Organisational behavior and National and Organisational culture

Organizational behavior:

This module learned in class talks about human behavior and the behavior inside the organizations, in this topic we study the introduction of human behavior.

The human behavior is based in two perspectives, one is the internal perspective that is the feelings and values that characterize a person, like: thoughts, feelings, experiences and needs, and another external perspective that are the events that influence the person in his internal perspectives.

The external perspectives are for example the organizations, and organizations have an organizational behavior that is influenced by the human behavior of the people that belong to this organization. This organizational behavior is based in psychology, sociology, engineering, anthropology, management and medicine, to analyze the factors that influence people and their behavior, such as: Competitive business environment, Globalization, Multiculturalism, Diversity and Rising ethical and moral standards.

The organizations can be formal or informal: The formal organizations are the ones that have a group of goals, objectives, to define the way that employees should act inside the organization. The informal organizations are the combination of values, beliefs, attitudes and feelings that determine the way the employees of the organization actually behave.

The organizations can also be categorized as Clock-work or Snake-Pit, the Clock-Work organization is the one that analyze the persons as a part of the organization, with an order established and easy to handle, and the Snake Pit is the type of organization that is very complex, difficult to handle.

National and Organizational Culture:

National Culture: Is the culture of a specific territory this culture is characterized by values, goals assumptions, attitudes, social structure, religion, Personal Communications, Body language and Education that.

Organizational Culture: Is the mixture of the national culture with the organizations, that generate a new language to interpret the behavior an language of the combination of the national culture and the organization rules and procedures.

As Helen Deresky say: “The culture of a society comprises the shared values, understandings, and goals that are learned from earlier generations, imposed by present members of a society, and passed on to succeeding generations. This shared outlook results, in large part, in common attitudes, codes of conduct and expectations that subconsciously guide and control certain norms of behavior”

References:

Handbook for international management research - Betty Jane Punnett,Oded Shenka


Questions:

1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use 2 hypothetical but realistic situations - or real ones - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. you may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.

Uncertainly Avoidance

This Cultural dimension applied to a business and organizational behavior is very significant in the way persons act and the risks that they take and hoe the manage them, for example:

• In a financial organization that manage stocks and decisions have a risk involved a person that works in the decision making about were they are going to invest to money to guarantee a profit and there is the possibility to loss a lot of money, a person must have some uncertainty avoidance to risks to take this kind of decisions, this dimension is often a personality that is acquired depending from the culture they been grown, a person with low Uncertainly Avoidance is unable to take a risk, and in a financial organization risks must be taken to achieve a goal.

• Organizations that are involved with new technology must have high uncertainly avoidance to risk of the approval of the market, for example when NINTENDO release the Nintendo WII they change the way people play video games with out knowing if it would have the market approval and taking the risk of doing it.

2.
All the organizations have their own corporate culture because in every organization there are rules, protocols and procedures that make people who work in the organization act and work in a determinate way, this simple and traditional rules that any organization in the world have, influence the behavior and the way people work and interact inside the organization, this is because this rules and procedures are applicable in every working day actions, and are the standards that if you work in that place you will acquire those procedures and this will influence the way you behave inside de organization. For example if inside the company the relation boss-employee is strong a rigid, it means there is a lot of power distance between persons in the chain of command, so the actions a decisions and communication will be difficult and strong inside the organization because employees in some way are scared of presenting their work to their bosses and the interrelation will be very little, so employees will only work by goals and always thinking in if the boss will be agree in what they are doing. Another important situation that is very common to happen in a high power distance relation is that employees aren’t able to present new ideas or projects that can be beneficial for the organization, making very difficult to apply new ideas. This example can show as how an organization can have an internal culture that influence the people inside it.

Corporate culture is also influenced by the culture of the place the organization is situated, for example a organization that has many divisions in different parts of the world and they have similar rules, the divisions of the different places may be affected by the external culture of the city, country, raze, way of thinking, etc, of the place the division is situated and that influence people in the organization and finally the organizational culture.

Organizational culture can be modified, I could be modified if the rules, protocols, procedures, work direction, group recreations, and relations inside are stimulated or changed in any way; this will change the ambient of work and it will reflect in the behavior of people inside the organization.

An organization must be aware of the cultural influences of the region were is situated, and how the organizational values can affect people in the common work labor, because if the organization only think in the importance of their values and rules it will have problems or lower results, making a crash between the employees region culture and believes and the values and rules of the organization. For example, an organization in the middle east must be aware of how important is the religion to the people, and if the organization don’t pay attention to this and apply a rule that employees cant waste time in other thing than working, this organization is going to have a crash between culture an inside organization rules.