Filling The Gaps

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Geert Hofstede , Cultural Dimensions:

1) Power Distance Index

2) Individualism

3) Masculinity

4)Uncertainty Avoidance Index

5) Long-Term Orientation

Just check the link and it would lead you to G. Hofstede`s web page and there you could read the explanations concerning the cultural dimensions.

I`m writing this because 1) there are still people who haven`t heard about them, although they use terms as “individualistic” country and 2) because I got to briefly explain the second one today and I could do it a bit better, so I needed some reminds

So far I have read only one article from Geert Hofstede- “Motivation, Leadership, and Organization: Do American Theories Apply Abroad?”, but I kindly recommend it to you. It was really interesting and it does not only explain how countries differ from each other, but also gives some explanation how culture affects management practices and how the latter should be adapt to a specific country in order to be more effective.

I got this inspiration a couple of days ago to write an article about corporate culture (last week at my OB/OD class we discussed the topic and where are the limits of an employee integration). Do we really need it and if yes, to what extent? Is the corporate culture sign for higher social consciousness (“we put employees first”), or isn`t it just a necessity (an easy way to attract, motivate and retain employees)?

Today’s business world doesn’t operate only with strong economics terms as it has been used till the last couple of decades and the success of a company no longer depends only on its policies toward maximizing profits and revenues. Today’s purpose of business is value creation and building a stronger longterm relationship among stakeholders- employers-employees-customers. Companies are trying to create such an atmosphere that will permit them to identify themselves as big families, places of like-minded people having the same values and beliefs. The key factor to achieve this goal is through creating unique corporate culture, but what I am asking is “Doesn’t business go too far?”.

Corporate culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature. However, the real purposes for its implementation are quite contradictory.

Earlier this year, Prof. Rosabeth Moss Kanter has published an article in Harvard Business Review called “Transforming Giants”. The focus is put on some of the biggest TNCs, the same who usually have the strongest and well-known corporate culture. One of the key messages is: “When giants transform themselves from impersonal machines into human communities, they can transform the world.” What I asked myself after reading it was “should it be this way?”. Should companies transform into human communities, is it their responsibility of making the world a better place and don`t you think that the likeness of the people involved in a company (in term of shared beliefs, values, attitudes) would become in the near future more an obstacle toward business success, than a condition for it? Another question one should ask is if the real purpose of companies with strong corporate culture is transforming the world or isn`t that just a new management tool. Even if I would like to think for a corporate culture as a sign for higher social consciousness, in my view is on the first place an easy way to attract, motivate and retain employees. Nowadays people are what differentiate companies and namely the human capital is the key strategic asset a company possesses so the main purpose of corporate culture is securing its survival on the market through policies of keeping its major source of success.

Along with the above mentioned there`s one more reason I refer to it as a necessity- the end of the hierarchy model. The power is much more spread away as it has been in mid 50s , the number of employees much higher and the cultural differences much bigger. What corporate culture does is unifying the people and secure they all understand the main purposes and values of the organization, so in any given case they would act according to company’s policies. The latte also make employees much more flexible.

One of the classic article related to CSR is “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, by Milton Friedman. As corporate culture is a part of CSR policies or it is going along with it, one could say that the policies for implementation of corporate culture is to increase a company’s profit. The rest (“making the world a better place”) is cause-related marketing.

What do you think? Do you really believe in the concept of corporate culture?

I would like to emphasis that I am not against corporate culture. I am against fake corporate culture and against corporate culture which goes too far. The effects of all nice activities companies undertake nowadays are easy to be noticed and have really great impact in the society. The question is that the same activities somehow take off the focus from the main business purpose… It`s like too show-off policies. I really could not agree that executives put people on first place, although if they want to survive, they definitely should start doing it. But not only on paper, because take whoever big TNC is, proud of its corporate culture and core values, put its name along with “scandal” in google and you would see where it would lead you. It would give you much better picture than the one from the main web page of the same company. I don`t want to say that this is always the case, but it often happens that all nice sentences a company stands for are just a new marketing campaign.

Aren`t the quality of services and products, along with good (satisfactory salary, opportunities for promotion etc) and safety conditions for work, the only things a company should take care of? Including, of course, the environmental issues. However, in my opinion that`s something a company must do anyway and it`s not related with CSR for ex.

Last thing, concerning values… Aren`t values culture-determined?

The environment we are living in it’s no longer only complicated, but complex as well. And if you ask me which are the factors that affect every side of it I would say “globalization, technological progress, environment policies and the aging society”. *In a random order.* There are of course some more issues to be taken in consideration when discussing factors` influence on the environment, but these would be my first associations. These are the ones I am finding in whatever analysis comes to my hands, doesn`t matter what is the topic and in which field it is. They all have different implications and interact with each other so summarizing them it`s rather impossible. That`s the reason why I want to share with you only one aspect of one of them -the impact of the aging society on the labour market.

First of all- what is an aging society and what are the reasons for the aging process?

According to the definition given by United Nations, when the percentage of population of people over 65 years old is more than seven percent, that society will be called “aging society”

Here are the main reasons for the aging process:
• sustained old fertility- and thus a decline in the proportion of children in the population

• a rising proportion of older people in the population, which could be due to the growing longevity

• feminization of the labour force (postponement of childbearing)- *I guess that`s somehow connected with point 1*

Now have a look at this article- Implications of population ageing for the labour market, by Sylvia Dixon, Labour Market Division, Office for National Statistics

Here are the most important points (in my opinion) concerning the implication of the process (taken from the same article where you could find more explanations):

1. Upward pressure on employers` wage costs
2. Downward pressure on levels of economic activity
3. Reduced voluntary mobility between jobs, and lower turnover within enterprises
4. An increase in involuntary job loss, especially among older workers
5. Reduced geographical mobility
6. An aging of the stock of knowledge and skills of the labor force
7. A rise in the incidence of ill health and disability within the labor force

One more document about the aging with focus on UK (plus an interesting comparison with Japan) you could find here- The changing age structure of the UK population, by Chris Smith, Cecilia Tomassini, Steve Smallwood and Mike Hawkins.

Actually during my first term this academic year I had to make quite an interesting presentation with one of my colleagues- Steffen and the above mentioned is a percent of the data we used then. The course itself was even better Cross Cultural Management in Human Resources, taught by Dr. Anna Murdoch.

The topic of the presentation was: Trends on the labour market- people, work and the progress of technology in a globilised world.

I would point out our conclusions and I hope that soon I will have some more free time to make you familiar with good books, researches, article and other resources related to the topic

Summary:

1. Technological progress causes a polarisation of jobs. There is an increasing demand both in low-paid “lousy jobs” as well as high-paid “lovely jobs”. Middling jobs decline.
2. The wage gap has increased dramatically during the last 25 years.
3. Because of aging, the labour force gets smaller and there will be an excess demand for workers.
4. Countries with highly regulated labour markets tend to have a higher unemployment rate than those without many regulations
5. Immigration is needed, there is only little impact on wages of local people.
6. Employers nowadays demand strong cognitive and interpersonal skills, employees want to sustain and improve their employability. They want to be trained.
7. Companies improve their flexibility with alternative work arrangements.
8. The labour force participation of women has never been higher than today. But women are still discriminated. They earn less money for the same work and are mainly occupied in low-skill jobs.

I hope it was interesting

Tony Robbins motivates you in 20 minutes

Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Randy Pausch and his last lecture

/ the order is random but if I were you, I would start from the last one /

*Notes on “Organizational Behavior and Organizational Design” lectures, taught by Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski (see the end of the post), Warsaw School of Economics. Have in mind that we are provided with all of the materials in power points so these are only sentences I`ve wanted to remember, questions without answers, things that should be check out etc.*

Management is contextual. There`s no a single sentence “If A, then B”- everything is changing.

What is motivation when you don`t see the employee?

“Time is money” vs “Money is time”- the changing role of the time (our major resource).

The business environment it`s not only complicated, but also complex; not only global, but globally intensely interconnected.

Change requires learning. (fast )

Knowledge differs from understanding. Understanding is beyond the knowledge.

How we learn to understand? How to go to the point we don`t think? (ex. golf players- considering the weather, the grass etc)

There are 3 levels of managerial understanding: 1) Staring at… (learning, reading, seeing etc); 2) Level of seeing; 3) Level of understanding (the underlying mechanism)

Soft knowledge- intuition, feeling, guessing. (simple intuition- close in time and place.) But then: is feeling a knowledge?

The-ever-present dream –> to know whatever is to know. The consequence- nowadays the world is full of information. We probably know less today, than yesterday. The kind of knowledge company may need in order to have success and survive may not exist yet.

To have a look at the chaos theory.

Critical dependence of initial conditions (ex. 2 leaves in a mountain stream at the same initial position- always take a different direction)

How to go from complexity to simplicity?

Children have the ability to see the nature of things; growns-up seek safe equilibrium.

Century of right side of the brain?

We should see what everybody has seen, but think what nobody has thought.

Creativity doesn`t mean the same for everyone.

“Grey revolution”

For the first time in history the society will be rather old than young. (in next 10-20 years and up)

Pension funds will be one of the major factors in the market.

The health sector would be with the highest growth rate.

Could we talk for “The end of capitalism”? (Because of the aging society and different kind of social policies needed)

Reverse mortgage

Will China become rich before getting older? (to have a look at the FT archive if I remember correctly)

Immigration is no longer enough to compensate the low fertility rate in most of the western countries and USA.

New customer majority! (55+ ; the only one customer group which will raise in numbers)

Changing of the advertisement. (ex. Dove)

The scarcest resource nowadays- the attention of the customer.

Is it good for business to divide life “at work/ at rest/ at play”? (I`m not completely sure, but should be again a title from FT)- Isn`t it better when employees think all the time for the business, even if that means to make a phone call or send an email not connected with the work itself through the working hours?

Personalization of the products in order to achieve not only the customer’s satisfaction , but to take him to the stage of perfection.

Puma: the first one to make the connection between sport and fashion.

Where is the limit of integration of an employee?

How the new technology influence privacy?

P.S. If something differs a bit from what has been said during the lectures, that means that I have “changed” it through my perception…

—————————————————————————————————-
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski (in brief):

Director of Theory of Management Department at Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)
- Director of CEMS programme at SGH
- Chairman and founder of Polish - Japanese Management Center
- Lecturer at Harvard University, Princeton University, Boston University, Sloan School, MIT, World Bank, Oxford University, Cambridge University, London School of Economics

If there would be a sentence I`ll always remember my “Network Economy” class with, this would be:

The only way a company could achieve a competitive advantage nowadays is through creating something that could not be copy!!!
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski

We are trying to find out some ideas and solutions for reaction to the fast changing environment… And almost everything we come to has 3 main characteristics: it`s on-line based , it`s giving the customer an option for personalizing it and the major source of income for the business it`s not from the main product, but from the additional ones.

What I`ve heard today was also “Traffic is the king”…

Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did.

I guess everybody who`s a bit interested in what`s happening around the world and especially in Europe, could point out the top news from the last couple of days- the Independence of Kosovo.
It`s a quite contradictory issue. Some countries (USA, France, Germany,…) recognized it, some not (Russia, …). Nobody knows where this conflict will end, although the initial idea was to bring more peace and stability in Europe.
That`s a link to an article we were discussing, taken from the FT, but as you could probably be much more curious about the topic, just type “Kosovo” in the search box and you`ll find plenty of materials.

Russia warns EU over Kosovo recognition

The second article I`ld like to put your attention on is again from FT, but on a different subject-

Blair signals interest in EU`s top job

You probably know that till the end of this year there should be a new position in the EU . *I didn`t… * The most desirable one The question is who should take it… Most of the students said that T. Blair is the perfect candidate- having the right background, being quite well-known, outstanding, interested in the EU etc. However, the issue of Iraq could be against him, as it`s written in the article. What do you think?