Intercultural Management: Cultural Dimensions and Strategies in International Business

This report covers the different aspects of the Intercultural Management within the business in which managers recognise values that they share with individuals of other cultures in order to understand such values of those cultures distinct from their own. In this report, different cultural dimensions of regularity as well as variability will be discussed and along with it different strategies will be evaluated that are used in international business context.

Thematic Literature
Review

Executive Summary
This report covers the different aspects of the Intercultural Management within the
business in which managers recognise values that they share with individuals of other cultures in
order to understand such values of those cultures distinct from their own. In this report, different
cultural dimensions of regularity as well as variability will be discussed and along with it
different strategies will be evaluated that are used in international business context.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The concept of intercultural management is very significant to understand regarding other
cultures where there is existence of diversity because it facilitates organisations in running
operations highly productive, effective as well as efficient. There are different aspects of
intercultural management which are having direct as well as crucial impacts on both the
managers and employees of the company. In this report, there are two topics given in which one
topic is going to be selected. The topic that is chosen here in order to demonstrate different
aspects of this report is regarding the influence of culture on the process of motivation. In respect
to this topic, two different prospects will be discussed (Amann and Jaussaud, 2020). The first one
is related to understanding of different cultural dimensions of the variability as well as regularity
along with the related frameworks for researching impact of culture on international business.
The next one is about the evaluation of various strategies that are used in context of international
business in the process of managing cross cultural situations within the workplace.
MAIN BODY
Culture within the workplace refers to the shared values, attitudes, belief systems as well
as combination of presumptions that are shared by the human resources of an organisation. These
are shaped by upbringing of an individual along with the cultural as well as social context.
Workplace culture is said to be the operationalising of the values of a company. The culture
within an organisation guides the decisions of the human resources on their technical plans as
well as needs. The process of cultural management is the key to success for any business
organisation. Enhancement in the cultural intelligence of the organisation is not considered as an
easy task. Effective cultural management helps in increasing the productivity, efficiency,
effectiveness of a business.
The influence of organisational culture on the motivation within the workplace is in such
a way that the culture of the organisation plays a significant role in the process of developing as
well as maintaining the level of motivation among the human resources of the company
(Barmeyer, Bausch and Mayrhofer, 2021). Favourable organisational culture facilitates in
maximising the purpose, potential and play by the workers along with minimising the economic
pressure, emotional pressure as well as inertia. When there is better culture within the workplace,
then the values are instilled as well as understood by the workers within the work life. Along

with it, favourable organisational culture also leads to enhance the performance of the human
resources and the organisation as a whole.
Different cultural dimensions of regularity and variability along with theories of organisational
culture
The concept of dimensions of cultural variability is emerged from the dominant values,
beliefs, principles, ethics and attitudes which are shared by a recognised group of the people that
helps in constituting a culture within the workplace. There are various dimensions that describes
the differences within the national cultures and these dimensions are performance orientation,
power distance, future orientation, uncertainty avoidance, assertiveness, institutional
collectivism, gender egalitarianism, human orientation and group collectivism (Bolten, 2020).
All these dimensions can be better understood with the help of Hofstede's Cultural dimensions
theory. This theory helps the organisation in modifying the existing performance as well as
bringing the changes within the existing workplace culture. The description of different cultural
dimensions is given as follows:
 Individualism Vs Collectivism: The organisations like Tesco, the main focus of the
company is on the individualism in which each worker tends to look out for itself and not
depended in its extended families or other managers for the assistance.
 Uncertainty avoidance index: This kind of cultural dimension shows uncertainty and
ambiguity that are used by organisations like Tesco for conducing its business operations
in international countries. Low index level of the employees indicates acceptance of
uncertainty and high tolerance.
 Masculinity Vs Femininity: This kind of strategy is associated with the masculinity as
well as femininity that are used by the companies like Tesco in order to develop the
performance of business (Chan and Du-Babcock, 2019). Within Tesco, masculinity
strategy is followed and human resources are highly competitive and focused on
improving social standards.
 Pragmatic Vs Normative: Within Tesco, normative strategy is preferred by the
management of the company for delivering the employment rights, valuables as well as
skilled human resources that can facilitate in increasing the performance of the business.
 Restraint Vs Indulgence: Within Tesco, the indulgence culture is followed in which
human resources gets benefits like flexible working hours and alternatives of remote

working. Different facilities are available for the manpower of company like gym, movie
theatre, recreational activities and many more.
 Power Distance index: It is said to be power index which gets adopted by managers of
companies like Tesco in order to eliminate inequalities as well as managing changes that
encouraged power among members of team and developing performance of business.
Another framework is of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner's Seven Dimensions of
culture that helps an organisation in analysing the impact of workplace culture on the
international business (Opengart, 2018). According to this model, human resources from
different cultures are just randomly distinct from others as they differ in very particular, even
predictable manner. The description of seven dimensions is given below:
 Universalism Vs Particularism: According to universalist culture, ideas can be applied
to anywhere and definition is used to ascertain difference between wrong and right. In
particularism, manpower has faith that circumstances determine how ideas can be applied
in practice. Personal obligations as well as relationships play a significant role in making
ethical decisions.
 Individualism Vs Communitarianism: Individualism seeks personnel as individuals
and culture is connected with ideas of western world while Communitarianism is
concerned with humanity being as a part of group and culture is linked with non-western
communities.
 Neutral Vs Emotional: In neutral, emotions got controlled while in emotional culture,
emotions are shown spontaneously as well as openly. Famous Trompanar cultural
dimensions are countries of neutral cultures Japan and Great Britain, where they shout in
public when angry, laughing out loud or displaying any other emotional outburst.
 Specific Vs Diffuse: Within specific culture, people have large public space that is
shared by other people in an easy way and these people linked in a informal way in both
private and public place (Pikhart, 2018). While in diffuse culture, people protect private
space as it provides easy access to public space and those people linked great value to
formality.
 Achievement Vs Ascription: In Achievement culture, worth of an individual is
ascertained on performance basis. It is also important that individuals from ascription

culture use well-informed people who know what skills and knowledge are of people
from an achievement culture.
 Sequential Vs Synchronous time: Time is measured and understood in various methods
like weeks, days, months, hours, past, present, etc. Such concrete measurement of the
time falls within the sequential time (Pikhart, 2018). While Synchronous time gets more
abstract as well as concentrates on being able to perform on different projects at once.
 Internal Direction Vs Outer Direction: The concentration is on the process in which
how people experience their environment. People in the western culture are primarily
outer-directed while the people from non-western culture are inter-directed.
Evaluation of different strategies used in international business context in managing the cross
cultural situations within the workplace
There are various strategies that can be used in the international business context within
the process of managing the cross cultural situations within the workplace. Some of these
strategies include overcoming of language as well as cultural barriers, planning of the projects
around the discrete time zones, considering various cultural communication styles, being open to
all the cultures as well as the differences and many more (Presbitero and Attar, 2018). To
overcome the language and cultural barrier, team encouragement is very necessary. High context
cultures use non-verbal cues often while low context cultures depend on word themselves.
CONCLUSION
From above explanation of the report, it has been concluded that intercultural
management within the workplace is very significant because the organisations nowadays work
across the nations as well as cultures. It is very important for the companies in order to
understand the different cultures of the employees for enhancing the productivity, efficiency,
affectivity of the organisation as a whole. Along with it, different cultural dimensions have been
discussed within this report through different frameworks of cultural dimensions. Moreover,
evaluation of multiple strategies have also been described within this existing report in order to
manage the culture of the workplace in an effective manner.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Amann, B. and Jaussaud, J. eds., 2020. Cross-cultural challenges in international management.
Routledge.
Barmeyer, C., Bausch, M. and Mayrhofer, U., 2021. Constructive intercultural management:
Integrating cultural differences successfully. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Bolten, J., 2020. Intercultural business communication: An interactive approach (pp. 139-155).
Routledge.
Chan, A. C. and Du-Babcock, B., 2019. Leadership in action: an analysis of leadership behaviour
in intercultural business meetings. Language and Intercultural Communication, 19(2),
pp.201-216.
Opengart, R., 2018. Short-term study abroad and the development of intercultural
maturity. Journal of International Education in Business.
Pikhart, M., 2018, August. Technology enhanced learning experience in intercultural business
communication course: a case study. In International Symposium on Emerging
Technologies for Education (pp. 41-45). Springer, Cham.
Pikhart, M., 2018, September. Multilingual and intercultural competence for ICT: accessing and
assessing electronic information in the global world. In International Conference on
Multimedia and Network Information System (pp. 273-278). Springer, Cham.
Presbitero, A. and Attar, H., 2018. Intercultural communication effectiveness, cultural
intelligence and knowledge sharing: Extending anxiety-uncertainty management
theory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 67, pp.35-43.