Cross-Cultural Management Exam Notes

Teamwork and Social Loafing

• Individuals exert less effort in group tasks when individual contributions are unclear - social loafing.
• Less likely to occur in challenging tasks or among friends/women.
• Collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) exhibit less social loafing, sometimes social striving (performing better for the group).
• Cultural factors influence training program effectiveness.

Cultural Diversity in Teams

• Increased diversity enhances creativity but poses challenges (stereotyping, miscommunication).
• Strategies to reduce friction: promote team identity, clarify tasks.
• Benefits of cultural diversity: broader viewpoints, deeper understanding, increased creativity, improved problem-solving.
• Managers should use explicit communication, highlight contributions, value diversity and merit, consider perspectives, and ensure understanding.

Creativity and Innovation

• Western cultures prioritize novelty in creativity, while East Asian cultures emphasize usefulness.
• Optimal teams combine individualistic and collectivist strengths to foster both novelty and usefulness.
• Multicultural teams excel in creativity and innovation due to diverse perspectives.

Leadership

• Effective leaders motivate, direct, enable, manage, and inspire.
• Different cultures have distinct perceptions of leadership (e.g., Lao Tzu's invisible leader vs. John Quincy Adams' inspiring leader).
• American CEOs are highly paid compared to global counterparts.

GLOBE Project: Cross-Cultural Leadership

• Identified universally desirable leadership qualities: charismatic/value-based and team-oriented.
• Universally undesirable qualities included being uncooperative, egocentric, and dictatorial.
• Culturally dependent leadership dimensions: humane-oriented, autonomous, participative, and self-protective.
• Effective leadership matches the desired style of the culture.

Cultural Traits and Influences on Leadership

• Rational persuasion is effective in American management but may provoke disagreements in hierarchical cultures like China.
• Paternalistic leadership is appreciated in Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern contexts.
• Chinese managers use guanxi (personal relationships) for social influence.
• In the Arab world, wasta (connections) facilitates trust.
• Brazilian leaders use jeitinho to navigate hierarchies.
• Japanese decisions are made through the ringi system (consensus).
• Effective global leaders are tolerant of ambiguity, non-judgmental, flexible, self-confident, and optimistic.

Culture and Justice

• Fairness is universal, but its interpretation varies.
• Three principles of distributive justice: need, equality, and equity.
• Individualistic cultures favor equity (performance-based), while collectivistic societies favor equality (seniority-based).
• Applying the principle of need is common in modern societies (e.g., healthcare, welfare).
• Variations in distributive justice: American favor equity, while Indians favor need.

Competition vs. Cooperation

• Competitive exchanges are zero-sum, while cooperative exchanges are non-zero-sum.
• Collectivistic cultures emphasize interpersonal harmony and group success, promoting cooperative strategies.
• Individualistic cultures focus on task orientation and individual success, leading to competitive behavior.

Negotiation and Compromise

• Negotiation strategies: Confrontational/adversarial vs. compromising.
• Collectivistic cultures seek compromises, while individualistic cultures use adversarial tactics.
• East Asian negotiators represent broad stakeholders, complicating decision-making.
• American negotiators have more independent decision-making.

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions

• Culture is the collective programming of the mind.
• Framework by Inkeles and Levinson focuses on relation to authority, conception of self, and primary conflicts.
• Hofstede's six dimensions: power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long- vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint.

Cultural Dimensions Research

• GLOBE Project expanded Hofstede’s dimensions to nine.
• Schwartz’s Values identified seven dimensions correlated with Hofstede’s.
• Organizational culture dimensions: process-oriented vs. results-oriented, job-oriented vs. employee-oriented, professional vs. parochial, open vs. closed systems, tight vs. loose control, pragmatic vs. normative.

Diversity Policies and Minority Leadership

• Minority leadership is essential for diverse workplaces to enhance decision-making, creativity, and reduce prejudice.
• Cultural interventions, like diversity policies, can stimulate minority leadership by boosting self-perceptions and goals.
• Multiculturalism and valuing individual differences increase leadership confidence among minorities.

Diversity Perspectives and Intercultural Communication

• Organizational diversity perspectives (motivation and rationale) shape intercultural communication and work outcomes.
• One-dimensional frameworks measure attitudes toward diversity (positive to negative).
• Two-dimensional frameworks include multicultural vs. colorblind and business case vs. moral perspectives.
• Multidimensional frameworks identify moral, market, and innovation rationales.
• Positive diversity perspectives correlate with open communication and inclusion, while negative perspectives lead to exclusion and conflict.