The role of culture in technology management research: National Character and Cultural Distance frameworks

Management research exploring the role of national culture on topics such as management style, strategy, and firm performance can broadly be divided into two categories. Studies that attempt to compare and contrast the impact of culture on organizations in different cultures have been labeled as “National Character” studies. These studies attempt to determine how specific cultural attributes affect actions, strategies and performance. The second type of culture study focuses on the interactions between two firms embedded in different national cultures. These studies look at the impact of “Cultural Distance” on the ability of organizations to successfully interact. It is this latter area which is becoming increasingly important to technology management in the “Flat World” of the 21st Century. Research propositions for technology management for each of the two frameworks are developed.     

Systems thinking and business process redesign: An application to the beer game

Managers are regrettably ignorant of the fact that their business organisations are ‘designable’. But recently, concepts such as business re-engineering and systems thinking, coupled with advances in methods of quantifying business systems, have enabled managers to scrutinise their business systems afresh.Ann van Ackere, Erik Reimer Larsen and John Morecroft use a well-known logistical system — the ‘beer game’ — to illustrate these re-engineering concepts and tools in a multi-stage production and distribution system involving a single brand of beer. This business game raises the fundamental question of why it is so difficult to match shipments and factory production to consumer demand.The authors conclude that such re-design concepts and tools can be applied successfully to full-scale business problems. Systems thinking, modelling and continuous time simulation can provide the framework for carrying the design process from mapping all the way through to redesign. The most effective CEOs of the future will be those who are competent to create corporate design in which employees are allowed to succeed.     

Adaptive culture and product/service innovation outcomes

Organizational culture has been used and defined extensively as a relatively stable, enduring set of values, beliefs, assumptions, and symbols shared in the organization. Based on this conception, researchers have studied the relationship between different types of cultures and innovation outcomes. In contrast to this static perspective, the dynamic systems perspective views culture as not necessarily determined by internalized and shared values. Rather, as cultures are constantly receiving environmental pressures that require continuous adaptation, they have an inherent attribute of change, which has been called adaptive culture. We focus on adaptive culture as an antecedent of product/service innovation outcomes, since innovations require a progressive upgrading of shared values, assumptions, and beliefs. Based on the thinking and acting schema, we propose two determinants of adaptive culture that help us to understand how culture can evolve to facilitate product/service innovation outcomes. We propose that structural flexibility and reflexive learning positively affect product/service innovation outcomes by creating an adaptive culture. A 190-company sample is used to analyze the theoretical model variables’ relationship to a culture that can change its values to improve product/service innovation outcomes. The results support the theoretical model, and lead to some implications for the management of culture.     

Business in Japan and the United States of America; some implications for management science and operations research

Significant differences exist between United States-managed and Japanese-managed organizations.

• •• U.S. firms are epitomized by surplus behaviors (emphasis on profits and returns on assets, investments and equity).
• •• Japanese firms are characterized by scarcity behaviors (emphasis on husbanding resources and reduction of waste).
• •• Management Science has been used in the generally surplus-oriented Western-world. Western values drive its application, or the decision not to apply it.
• •• Management Science can work effectively within a scarce-resource framework, as well as within a surplus-resource framework.
• •• Management Science has been barely used by the Japanese, although they might use it effectively. A possible explanation is that the Japanese culture is pervasive and consistent in dealing with scarcity.
• •• Management Science, when combined with a severe distaste for waste, may enable Western-world management to develop better strategies to achieve Global Competitiveness.
• •• The scarcity-oriented value system elevates the importance of people as resources. Management Science, to be effective, must do the same.

     

Some aspects of inflation and published accounts

Company accounts are at present drafted in an uneasy compromise between different objectives. It is not yet generally appreciated that no single figure or set of figures can sum up the whole financial state of an enterprise. The basic tools of financial management are short and long-run cash projections and the reports of actual flows which monitor these. The problem in drafting annual accounts so that they will help shareholders and others to make decisions is that financial reality requires a look into the future and this in turn calls for subjective judgement. But the more realistic are the accounts in this sense, the less susceptible are they to objective audit. Inflation adds a further level of distortion, but the effects of this can be brought out in a relatively simple way by making corrections based on movements in a general index of prices. Although there are considerable practical difficulties it seems likely that a more fundamental improvement would be the introduction of a ‘current value’ or modified ‘replacement cost’ approach to ordinary accounting in addition to (but not in place of) the general index inflation correction.     

Intercultural differences in issue interpretation: Effects of emotions and framing

The interpretation of strategic issues as threats or opportunities influences strategic actions and firm performance. The extant research identifies cultural differences as an important driver of strategic issue interpretation. Specifically, research from a socio-cognitive perspective shows that differences in cognitive styles across cultures lead to differences in the interpretation of strategic issues by East Asian and Western managers. Based on cross-cultural research on emotions and decision-making, we argue that cultural affordances also lead to differences in emotional experiences and behavioral consequences across cultures which affect the strategic issue interpretation of managers from East Asian and Western cultures in different ways. We theorize that Chinese managers are similarly affected by fear and happiness in their strategic issue interpretation, while German managers are only affected by fear. For German managers, this effect is moderated by issue framing, which is not the case for Chinese managers. A vignette-based decision experiment involving 194 German and 174 Chinese executives offers support for our hypotheses. These findings have implications for cross-cultural research on strategic issue interpretation and for cross-cultural research on strategic decision-making in general.     

Management revolution in the age of the new economy

In the age of the new economy a management has evolved, including management ideology, learning organization, team work, incentive of all the staff, cooperative competition, and strategic alliances. The concept of this new management did not appear all of a sudden. It evolved from the traditional, profound thought of management culture and the traditional Chinese management culture in particular. The principles of the new economy are in accord with ancient Eastern philosophy. Management culture in the East and that in the West have been gradually integrated with one another. The Eastern management culture has undergone a period of spreading to the West and returning to the East. Management scholars throughout the world have noted and paid attention to the traditional Chinese management culture, whose quintessence is human orientation, moral priority, and behavioral cultivation by self-discipline (or ren wei wei ren). It is not only a new way of thinking about modern management behavior but also a manifestation of the successful adoption of the philosophical thoughts of ancient China into the age of networks.     

Safety sans Frontières: An International Safety Culture Model

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high‐risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country‐level data on Hofstede's five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long‐term orientation). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice.     

EC anti-dumping laws as a barrier to trade

Anti-dumping (AD) laws in the EC are intended to establish ‘fairness’ between trading partners. But there are negative effects, in particular, firms with weak firm specific advantages can shelter behind AD laws; they can even follow shelter-based strategies and lobby for protection.Alan Rugman and Michael Gestrin explain how shelter can be used as a management strategy, and how AD laws have grown up in the EC since 1979 to affect sectors of industry and geographic regions. They conclude by pointing out that a shelter-based strategy by a strong firm can undermine the very competitive pressures in its home market that made it internationally competitive in the first place.     

The Role of Culture as Driver of Quality Management and Performance: Infrastructure Versus Core Quality Practices*

Increasingly, scholars and practitioners recognize the importance of understanding organizational culture when implementing operations management practices. This study investigates the relationships among organizational culture, infrastructure and core quality management practices, and manufacturing performance using two alternative models. Understanding these relationships is important because culture can provide insight into the context dependence of quality management practices and shed light on the mixed results of past studies concerning the link between quality management and performance. Analysis of manufacturing plants from six countries indicates that organizational culture has a stronger influence on infrastructure quality management practices than on core quality management practices, regardless of whether the plants are located in Eastern or Western countries. In addition, infrastructure quality management practices have a significant effect on manufacturing performance. These results contribute to the quality management literature by emphasizing the importance of accounting for culture when making decisions to implement quality management practices to achieve a performance advantage. Finally, we also contribute to the literature on the culture–performance linkage by finding support for a direct link between culture and manufacturing performance.     

Is the professional self-managing or is there really a need for professional management?

Is the professional self-managing or is there really a need for professional management? The answer to that question is in both cases: “Yes”. The professional is largely responsible for directing his own activities. Managers must take due account of this by applying rules and procedures on a modest scale and aiming to achieve maximum harmonisation of the objectives of the organisation and the personal objectives of the people working there. If they can do that then there can be said to be professional management.The difficulty in managing professionals is the difficulty in steering the force and the direction of the thinking of others who are — by nature - often differently-minded: professionals have generally followed a specialised, usually scientific education, enjoy a high social standing, like to “perform solo”, have a dislike of management both in the active and the passive sense and the output of their work is difficult for others to evaluate because there is generally no clear consensus on the definition of performance indicators.Managing professionals could be considered as managing brain capacity and that calls for more than just good sense. A manager of a group of professionals can even sometimes experience a great deal of professional pleasure in his work if he is capable of acting as a specialised generalist, pacemaker and coach for his or her team.     

The interactive relationship of corporate culture and knowledge management: a review

Knowledge management and corporate culture are two managerial concepts that are often connected in articles, especially in knowledge management literature. It is, however, a rather complex relationship, as evidenced by the existence of various theoretical and empirical contributions as well as various implicit assumptions. This review therefore, aims at systemizing and clarifying different approaches towards the relationship between intraorganizational knowledge management and corporate culture. I identified three different perspectives on this topic. The first perspective regards cultural values as knowledge resources. The second approach deals with the characteristics of “knowledge cultures” that are regarded as a favorable antecedents for knowledge management. The third view assumes a different causal relationship because knowledge management initiatives can also modify cultural assumptions if employees are subject to positive experiences. This paper describes all three, discusses their underlying assumptions, and shows their implications for theory and practice. By comparing the three perspectives, this systematic review reveals that they are based on different theories and therefore, their results cannot be easily combined. Our conclusions show that being aware of these differences and providing a common theoretical basis opens up avenues for future research in this field.     

Implementing lean information management: the case study of an automotive company

Worldwide modern organisation is continuously crossed by a great number of information but frequently information is not accurate, the needed information is not generated or it cannot be easily identified and, more, the information cannot flow through the whole organisation. This paper proposes the application of lean thinking in the field of information management. In the areas of manufacturing and production, the lean thinking is well known but usually the importance of a holistic approach is neglected and the improvement involves only the production and logistic areas and there is not a specific focus on the lean information management. We applied lean thinking to information management in order to improve the performance of an automotive company. We analysed the as-is company condition, we identified the present muda and we introduced the necessary changes. Then, we verified the modification efficiency through the calculation of a performance index. The paper proposes an interesting and exhaustive case of lean information management application and it highlights the possible improvement of such approach. The results of this study are not sector specific: they are not only applicable by other automotive industries, but they can also be extended to many other sectors.     

Globalization and cultural change in international business research

The four articles in this special issue invite the reader to reflect on the impact of global business on values, ideas, and ethics around the world. In this comment, I advance four arguments that question assumptions regarding the impact of global business on culture. First, national cultures are not homogeneous and the impact of globalization on heterogeneous cultures is not easily predicted. Second, culture is not the same as cultural practice. The spread of practice does not equate with the spread of culture. Third, globalization does not represent a rupture with the past but is a continuation of prior trends. Fourth, globalization is only one of many processes involved in cultural change. By questioning these assumptions, we can build on the work of the authors of this special issue in order to develop a more accurate understanding of cultural change around the world.     

Culture and Crisis Communication: Nestle India's Maggi Noodles Case

Extant theoretical paradigms in the field of crisis communication are organization-centric and do not adequately recognize the role of culture. The purpose of this essay is to analyze a crisis faced by Nestle India using the framework of global public relations which defines culture broadly to include political, economic, media, societal, and activist cultures. Our analysis revealed that a multinational corporation with over a century of presence in the country struggled to align itself to the complexities of the cultures of the host country. In the case of Nestle India, whereas environmental variables such as political economy and Westernization of urban India boosted the growth of its instant noodles, the multinational also struggled to cope with the rise of media corporatization, activist pressure and the vagaries of regulatory enforcement not to speak of cultural nationalism. It is evident that Nestlé's crisis response was governed more by its traditional corporate culture than by an ability to keep pace with the changing demands of its environment, leading to the amplification of an issue into a crisis. The study concludes that multinationals that ignore culture will be forced to pay a heavy price both in terms of reputation and the bottom line.     

Components supplier patterns in the UK motor industry

There has been tremendous Western interest in the ‘Japanese’ model of manufacturing, particularly in the motor industry in recent years. Western vehicle assemblers profess to be developing closer, higher trust relations with their suppliers to support practices such as just-in-time production and total quality. Comparatively little work has been carried out into the relations between first tier suppliers and their suppliers. This paper reports a study into the relations between a UK ‘first tier’ supplier to the European vehicle industry and 29 of its suppliers, and describes how the Japanese manufacturing model is making itself felt beyond the first tier suppliers.     

Accountability and value for money: a theoretical framework for the relationship in public–private partnerships

There is an implicit assumption in the UK Treasury’s publications on public-private partnerships (PPP)—also more commonly known in the United Kingdom as private finance initiative (PFI)—that accountability and value for money (VFM) are related concepts. While recent academic studies on PPP/PFI (from now on as PFI) have focused on VFM, there is a notable absence of studies exploring the ‘presumed’ relationships between accountability and VFM. Drawing on Dubnick’s (Dubnick and Romzek in American public administration, politics and the management of expectations. Macmillan, New York, 1991, Research in public administration. JAI, Greenwich, 1993; Dubnick in Public service ethics and the cultures of blame, 1996, Public sector ethics: finding and implementing values. Routledge, London, 1998, Int J Org Theory Behav 6(3):405–441, 2003, Public Perform Manage Rev 28(3):376–417, 2005; Dubnick and Justice in But can you trust them to be ethical, 2002) framework for accountability and PFI literature, we develop a research framework for exploring potential relationships between accountability and VFM in PFI projects by proposing alternative accountability cultures, processes and mechanisms for PFI. The PFI accountability model is then exposed to four criteria—warrantability, tractability, measurability and feasibility. Our preliminary interviews provide us guidance in identifying some of the cultures, processes and mechanisms indicated in our model which should enable future researchers to test not only the UK Government’s claimed relationships between accountability and VFM using more specific PFI empirical data, but also a potential relationship between accountability and performance in general.     

管理行为中的距离难题及距离管理思维

本研究的目的在于对管理行为中的距离难题进行基本的描述,为行为距离提供一种可行的度量方法,并提出相应的距离管理思维。鉴于泛函分析在距离空间描述上有一套较为科学的方法,引用了泛函分析思想来描述距离难题;考虑到行为距离影响因素的模糊性,采用了模糊评价原理来对行为距离进行度量。根据距离难题的模型描述,提出了通过认识和改变人的行为模式来根本解决距离难题的距离管理思维。     

管理与文化的关系探讨

管理与文化的关系在学术界有众多争论,二者构成一了个纠缠的“结”(com p lex)。管理学追求普适性,而文化表现特殊性,二者之结导致管理学研究出现了相应的偏差。文化在管理中的作用包括价值定位、优先选择、惯习支配、思维方式4个方面,对这4个方面的管理学研究,最终要形成超越特殊性的普适性学说。所谓中国式管理和东方管理学,正是在这一纽结上陷入了歧途。相当多的管理文化研究,实际上是管理经验总结而背离了管理学的普适要求。管理学中对文化的重视,需要回归管理学的普适性。     

The root ideas in dealing with change

Is there a prototype for dealing with change, a fixed and reliable strategy? Although the answer to this question is no, there are certain fundamental ideas that can help us think about our situations. These ideas come from a wide variety of sources, including: theories dealing with chaos and complexity; systems thinking and complex adaptive systems theory; family dynamics, and organizational development. None of these are simple ideas, easily implemented to make us masters of change. But we have to start somewhere, and the best place might well be a quick discussion of some of these fundamental ideas,