Africa

In this occasion we are going to study the social system of values and thoughts that is practiced in South Africa and it is known Ubuntu.  The reference article is: Building Competitive Advantage from Ubuntu: Management lessons from South Africa by Mzamo P. Mangaliso.

According with the author’s definition Ubuntu is “humaneness-a pervasive spirit of caring and community, harmony and hospitality, respect and responsiveness- that individuals and groups display for one another”. The social attitude of most African population is oriented towards the Ubuntu values that mainly state “a person becomes a person only through his relationship with and recognition by others”, this conception gives us an idea of how important is the unity and the kinship lies for the Ubuntu followers in the development of their lives.

The society uses the Ubuntu notions to interpret problems that need to be solved and as a reference point to take positions or make judgments about the fair actions and the unfair ones. This article also states that practice of Ubuntu values in the corporate field could reach a sustainable competitive advantage for those companies, who consider their employees as valuable elements. This analysis makes a brief description of how interact the Ubuntu statements with key variables of the corporate environment.

Relation with Others: the Ubuntu driving norms are reciprocity, suppression of self-interest and the virtue of symbiosis. People like to be treated as members of one single family because this means that they are going to be treated with respect, dignity, humility and compassion, and these attitudes encourage workers to have a higher commitment with the organization’s performance. Under Ubuntu statements, it is well seen that relatives work together in the same workplace, because it provides an emotional and mental support for the employees. If the kinship ties at the workplace generate harmony and commitment among employees, the managers should take them into account in the elaboration of recruitment policies. The African employees are eager to contribute in the results of their work team, that’s why is commonly shared among them the promotion of cooperation and competitiveness.

Languages and communication: from Ubuntu perspective the communication has a social purpose to establish and reinforce the relationship. Unity and common understanding are more important than the accuracy and efficiency of the language, so in order to encourage a participative environment where employees can fully develop their potential, companies are proving spaces for participation and self- expression, all these efforts are oriented to increase the productivity of the workers.

Decision making: this process has a circular and inclusive dynamic; this means that different perspectives are considered interesting and valuable for the solution of problems. Diversity of ideas is encouraged in the corporate field. Consensus is a very important issue, to such extent that is preferable to make a decision that is supported by everyone than a right decision which nobody recognizes it.

Time: the vision of time for Ubuntu followers states that time is a reference element for communities. It is seen as “an unified structure that emphasizes interdependence, share heritage, regularity and congruity”.

Productivity and Efficiency: from Ubuntu perspective it is appropriate to work for optimization rather than maximization, this means that an optimized solution leads most favored outcomes in the long term and covers a wider percentage of stakeholders.

Age: the age, the wisdom and the experience are highly valued in the South African companies, that’s why maturity is an important criteria for selecting workers into leadership positions.

Beliefs: companies should adopt a position of flexibility and willingness to learn local cultures in order to create among employees an environment of mutual respect a sense of identity with the company.

The proposed question is: What is Ubuntu? How was it applied to support the merging process of the companies? (3 examples)

Ubuntu is a philosophy which states “that a man just can find his own humanity when he helps others to find theirs”. The others give us the recognition we need to feel us part of the community and this is a reciprocal dynamic. This philosophy fosters the unity and the harmony among people. The Ubuntu statements were used as a reference point to guide the changes that the merger entails, so the management team uses the drums as symbolic elements that emphasize the importance of communication and loyalty, as the National Marketing Manager of the African Miners Bank, Tom Miles said “the community moved to the sound of the drum, they were unified by moving to the same rhythm”.

Another action was that management team told stories to the employees in order they get a better understanding of the changes that need to be done in key business areas such as growth, security, equality, etc. These simple stories were oriented according to the Ubuntu values. Also the employees received a booklet that explained the Ubuntu culture campaign and gave ideas of how employees could contribute with the development and success of the campaign.

Images taken from:

www.mothertongues.com

www.freestylemovement.com

South Asia

In this chapter we are going to analyze some of the main components of the leadership behavior of the sales managers from the Indian industrial companies. Based on the text: Leadership behavior and organizational commitment: a comparative study of American and Indian salespersons by Sanjeev Agarwal, Thomas E DeCarlo and Shyam B.Vyas, we can observe the similarities and differences of leadership behavior between Indian sales managers and American sales managers.

Due to the great importance of the role played by the sales force in the company's performance, it is appropriate to know how those leadership behavioral factors can affect the employees commitment with the company. The two cultural variables that were studied in this research were power distance and individualism. This research shows how these variables interact with the "chief-subordinate" relationship.

To get a better understanding of the findings of this research is necessary to explain two important elements of leadership behavior: consideration and initiation of structure."Consideration is the degree to which managers develop a work climate that promotes subordinates' trust and respect for subordinates' ideas and feelings". Initiation of structure refers to the degree in which managers define the roles of their subordinates in job- related activities, specify procedures and assign tasks.

Another important factor related with the analysis of this research is the role stress, which is composed by two elements: the role ambiguity and the role conflict, the first one is defined as the lack of role clarity that an employee must face when there is no authority who can lead him at the moment to perform certain task. The second one represents the degree of conflict that an employee can find from different conflicting demands that come from internal actors (managers) and external actors (customers).

According to the study, the Indian managerial culture shows a high power distance and low individualism (HPD/LI), just the opposite case shows the American managerial culture (LPD/HI). Based on the previous statements, the researchers made some hypothesis about how do these elements interact between each other according with their respective cultural background. The main outcomes of this research show the following conclusions. In the relationship between initiation of structure, role ambiguity and role conflict, exist a negative correlation in both countries with more strength in the American case, the Indian sales persons don't perceive a decrease of role ambiguity as their managers develop an initiation of structure because the Indian sales persons are strongly dependent of their manager and are conform with this/her leadership behavior , so they take for granted the paternalistic and authoritarian management style. They are prone to accept the manager behavior, meanwhile the Americans value any type of help that their supervisors could offer them, because the American sales persons are used to fix daily work problems by themselves.

Regarding the other relations between consideration and role stress (negative correlation), between consideration and organizational commitment (positive correlation) and between role ambiguity and organizational commitment (negative correlation), both countries have shown similar perspectives and managerial tendencies, the reason could attribute to the fact that sales persons from both countries have received similar sales training programs, have received high level of education and all of them have been exposed to the standardization process that the globalization brings, so this entails to a convergence in the leadership behavior of the sales managers. 

Proposed Question:

1. What are the key challenges for the future development of the outsourcing industry in India. Please provide examples from the case and recommendation to address such challenges.

The workers in the outsourcing sector face a lot of stress due to their demanding activities, most of them characterized by high levels of time efficiency and monotonous tasks. Most Indian employees in the outsourcing industry are college educated, so they have a motivation of being promoted in the company, unfortunately the employees perceive the jobs in this industry as short length activities, this means this sector doesn't  provide a long term career for the employees. In spite of the high wages that employees earn in this industry, the lack of opportunities of professional development is one of the main reasons of the high turnover rate presented  in this sector. Another challenge is the lack of qualified and talented workers to fulfill the strategic charges that this sector requires.

The CAMS human resource area tries to reduce the unconformity and stress levels among employees through certain activities focused on  "bonding and sharing" experiences and knowledge. Also the company complies with statutory requirements in oder that its employees can feel that they have steady jobs.The most advisable action to face all the previous challenges is to develop strategies to increase retention rates such as the implementation of policies that foster the professional promotion among employees.

Images taken from:

- www.altergroup.com

- www.webketu.com

Text: Agarwal, Sanjeev, Thomas E DeCarlo, Shyam B. Vyas, & Source:. 1999. Leadership Behavior and Organizational Commitment: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Salespersons. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(4): 727-43.

Blog Recommendation

In this occasion I would like to suggest you visit the following blog http://oyc2010.blogspot.com/ from my classmate Carlos Torres, because I find it very interesting due to the several dynamic tools that he uses to exemplify the cultural topics; photos, cases and relevant videos are shown making the presentation more attractive. Also he makes a comprehensive analysis of the different units, in his blog he integrates the opinion of several authors in order to build a broader perspective of the issues that we are studying. He raises analytical questions in order to foster a critic thought among his readers.

China

According to the article: Is Guanxi still working, while chinese MNCs go global? The case of Taiwanese MNCs in the UK by Chun Lisa Chen  and Mark Easter by-Smith, Guanxi is a chinese social system based on the relationships between individuals whose ultimately goal is to achieve harmony in the society, in order to get this harmony the relation should be conducted with a cooperative behavior, reciprocity and a high commitment with the others persons.

The Guanxi was inspired by some Confucianism statements that "urging individuals to adapt to the collective to control their emotions, to avoid conflict and to maintain inner harmony. Social relations should be conducted in such a way that everybody’s “face” is maintained and face is a key component in the dynamics of guanxi". The activity of Guanxi is based on a face- to face communication and the trust is the main value that sustains all the system's dynamics.

The Guanxi is applied in both fields, the social and the business one, the latter has two models of Guanxi: the horizontal Guanxi and the vertical Guanxi. The taiwanese business culture works through the construction of a contacts network, it is very common that a business manager personally knows his employees and his business contacts, in most of the cases the new employees or business contacts should be introduced by someone whom the manager trusts, this is known as Renqing and "is kind of a resource in Chinese society,
which means that an individual can introduce someone to another person in the course of social exchange".

In the horizontal Guanxi the manager works to develop and strength business relationships through the socialization with his customers, the construction of mutual trust and the constant communication. This horizontal approach let the manager get a bigger competitiveness in the market, because this model allows him to get information about business oportunities and provides him resources related to social capital, as an example of this case, the IT taiwanese MNCs, who decided to internationalize their operations afirm that they chose to locate their subsidiaries in UK, because for them is very important to work close to their most important customers.

The vertical Guanxi is related to human resource management, where it states the importance of personal relationships between the employer and the employee. The vertical Guanxi concept is highlighted in the following paragraph "Taiwanese manager gives face to the supervisor, he expects that the supervisor will obey the rules (obligation) and follow his orders (obedience)...Mianzi entails providing empathy with others and avoiding speech or actions that cause embarrassment to others. Where face is saved, emotional feelings of attachment are developed".

 This article summarizes a research made with some taiwanese MNCs , most of them from the IT sector and the financial sector, these companies develop an entry strategy to the UK market based on the Guanxi approach, but they have found some difficulties to implement this model, the Guanxi approach is not seen as a good alternative to use in an employees' recruitment, because the Guanxi could affect the company's efficiency. Also the UK employees or business contacts are not too commited with this approach.

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. Discuss in your blog the relevance of the Guanxi and the existence of chinese business networks as supporting factor to the internationalization process of chinese companies.

For me there are many valuable elements of the Guanxi approach to take into consideration when an international manager arranges to build a business relationship with his customers, I think those elements such as harmony, communication and trust could promote a higher level of cooperation and this issue could be translated in bigger and better developments of projects. In the same way I think the Guanxi approach could ease the daily activities inside a firm, because all the employees (from the top to the bottom) are caring about how they are going to interact with their partners in order to avoid emotional conflicts or disrespectful behaviors and certainly this could be a good productivity indicator because the employees could work in a comfortable labor environment.

The existence of chinese networks abroad could be very useful for companies, which are going to undertake an internationalization process, these networks could support the development of new contacts, gather market information, and give important ideas about how the beginner company should consolidate its strategic plan in this new market, however no company should depend entirely to these business networks because the international market requires a broader perspective of interaction among employees, managers and customers, many of the business contacts, whom the manager is going to know don't belong to the same business network and many of them don't even  share his culture, so he has to be ready to face this challenge.

Images taken from:

http://guanxithegame.bureauvenhuizen.com/wordpress/

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090321_Guanxi_Magazine

East Asia

In this chapter we are going to analyze a cultural case from East Asia: the management convergences and divergences between korean firms and japanese firms. Our guide text for the analysis is: "What makes management style similar and distinct across borders? growth, experience and culture in korean and japanese firms" by Jangho Lee, Thomas W. Roehl and Soonkyoo Choe. 

According to the authors' definition "the convergence assumes that as countries develop, management systems will converge to a model found in developed countries. The other, the comparative cultural approach (divergence), is based on the assumption that a wider set of cultural norms in each society is a powerful force for differentiation".

When firms get a bigger size or when they undertake international activities, the management system turns into a more sophisticated practice, that is why many firms try to imitate the management styles from bigger companies, which have had similar management problems and their outcomes were successful, this means both driving forces (a bigger size and international activities) make the management styles tend to convergence to a single model, the most developed and the most successful. So the firms that are in this situation must face two kinds of pressure: a domestic pressure  that tries to  preserve culturally determined forms of management and the pressure from international markets that encourages firms to conform with the conventional international norms, under these circumstances,  it has become a real challenge to keep an equilibrium position between these two approaches.

As firms became larger and internationalized, the main statements of the different management styles tend to converge to the most developed model, however the dimensions that are directly tied with some aspects of the national culture tend to lag this change and sometimes to avoid it.

This article also compares the similarities and differences between the korean management style and the japanese management style. Many authors state that korean model is almost a copy of the japanese model, the reason is the years of japanese occupation into the korean territory, this situation allowed the direct influence of japanese traditions among the korean people, however there are some essential cultural differences between both management styles, for example the koreans give more importance to the blood ties, that's why is very common to see korean companies managed by an entire family, also the koreans state a more individualistic orientation and are so respectful for the hierarchical differences, so these features are reflected in their management style, the korean managers tend to be authoritarian and do not give the enough recognition to their employees to take into account their suggestions, the employment system is characterized by the frequent employees turn over, there is not a real stability in the jobs. Besides the korean government has a high involvement in the companies' performance, it helps them through credit, foreign exchange rationing and supervising the private investment plans.

Meanwhile the japanese culture has other features that differentiate its management style, the japanese state a group orientation, that's why is very important for them the employees' ideas, the consensus and the loyalty. A strength of their manufacturing process is the flexibility to adapt the product to the changing market requirements, this shows a sinchronized connection between the product design area and the production. Also the japanese firms are eager to introduce new technology in their manufacturing process. The japanese firms tend to establish a solid and long- term partnership with their suppliers in order to consolidate a competitive advantage based on the mutual trust, direct communication, flexibility and cooperation to develop joint projects. In the sales management area, it has always been important the market share and all those strategies which focus on the growth of the market participation, for example the pricing strategies.

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. In the case of korean and japanese management styles, do you think they tend to converge or diverge? Are they likely to converge to each other or to other management style?

Definitively both management styles tend to converge to each other because they share many elements of a common cultural background and some deep beliefs and values related to religion and social principles such as the harmony promoted by the Confucianism. Also the companies from both countries have reached large sizes and have established an international orientation in their operations, this means that management styles are going to adopt all the roles or parameters that fit better with the international market requirements. In my opinion  it is more feasible that korean firms learn from the management strategies of the japanese companies because the latter ones have more experience in the international market  and because some korean firms have as their main competitors japanese firms, which manufacture the same product that they do, so there is no  better way to learn than observing your most successful rivals.

Images taken from:

http://home.scarlet.be/catalin.gelu/soloinstruments.html

http://www.hytec-electronics.co.uk/ContactUs.aspx

Expatriate assignments and Overseas Experiences

In this chapter we are going to analyze the features of the EA (expatiate assignment) and the OE (overseas experience) as social phenomenons that can change or strongly influence the individual's career and the companies' performance, the guide article of this topic is: Expatriate Assignment vs Overseas Experiences:  Contrasting models of international human resource development by Kerr Inkson, Judith Pringle, Michael B. Arthur and Sean Barry.

 According to the authors' definition EA consists in: "In Expatriate Assignment (EA), the initiative for the international experience comes primarily from a company which operates internationally. A position may become available in a subsidiary outside the country in which the company is based. The job requires both knowledge of the company's strategy, procedures, etc., and the ability to work and live successfully in a foreign environment ... In Overseas Experience (OE), the initiative for the international experience
comes from the individual. Typically, he or she will save money to bankroll the trip, resign from work, and set off overseas autonomously".

The authors highlight that in an open economy the OE could bring more benefits and better outcomes for the company in which the individual is going to work after his return to home, and for the sector in which his job belongs. The reason is the knowledge and the social skills that he got during his international experience could be more useful and relevant when the individual was the only one who takes the decision for himself based on his real motivations to explore and learn overseas.

The persons who have had an OE develop many valuable skills such as flexibility, a broader perspective and a critic thought, these skills could be applied in any type of company and could contribute to develop a more accurate insight of the international market conditions.

At the other hand, the EA is traditionally seen as a human resource management (HRM) issue, where this area selects, prepares the expatriate workers, gives them support overseas and plan their future repatriation, but this approach has been criticized by many authors because they think this concept is very limited, the authors think that EA could not offer to the company a complete feedback of the knowledge the repatriate worker got overseas and it is because he just focuses on pursue the mandated company's goals, he does not mind neither get a deeper knowledge of the host culture nor develop personal skills that could help him to become a competitive and high qualified worker.

Some repatriate workers have complained about the uncertainty they face when they come back to the company, because they do not find an adequate position to use their new skills, after their return they become less employees and more project partners, this means they require more interaction and exchange of benefits with the company.

The authors suggest that the HRM area should modify its structures and procedures in order to get better benefits from the overseas experiences of their employees. The EA should be seen as a non-linear dynamic and not as a process with predictable effects derived from the HRM policies, so the HRM should left behind the traditional hierarchical careers model and redefine the employment principles in order to encourage the exchange of implicit knowledge and skills. One thing that HRM area should take into account is that nowadays expatriate workers are changing their wishes, for them to be promoted to a higher position in the company is becoming a lesser important issue, they are more interested in enrich their careers through the experiences obtained in the different sectors and companies in which they have worked. Another particular feature is some expatriate workers are interested to have their own business.

As a conclusion I want to highlight an authors' paragraph where they talk about how the HRM should performance:"The focus in HRM must move from, "How do we plan, prepare, and protect our people so that EA doesn't cause them to leave?" to "What are the benefits we seek from this exchange and how do we ensure that we get these benefits?"

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. Explain one of the causes for expatriate assignment failure and provide three recommendations to address it.

The main failure that expatriate assignment presents that the initiative to work abroad comes from the company instead the individual, so it is not a personal choice and the worker does not have the enough motivation either learn different ways of thinking nor explore different cultures.

The suggested actions to improve this situation are:

1. The HRM area should redefine their employment principles and make more flexible the EA selection process in order the employees who undertake this process are really motivated to have this international experience.

2. The HRM should take into account those persons who have had an overseas experience in the recruitment for specific intercultural jobs due to they have different social skills that have been developed in their previous international experiences.

3.Improve the feedback process in order that both the company and the repatriate workers have benefits with this knowledge transmition, the company should assure that relevant information has been transmitted and the repatriate worker becomes a project partner in order to use and take advantage of their new skills.

Photos taken from: http://www.giantexperiences.org/

Migrant Workers

The analysis of this chapter is about the migrant workers and we are going to focus on the Canada case, our guide text is a David Verbeeten article: The past and future of immigration in Canada.

Canada is a country with a rich immigration history, the lower population levels in this territory has always been a big concern for the canadian public authorities.

The author states an interesting definition of how the immigration dynamic works:"Immigration will as always, though, be the product of "push" and "pull' factors abroad and at home".

In the canadian case, during the nineteenth century the net migration inflows presented a negative rate, indeed for that time Canada was not an attractive target for the european migrants, Canada was perceived as a remote, cold and backward territory. There is no doubt that Canada did not have a strong pull factor to attract immigrants. Besides the canadian authorities had a declared preference for a certain kind of immigrants, people with the following features: white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant, that is, British or America. The policies did not help to settle the canadian territoty.

However this reality changed during the twentieth century, Canada had become an attractive and promising place to live. This transformation was the result of the progressive economic boom, almost all the economic sectors presented a high performance and a dynamic growth, so the canadian economy needed a bigger and qualified workforce to sustain this growth. Besides the previous fact the economic and political situation from overseas territories did not assure stability for the citizens, so these situation became push factors, it means these reasons encouraged people to immigrate to better destinies, in this case Canada.

Regarding the migration policies, the selecting criteria based on the race and religion was eliminated and replaced by a "point system", "which emphasized the skills, education and training of the independent immigrant". These measures were more consistent with the conditions and necessities of this period. Canada encouraged the immigration inflows through more flexible entry requirements, an example of this initiative is that canadian government eased the entry of dependents, family members and refugees in its intent to foster the family reunification. 

Nowadays Canada is still facing a migration challenge, because the migration trends have demonstrated that many immigrants return to their countries when those states obtained a certain development grade or a higher richness level. Also the migrant workers constantly move to those countries, where they can receive a higher payment for their jobs. So the dilemma that Canada faces could be summarized in this way:

Canada wants to have under control the immigration inflows in order to not damage the welfare system with the entry of "vulnerable" people, but at the same time the authorities should keep creating incentives or pull factors to not lose the qualified migrant workers and to avoid the brain drain of national citizens.

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. Do you think the point system in Canada is meant to protect the country's sovereignty? or is it just a deliberated form of discrimination? why?

I think the point system is a selecting method that defines which persons are the right immigrants according to the Canada's expectations. I think the country has the right to decide which people are going to live in the territory and off course the public authorities are going to show preference for those persons, who have professional skills because those are the persons who can contribute to the country's richness. I do not see this selecting method as a discrimination criteria because its rules and requirements are not so strict, indeed they allow the entry of many people, who perhaps do not have the educational background that the country would wish they have it. This is the case of dependents, family members or refugees in order to pursue the family reunification objective.

Image taken from: http://www.chinaexpat.com/blog/ernie/2008/12/22/china-s-ten-toughest-jobs.html