Human Resource Issues in Transcultural Organizations

Ashmita GhoshSwati V Shetty

Rituparna Srinivas

Management Practices for Business Excellence

Overview

Basic Overview of Human Resource Management

Issues in Transcultural Organizations

Case Study 1: Arte TV, France/Germany

Case study 2: Grapefruit Branding Agency

Case Study 3: Stockholm Public Dental Service

Definition:

Human Resource Management is a management function that helps managers recruit, select, train and develop members for an organization.

Organization

Operations

FinanceMarketing

Human Resource

Basic Overview of HRM•Organizations run on the people who are a part of it.

•HRM involves the application of management principles in acquisition, development, retaining and remuneration of people.

•HRM must be viewed holistically and not in isolation to other functional areas.

•HRM decisions must bolster the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations. (producing high quality products and delivering high quality services)

•Scope extends not only to business establishments but to education, healthcare, hospitality, defense and so on.

HRM

Evolution of HRM18th Century- Industrial Revolution (Textile, Steam, Iron Industries)

1913- WOMEN WELFARE OFFICERS

World War 1: Surge in the demand of products called for hiring of Women.

1920: LABOUR MANAGERS (recruitment, queries, remuneration)

1930s: PERSONNEL MANAGERS (Benefits and Allowances to motivate)

1940s: World War 2 (Personnel managers + Welfare Officers)

Evolution of HRMPost WW2: 1945-1979 EMPLOYMENT MANAGER

(motivation, promotion, morale boosting) Bargaining between Employees and Employers.

1980: Human Resource Management(present scope)

1990’s Shift in paradigm brought about in Toyota Japan.

Toyota Human Resource Management

Strict and rigorous selection and recruitment .

High level of training, especially induction training and on the job training . Team working.

Multitasking.

Better management-worker communications .

Use of quality circles and an emphasis on right first time quality.

Encouragement of employee suggestions and innovation.

Single status symbols such as common canteens and corporate uniforms.

Pioneers in HRMKautiliyas Arthashastras (4th Century B.C.)

Fredrik W Taylor (Father of Scientific Management)

BF Goldrich Company (First Company to adopt HRM policies)

Elton Mayo (Experiments)

David Guest (HRM Model)

Sakichi Toyoda

House of TATA

Models of HRM

Provide a structured approach to designing Human Resource Strategies.

The Fombrun Model

The Harvard Model

The Warwick Model

The Guest Model

The Guest Model is the most recent model and claims to be the most superior of the predecessors.

It implicates the direct relationship between HR Strategies and Financial Outcomes.

The Guest Model

HRM Strategies

HRM Practices

HR Outcomes

Behavioral Outcomes

Performance

Outcomes

Financial Outcomes

Hiring Training Appraisal

CommitmentQualityFlexibility

ProductivityQualityTurnoverAbsenteeism

Higher ROIProfits

TRANSCULTURAL ORGANISATIONS

What is transcultural organisation?

Transcultural organization defines the way in which an individual is programmed to behave in the environment.

What Is Culture• Culture is explained as a man’s medium that forms the human life of

an individual.

• Culture can also be defined as Overt behaviors eg. how people dress, eat, walk, talk ,relate to one another ,conduct themselves during public ceremonies such as weddings.

• Culture is furthermore defined as the shared value that characterize a society and lie beneath its art and architecture, clothes, food, ways of greeting and meeting, ways of working together, ways of communicating etc…

• Hofstede believes that culture is a collective programming of mind based on values. He has found four dimensions for explaining differences among cultures, namely power distance, uncertainity avoidance, individuality and masculinity.

Problems in Transcultural Organisations

•The culturally diverse person have different backgrounds and experiences and therefore they hold different perspectives and assumptions.

•The risk for tension, disagreements, and conflicts rises in a diverse workforce due to misunderstanding miscommunication, and mutual stereotyping of each others competences and contribution.

•Furthermore, the problem is different perceptions and attitudes that individuals have about the organizations diversity efforts.

Problems in transcultural organisations( cont’d…)

• communication

communication across cultural lines is really important to avoid cross cultural problems.

Some of the sources of miscommunication are :

1. Differences in body language or gestures. 2. Different meanings for the same word.

ways of avoiding miscommunication

• Some of the ways in which miscommunication can be avoided are :

• Seeking Clarification at the slightest doubt .• Understanding the details .• Summarization of the discussion after the meetings.• Using simple words that are easily understood and avoiding

unnecessary jargons.

Reasons for cross cultural issues arising at the organizational level:

1. Relative hierarchy of departments2. Way information is shared and distributed3. Significant differences in the types of skills that

companies in different countries look for in candidates

Cross-Cultural Differences & Engineering Firms

Approaches to Engineering Problem Solving

•The approaches used by engineers of different cultural backgrounds to tackle the same technical problem are likely to differ widely.

• The type of approach used to solve engineering problems is often a reflection of what is emphasized in educational curricula leading to engineering degrees in various countries. Eg…

• In France and Greece, for example, engineers tend to emphasize theoretical or mathematical approaches over experimental or numerical ones.

•Other countries, such as Canada and the United States, tend to favor experimental or numerical approaches.

Approaches to Engineering Problem Solving( cont’d)…

• There is no absolute "right way" to approach technical problems, issues are likely to arise when engineers with different inclinations work together to solve them.

• For example, high labour costs and the availability of skilled workers make process automation and the use of heavy equipment valuable in developed countries, while using large numbers of unskilled workers may be a preferred approach in some developing countries.

How Cross-Cultural organizations can help

• Can shorten the learning curve by delivering training to companies in a timely and targeted fashion.

• The necessary cross-cultural information should be shared with all employees involved in international ventures, rather than being limited to those who had experience with them.

• Cross-cultural training organizations are experts in the area of cross-cultural relationships and can provide training on many topics, including how to: 1. Do business in a given country or region.2. Make presentations in a given country of region.3. Select the right people for international assignments.4. Prepare employees for expatriate assignments; and improve the productivity of multinational teams.

How Cross-Cultural organizations can help (cont’d)…

• Building a shared culture.• Consensus agreement on important matters.• Building an understanding climate.• Identify / use the rich points in each culture.• Concentrate on the things you know.• Understanding various religious practices.• Understanding various food practices.• Understanding various dress practices.• Showing patience always.• Showing good manner always.• Showing sense of humor always.• Showing tolerance always.• Showing respect always.

Case Study -1: Arte TV, France/Germany

Background

ARTE is a European public-service cultural television channel. Its originality lays in the fact that it targets audiences from different cultural backgrounds, in particular French and German. It is composed of three entities: the headquarters in Strasbourg and two member organisations responsible for programme production and delivery: ARTE France and ARTE Deutschland.

• Together these currently provide three-quarters of ARTE’s programming in equal proportions, the remainder being provided by ARTE G.E.I.E. and broadcasters cooperating with ARTE. Some of the programmes provided by the members are not only produced in France and Germany, but also in other European countries.

• The founding fathers of ARTE believed that a joint television channel should bring French and German citizens closer on a cultural level and promote cultural integration throughout Europe. Creating a television channel for two audiences was a first in television’s history and is still an exception in the global TV market to this date.

Study

ARTE broadcasts all its programmes in French and German, and all the channel’s operations are bilingual. There is an in-house language department for translation and interpretation as, every single day, programmes have several interpreters on air (more than 2,000 interpreter-days per year).

In the process, ARTE has identified and developed special skills for TV and media interpretation, training its interpreters to become good media communicators.

As there are no similar training modules on the market, ARTE has

been asked to train staff interpreters for the European institutions, NATO, the Council of Europe and other big organisations.

Today ARTE is well established in both Germany and France, and is synonymous throughout Europe with high-quality creative broadcasting. Its leitmotif is open-mindedness towards theworld, towards new topics and new narrative forms.

Conclusions The ARTE network offers some of the most creative TV programming

to be found not only in Europe, but worldwide, with input from both the German and the French sides. It is highly creative in the strictly artistic sense, but also very creative in the manner in which it plans and operates the network.

Working in an international context, ARTE’s programmers and filmmakers are confronted every day with people from different cultural backgrounds and have to adapt to different ways of thinking, of working.

This confrontation between different worlds may sometimes be

destabilising, but in the end it’s very creative and stimulating.

Today ARTE is well established in both Germany and France and is synonymous throughout Europe with high-quality creative broadcasting. Its leitmotif is open-mindedness towards the world, towards new topics and new narrative forms.

Case Study-2 : Weber Shandwick

communication consultancy, International

Background

Weber Shandwick is a public relations/public affairs consulting company with offices in every European capital. Its services include communication programmes that are either in the local languages or in languages that can reach audiences in multiple regions. Each regional office is run by persons from that region, while the Brussels office consists of a team of 60,representing 17 different nationalities.

Despite the very similar nature of the work done in the regional offices (which are more monocultural and speak their local language plus English) there is a distinct difference in the way creativity is achieved in the Brussels office (which is multilingual and multicultural). Beyond the communication possibilities that come with a multilingual team, there is the culture that develops in a multicultural organisation.

As most of the team have travelled widely, live far from their mother land or were born into multicultural families, there is an innate understanding of how to create a third culture, the behaviours that will make it work and the benefits of having a tightly woven team. In this environment, people have more patience to listen, are slower to judge, and are curious to lean about other’s views – attributes that foster creativity.

Study

A brainstorm session on the same subject was run in two offices – a generally monolingual office and the multilingual office (Brussels). In the monolingual office, the group jumped quickly into the problem without a thorough understanding of the brief and immediately started generating potential solutions. While many interesting ideas surfaced, very few had anything to do with the actual problem.

Meanwhile the multilingual group in Brussels was still discussing the problem and, in the end, pulled together as a team with a common understanding of what needed to be achieved. While this team developed fewer ideas, the ideas it did generate were more creative and more applicable.

The multilingual group uses its variety of languages to its advantage.

As teams move through the process of innovation, they need to explain to their colleagues their understanding of the problem, the options they find and the how the solution will work.

Conclusions

Creativity requires openness, time, discussion, and permission – speaking languages and living among other cultures contributes to the mental flexibility that is required in the act of creation Working on creative projects with multilingual groups often generates new ideas in the process of translation, discussion and brainstorming.

Through the filters of translation, inevitable misunderstandings

happen and often lead to reinterpretations of the problem and better ideas being generated.

Crossing language barriers requires additional discussion, analogies and examples - these visual explanations of the situation activate people’s creative brains as they try to understand each other. So multilingual discussions generate more ideas and can result in concepts that are more thought through.

Case Study -3: Grapefruit branding agency,

Romania

Background

Romanians Marius Ursache and Stefan Liute are bilingual, having spoken English since early childhood, while their personal backgrounds exposed them intimately to the British and American cultures. Ten years ago they founded Grapefruit, a branding agency based in Iasi and Bucharest.

From the very beginning, Grapefruit worked for international clients, mainly based in English-speaking countries, providing brand identity, design and strategy services. Grapefruit is now one of Romania’s top branding agencies, employing a team of 16 in its two offices and catering to a large variety of clients.

More than half of its work, both creative and strategic, is executed and delivered in English. This language is lingua franca not only for Grapefruit’s international clients, but also for those at home. The agency is, and has always been, truly bilingual in its business communications, as are all its people, quite a few of whom are multilingual.

Study

Grapefruit helps businesses and organizations build and maintain strong brands. It does so by:

• developing brand strategies that make or keep brands relevant to their audiences

• creating brand identities and communication materials/activities that effectively reflect the underlying brand strategies

• helping clients manage their brands through planning, evaluation and training.

Grapefruit conjures up ways of bringing new brands to life, or revitalising existing ones: everything and anything from core, abstract ideas via slogans, logos and visuals to brand management plans.

All these activities are intrinsically creative, since no market or industry has viable formulas or recipes for brand success. Moreover, successfully mixing business strategy and considerations with visual or verbal artistic talent is often a complex and thoroughly creative process in its own right.

Grapefruit’s creativity has driven its continued commercial success and has generated international recognition over the years. Most recently, Grapefruit was the most widely nominated and awarded Romanian agency at Rebrand 100 (USA), Identity: Best of the Best 2007 (Russia) and Pentawards 2007 & 2008 (France).

Conclusions

Bilingualism, allied with multilingualism, has allowed Grapefruit and its founders to gain the business and professional insights they have applied to their venture since its inception. It allows all members of the company to draw on large swathes of universal culture, both classic and contemporary, that are simply less accessible in their native tongue.

This in turn has encouraged the circulation, identification, and ultimately combination and exploitation, of ideas that would have been unreachable for Grapefruit and its people, had they been monolingual.

In many respects, multilingualism has helped Grapefruit to think and act in a more global, sensitive and business-savvy way. It has been a vital part of Grapefruit’s competitive advantage and part of its influence on the people the agency interacts with.

Learning from the case studies

Inference:

These case studies demonstrate in practice, in a variety of ways, the contribution of multilingualism to creativity.

The common theme that links them is that, thanks to the multilingual and multinational composition of the teams and the ways these initiatives have been organised, all have been both innovative and successful.

Case Study

Stockholm Public Dental Service (SPDS)

Stockholm, Sweden

Company Trivia

Europe’s largest dental care company.

Public sector enterprise responsible for providing dental care to over 400,000 customers.

Annual turnover of close to 1 billion Euros.

Over 120 clinics spread across Stockholm with 2200 employees that include Doctors, Nurses and other support staff.

Company TriviaDuring the year 2001 the company was suffering from an economic deficit of more than 200 million Euros.

Mrs. Bemurdez Svankvist was appointed as the director for the company.

She had a totally unconventional way of thinking and was determined to revive the company.

Within 2 years the company was back on its feet and was able to turn its deficit into a surplus.

The corner stone for this change was the employing of culturally diverse staff.

Mrs. Bemurdez Svankvist had 3 main goals in mind.

1.Revival (turn the Deficit into a Surplus)

2.Decrease the unemployment by hiring more people.

3.Venture into untapped markets for the company.

De- Merits of a Transcultural Organization

Difficulty to predict behavior of people.

Complications concerning gender bias.

Complications concerning dignity of labor.

Prejudice against certain cultures.

Communication difficulties.

Benefits of a Transcultural Staff

Attracts best talent from all corners of the world.

More variety of ideas, suggestions and higher degree of innovation.

Multiple approaches to problem solving.

Tax financed and therefore reassuring to diverse communities.

Augment the customer base.

Increase the credibility of the Organization.

Results

The company recovered from its economic deficit with a turnover of more than 1.3 billion Euros.

The customer base of the company grew by 18%.

The attrition rate within the company reduced from 14 to 9 %.

The level of satisfaction of the employees increased.

SPDS is on its way to changing from competent to dominant in the dental care market.

People must be judged not on the basis on the color of their skin, or the beliefs in their faith but the merit of their ability and content of their character.

- Dr. Bemurdez Svankvist