Impact of country’s culture in use of power to initiate change program

Running Head: Organizational Change Management
Organizational Change Management

Organizational Change Management 1
Impact of country’s culture in use of power to initiate change program
Change management refers to the framework which is used by managers to identify the change
present in the organization and rectify them. Power is an important factor which helps the
manager to apply change in an organization. The aim of below mentioned paper is to analyze and
evaluate the cultural dimensions of two countries namely Singapore and Australia. It also
explains the influence of such culture on the French and Raven Five bases of power. The latter
part of the paper tells about how the use of power would be effective and ineffective in an
organization change program depending on the culture of a particular country.
Further, power refers to an important tool which helps the manger to initiate their decisions in an
organization. Without power, no manager can ask the employees to work according to their
direction. Also, it should be noted that power is not present with all; instead it is divided on the
basis of responsibility and authority assigned to them. Relating the power with the hofstede’s
dimension, it should be noted that the cultural dimension model explains the cultural features of
the people of the country which helps in analyzing which should be used by them (Bélanger, et.
al., 2016, 287-300). There are specifically six dimensions in the model that are, power distance,
individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation, indulgence and lastly masculinity.
Further, it should be noted that there is presence of diversity in the country Singapore as there are
77% of Chinese, 15% of Malay, 6% of Indians and lastly 2% of other expatriate society. And on
the other hand, the country Australia has majority of people who belong to British community
(67%) and it has presence of some European culture within them and only 2% of aboriginal
natives are present in the country (Chua, Roy, Yannig Roth, and Jean-François Lemoine 2015,
189-227).
The first dimension that is power distance talks about the degree to which less powerful member
of the society are drifted or motivated with the more powerful member of the society. It talks
about the ways in which power is distributed unequally and how people handle such inequality in
the society. In the country Singapore, people are more dependent on their superior in the society,
so there is very low degree of power distance in the society. People do not take any decision
themselves; employees in the organization are more dependent on their manager to take actions.
As the Chinese people believe in the Confucian teaching due to which a large segment of the
society initiate such activities in the environment (Ferraro, Gary and Elizabeth Briody 2017).

Organizational Change Management 2
Whereas, on the other hand, people of Australia have a relatively high degree of power distance
attribute under them. They do not prefer seeking permission of someone to take actions. Also
there is presence of flat organizational structure which motivates the employees to take
responsibility and initiate actions for the betterment of the company. The second dimension that
is individualism versus collectivism tells about the degree of which people of a country want to
nurture themselves and their immediate families. Collectivism talks about the attribute to which
people want to take of themselves and their relatives in the society and become whole heartedly
responsible for their wellbeing and wellness. The loosely knit group in the society tells about the
belief of people in used the feeling of ‘I’ and the tightly knit group represents the feeling of ‘WE’
(Yeo, Su Lin, and Augustine Pang 2017, 112-122). Talking about the culture it should be noted
that the people of this country score a low grade, as there love taking care of their extended
families and depending on each other for existence. Whereas, in the country Australia, people are
deeply connected to each other, they only take care of themselves and their immediate family.
They have a strong feeling of individualism under them and they prefer being independent at the
workplace and in personal life as well (Stone, Dianna and Diana Deadrick 2015, 139-145).
Further, masculinity versus femininity refers to the dimension those talks about the acceptance of
people for the monetary benefits and heroism in the society. Whereas, femininity in the society
represents act of modesty in the society, it talks about the qualitative growth of a person in the
society and masculinity talks about quantitative growth in the society. The country Singapore in
this case falls under category of femininity (Aiello, et. al., 2018). The society is little more
inclined towards femininity in this case as the score is 48. Whereas Australia scores 61 in this
dimension which talks about their dominance in the society. This aspect also talks about the fight
between tough and tender. So, it should be noted that people of Australia have strong belief in
working shoulder to shoulder in the market. Further, uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to
which people in a society manages to with the future coming problems. It talks about the ways in
which people reacts on unknown situations coming on their way. Singapore in case of
uncertainty avoidance scores 8 whereas 51 are scored by Australia. The score of Singapore tells
that the people respects the rules and regulations and aims to avoid the problems by complying
them. Whereas, in the case of Australia, the country do not follow all the rules instead the only
follow the ones that they think are important (Todnem By, Rune 2005, 369-380). Long term
orientation versus short term normative orientation talks about the ways in which people initiate