First, SAS institute motivate all employees to become goal alignment in their field of work. This is where they all share the common goal to get their work done. In one of the excerpts taken away from this case, an employee- friendly benefits summary expresses the statement “If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the company, they will make a difference to the company.” “SAS Institute’s founders set out to create the kind of workplace where employees would enjoy spending time. And even though the workforce continues to grow year after year, it’s still the kind of place where people enjoy working.” Clearly highlighted from this statement that SAS Institute is mainly ran off of a fit perspective. Which argues that a culture is only as good as it fits the industry. Allowing a good blueprint or set up will
Femininity index. Masculinity vs. femininity (MAS): In this dimension, masculinity is defined as “a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material rewards for success.” Its counterpart represents “a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life.” Women in the respective societies tend to display different values. In feminine societies, they share modest and caring views equally with men. In more masculine societies, women are more emphatic and competitive, but notably less emphatic than the men. In other words, they still recognize a gap between male and female values. This dimension is frequently viewed as taboo in highly masculine societies.
Culture is “a system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organisation and guides the behaviour of its members” (Schermerhorn et al. 2011). It plays an important role in any organisation. For instance, in Woolworths we can se...
In such a highly competitive environment, success is defined by winning and being the best in a competitive environment. This system of competition is usually inculcated in school where students or pupils are ranked based on performance. The candidate who ranks top is considered the best or a winner. A high score is therefore masculinity and a low score is femininity. A low score under this dimension means that the society values caring for others. Emphasis is given on the overall quality of life as a sign of progress instead of standing out from the rest. While a high score indicates an underlying motivation to be the best, femininity is the desire to achieve good results for the sake or for the betterment of everyone. Australia scores 61 percent on this dimension and Pakistan 50 percent. Compared to Pakistan, Australia is a masculine society. In Australia, therefore the value system is based on being the best or demonstrating personal competence even if doing that is harmful for the society or group. The winner in Australia takes it all. The opposite is true in Pakistan, where the value system is based on group interest instead of pursuing personal glory. The ability to work with others is valued in Pakistan, but in Australia, what matters is personal achievement and successes. In case of conflict at work, the goal of solving the conflict is to resolve good working relation at work of foster
Organisational culture is one of the most valuable assets of an organization. Many studies states that the culture is one of the key elements that benefits the performance and affects the success of the company (Kerr & Slocum 2005). This can be measured by income of the company, and market share. Also, an appropriate culture within the society can bring advantages to the company which helps to perform with the de...
It represents the distribution of emotional roles between the genders. Masculine cultures are valued as competitiveness, assertiveness, materialism, ambition and power. In contrast, femininity cultures are inclined to relationships and quality of life. Masculinity culture is more obvious in larger organization as the management is more decisive and aggressive, thus, it shows a relatively lower share of working women in professional jobs. In femininity organization, the employees work in order to live and prefer leisure time than money. The resolution of conflict in masculinity is letting the strongest win but in femininity, the employees solve conflict in a harmonious way by compromising and
The first national culture dimension to be identified is the measurement of power distance. This can be defined as the degree of inequality among people built upon what the population of that country accepts as normal. In countries with high power distance like China, individuals are more likely to accept differences in authority or inequality. Management are inclined to be dictatorial, making autocratic and paternalistic decisions, with their subordinates remaining faithful and obedient to them at all times. Often these societies or institutions possess business structures that are typified by close control over all operations. Organisation structures tend to be tall hierarchies with numerous levels within a formal setting. One of the reasons that can be identified for the acceptance of this type of authority in China is derived from thousands of years of political centralisation, which tends to result in a tradition of obedience.
According to Sledge, Miles, and Coppage (2008) power distance is “the degree to which control and influence are distributed unequally in society” (p. 1670). In a country with a high power distance employees would not feel comfortable voicing their opinions or disagreeing with their managers. Empowering employees would not work well because employees would be scared to take actions on their own. Employees would feel more comfortable with structure and strict procedures. In countries with low power distance managers could benefit from empowering employees. Employees are free to voice their opinions and develop and express new ideas or plans. Empowerment would motivate employees more in a country with low power distance.
If a company try to enter in a foreign market, what can not be avoided is the culture differences. According to Greet Hofstede 's Cultural Dimensions, there are five dimensions of culture, which are power/distance(PD), individualism(IDV), masculinity(MAS), uncertainty/avoidance index(UAI), long term orientation(LTO). PD is the extent to which the members of organizations have less power who accept and expect that the unequal power. It suggests that a level
...nity coincidently, could be employing femininity. Femininity deals with notions of people being modest, caring and nurturing. Teamwork and the way in which goals are achieved are addressed. Harmony is created in feminine cultures which in turn help organizations achieve their goals better, and more efficiently. However femininity must not be taken up to quickly, as some masculine ideas are needed to make sure that at the end of the day, the organization does not forget its goals and what it has to achieve. In South Africa due to various employment laws, more and more women are becoming a part of the mining industry, the mining charter states that at least 10 % of a company’s workforce should be women, spread over a variety of occupations within the mine. So in this field masculinity and femininity is being fused which is a good thing.