论文写作 The International Market Scenarios Of Expanding Organisations

No two places are the same for an organization to expand into. It has often been observed in the international market scenarios that organizations aiming to expand in new places often prove to be a failure if they do not pay heed to the specific needs of the environment they are approaching. Acting responsive and adaptive becomes mandatory for such organizations. Culture hence becomes one of the most important dictating factors for an organization in the process of framing its plans and policies to setup and manage business and also to lure and satisfy customers keeping in mind the needs of the target group. There have been extensive research works done in the field aiming at exploring the importance and effect of culture on an organizations policies and performance. The present paper an attempt has been made to describe two such theories namely, Schwartz value inventory and Hofstede's cultural dimensions, compare and contrast between the two and realte real world concepts to them.

Introduction:

With the changing global economic scenario companies often decide to expand into new and hitherto unexplored places. For an organization, expanding is not a very simple task. It is a complex job involving many decision making processes. Furthermore, all these decisions and policies have to be framed keeping in mind the needs of the new environment they are entering. Thus, culture of the new place then becomes a deciding factor. It has been observed over the years that organizations successfully adapting to the new environments have succeeded or at the least not failed due to failure in adapting to the new culture. But, the organizations which have not been responsive have invariably failed. Such is the importance of culture for an organization's performance. Among many theories attempting to understand and analyze cultural dimensions across dimensions, those propounded by Hofstede and Schwartz hold an important place. In the present paper, we shall analyze and compare both the theories. In the second part, we shall see the applicability of the same in organizations. The study aims to clear the ambiguity about when and where to apply these theories. The following paragraphs describe Hofstede's and Schwartz's theories in brief.

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions:

In order to be successful in various countries it is extremely crucial for organizations to observe and understand their respective cultures. In Hofstede's words, "Differences in ethics reflect cultural variations" (Hofstede 1991). Hofstede, through his theory helps in understanding culture through understanding the various dimensions of culture. According to him, culture is the "collective programming of the mind". What sets humans apart from computers, he says, is the quality of straying from the standard programmed behavior. He goes on to say that human beings have a set of mental programs peculiar to each individual and that they do not reveal these to other individuals. It is these programs that set the individuals apart and define their personalities. In his theory, Hofstede, has described five dimensions of culture. They are described below.

Power Index (pdi) is the first dimension of culture. It represents the acceptability of the less powerful members of the society of the fact that power is distributed unequally in the society. Hofstede says that although power and inequality form the basis of and are characteristic of every human society, they exist in varying degrees and forms in various societies. In order for the international organizations to understand this, it is very important for them to visit the places and study the cultures. For instance, while people in Sri Lanka and Africa are more apt for the power index, the Americans are mush less so. Individualism (IDV), according to Hofstede is the second dimension. This aspect refers to the tendency of human beings to look only after themselves or their immediate families (Hofstede 1980, 1991). Western countries are known to be more prone to this aspect. Collectivist culture, in contrast is known to be the opposite of individualistic culture, it is individualistic dimension reversed according to Hofstede. It is a culture where people are markedly more dependent on fellow beings and society and more emphasis is laid on thoroughly believing and practicing religion. People scoring more in collectivist culture score less in individualistic one and vice versa. The attribution of duties and roles to ales and females in a society is the third dimension viz Masculinity. If the society rests more power with the males it is termed as a masculine society, as the term suggests and feminine if is the opposite. Again, feminine society is the reverse of masculine society, so the society can either me masculine or feminine based upon the amount of power it attributes to each group. A prediction o the general behavior of the society can be made based upon the observation of its feminine or masculine behavior as there are striking differences between the working pattern and manners of men and women. While men are known to be more aggressive, risk-taking and aggressive in their behavior, women prefer to be more meticulous, co-operative and toned down their work.

The fourth dimension is Uncertainty avoidance. This represents the society's forbearance towards uncertainty and haziness. Those societies are termed as 'flexible' who do not take a lot of steps to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity indicating that they would be more open to changes in contrast to those who would act rigorously to shun changes. This feature is very much useful in predicting a particular region for businesses to grow. The fifth and last dimension put forth by Hofstede is Confucian, named after the Chinese philosopher named Confucius. This dimension was used to compare the orientation of people from 23 countries of the world. Short term and long term orientations were tested with certain values attached with each orientation. People with short term orientation were believed to be more tilted towards accomplishing social obligations and respecting tradition among other things. Groups that were long tern oriented laid more importance on values like perseverance and frugality.

Hofstede's theory proved to be significant in analyzing and understanding the culture of a place in more ways than one. A country's culture can be examined from various angles using Hofstede's theory by studying the type of people and type of society and its readiness to adapt to changes. The theory is based on assumption which more often than not, falls true. It was a set of questionnaires submitted by students and was taken from authentic sources, for instance, IBM employees (Stephan Dahl-2001).

论文写作 The International Market Scenarios Of Expanding Organisations