background of employees valuable in terms of managing their interactions?
How does knowledge on ‘Time orientation’ help in managing a team com-
posed of people with distinct orientations? Cross-cultural management
research knowledge is valuable because it enables us to raise implicit cultural
differences to a conscious level. Knowing about the various cultural dimen-
sions helps us to recognize cultural aspects of a situation. Once explicit, the cul-
tural differences can be investigated, talked about and understood. Situations
can be solved.
How did Annika come to a solution?During the meeting, everyone was using the word ‘rule’ and making sense
of it. Annika’s management style favors consensus, so she decided to con-
tinue the conversation separately with each group, come to a solution and
propose that solution in a second meeting. Only during the individual talks
did she realize that everyone was interpreting the word ‘rule’ differently.
These differences reminded her of a cultural dimension (Universalism versus
Particularism). She managed to make all participants clarify how they see
rules: from a strict constraint to something to be interpreted. She was thus
able to go beyond the first discussion (and the resulting frustration) that was
only on the need to have rules or not. During her second talks with the par-
ticipants, she actually discussed what rules meant for them, asking questions
such as: ‘How do you usually react to a rule? Please give me an example out-
side work’. Then, she came back to the discussion on recruitment rules and
invited people to say why they were in favor of or against rules. It appeared
that everyone wanted to keep recruitment procedures flexible. She came to
a solution by establishing ‘guiding principles’ for recruiting new trainees.
They were well accepted a week later in the management meeting.Both institutional and cultural dimensions as discussed in the first two chapters
of this section have an important impact on HRM practices in different coun-
tries. In the next three chapters we will look in some detail at how HRM is prac-
ticed in three major areas of the world: Europe, Asia and developing countries.
7 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 Discuss the various conceptions of culture reviewed in this chapter
2 What is the relationship of culture to human resource management?
3 Discuss the three frameworks and their related cultural dimensions presented in
this chapter.
Culture in Management 163