Impact of Culture on Organizational Success

This assignment delves into the crucial role of culture in shaping organizational success. It examines how cultural diversity influences various aspects of an organization, including employee communication, collaboration, and innovation. The analysis draws upon case studies like Zappos to illustrate the impact of diverse cultures on workplace dynamics and overall organizational performance. Students are encouraged to critically evaluate the challenges and opportunities presented by cultural diversity in the modern business environment.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Understanding International Human Resource Practices
Name of the Student
Student ID
Name of University
Author Note

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Answer to Question 1:
It is a matter of fact that Google as an organization maintains a unique workplace culture
that is beyond expectations for the most of the employees working in various organizations. The
work culture that Google maintains is not at all a typical corporate culture. The success of the
organization can be attributed to this kind of unique workplace culture. It is seen hat the
management of Google tries to keep their employees satisfied and happy within the office
premises as it can be said that a general workforce is an asset of an organization, but a motivated
and committed workforce towards the organization is a precious of that company (Hatch and
Zilber 2012). It can be said that behind this unique workplace culture of Google, there is the man
named Laszlo Bock, who is the head of People Operation Department of the organization, which
department is widely known as Human Resources worldwide.
The organization offers various perks to the employees like free breakfast, free haircuts,
free health checkups, gaming facilities, free transportation, nap pods, gym and swimming pools
and many other benefits to keep the general workforce motivated and committed towards the
organization for the betterment of productivity and profitability as well (Briody et al. 2012).
Looking at the success of Google, recently various organizations are trying to create a friendly
ambience within the organization like Google has. The same work culture is present in Google’s
various branches in United States of America, China, Switzerland and Brazil. Statistically, it is
found that, employees of some organizations those support healthy habits like Google does,
generally have eight times more dedication towards the organization (Hatch and Zilber 2012).
Organization like Google, believes that interacting with colleagues give huge boost to the
creativity and confidence in the employees that increases the general productivity of the

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organization. it is seen that working under such friendly work culture, almost sixty percent of the
employees come up with unique ideas that are beneficial for the organization.
Identical work culture can be seen in every branch office of Google and that allows the
employees to give their best to the organization (Hillis, Petit and Jarrett 2012). The main motto
of Google is to keep the employees of the organization happy and motivated to increase the
productivity and profitability, as it is a matter of fact that, employees are the nucleus of an
organization and ensuring their happiness and satisfaction level should be the primary concern of
the managerial body of the organization (Lester et al. 2012).
Thus to conclude, it can be said that Google was established in the year of 1998, and the
organization reached the height of success after the organization has taken up various policies to
keep the employees of the organization happy and motivated towards the company. Thus, in
short it can be said that, the huge profitability of Google is highly based on their policies of
keeping the general workforce happy and satisfied by providing them with the best facilities that
one can only imagine.
Answer to question 2
Zappos is a company that specializes in selling of shoes through online. The company
tries on a constant manner to create a corporate culture so that the new employees can be
attracted towards the job that is being offered by the company. The company tries to take better
decisions regarding the culture of the organization so that it can keep the employees satisfied
within their environment. For the ease of completing this structure, the company has a well
managed Human Resources (HR) Department that helps in the hiring process of the employees
within the organization (Warrick 2017).

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The company at the time of hiring the employees provides them a proper description of
the job along with an updated system of training so that it can help the employees in developing
their skills in a proper manner. The company hires the employees based on the recruitment
process that is traditional in nature, where the new employees get to interact with the experienced
employees so that they can get better insights about the work culture within the organization.
The people who are responsible for conducting the interviews base their questions on the
core values that the company has so that the interviewee can be well versed with those strategies
before joining the company. This helps the company to access the skills of the interviewees
through an appropriate manner (Warrick, Milliman and Ferguson 2016).
As the HR consultant of the company called propertyfinder. ae, which is a small and
medium-sized enterprise (SME) based in UAE, I would take the initiative of making the work
culture within the organization better. The new employees who will be hired within the company
may interact with the experienced employees by organization a meeting or a program so that the
employees can come in contact with each other. I will focus more on the employees who can fit
in the company with respect to the culture that is existing within the organization. This may take
some months but will help the company inn getting better quality of employees so that the level
of production can be increased. The person who will be responsible for conducting the interview
needs to provide quality feedback to me about the candidate so that it can help in choosing the
best employees (Ng et al. 2016).
One of the policies that need to be restructured within the company is that the employees
will be provided with $1000 up on completion of their training process after which the employee
can leave the organization as well. To become a permanent employee of the company, the

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employees need to associate themselves with the culture and the goals of the organization so that
the company can depend on the employees for increasing the level of productivity within the
organization (Eremina and Puhakka 2017).
Answer to Question 3
Shifting to UAE will be exciting as well as bring a major change in the life of the British
family. UAE is a great place and is on the verge of becoming one of the most desirable cities in
the world. The pre- departure training program involves the critical skills which are required to
solve the issues regarding working in a cross- cultural environment. The training program will
help in finding the meaning of the overseas assignment and have a proper mentality and self-
awareness to adjust in another culture. The training will help the British family to adapt the
culture of UAE and deliver effective results in the new environment (Bellini et al. 2013).
This training program will also help in evaluating the real and practical work issues that
arrive for the emigrant and find out the approaches for resolving those issues. It will help in
providing both the cross cultural knowledge and the necessary communication skills for
developing a strong and reliable relationship with the colleague of UAE and set a practical team
goal at the new position. The objectives for the program will include- a clear meaning of the
overseas assignment for the benefit of the career of the British couple; develop an understanding
of the challenges faced in inter- cultural situations at the new position; learning to save energy to
increase the effectiveness of the new role; learning of a practical approach for getting acquainted
with the diverse culture of the world; working on the development of communication skills to
adjust with the members of different cultural backgrounds; learning the practical cue of leading
effectively in a new position abroad (Goby, Nickerson and David 2015). Through the training

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program, it will be taught that the lifestyle in UAE is not at all similar to UK, it is much stricter.
The cost of living is much lower than UK. The British family needs to embrace the local culture
of UAE.
According to Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, it is the collective
programming of the mind that differentiates the members of one group from the others. It has
referred to the cultural dimensions based on the values of strategic practices and can be
supervised by the organization’s management under the guidance of skillful consultants and
coaches (Ozgen 2014). This guidance and coaching form the second activity of the Hofstede
centre. The six dimensions of culture include- power distance index, individualism vs.
collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance index, pragmatic vs. normative
and indulgence vs. restraint. In the given situation, the British families will have to abide by the
workplace ethics of the new country, UAE. They cannot lead a carefree life as they used to do in
their country because the lifestyle is more conservative in UAE. The local people of UAE prefer
politeness and cannot take ‘no’ as a direct answer whereas the British are more straight forward
and extrovert in their way of presentation. This training program will inculcate the new
behavioral characteristics among the British family so that they do not face any hardship in
adjusting to the new culture (Rees-Caldwell and Pinnington 2013).

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Answer to Question 4:
International human resource management strategies are associated with the structural
and cognitive differences of national individual culture. Mazda is a Japanese automotive
manufacturing company and Chrysler is the American subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
Having been based on two different countries with different approaches all together, both the
companies have undergone some significant changes depending on the cultural considerations of
the employees in international level. In the year 2009, Mazda, the Japanese automotive company
had summarized their seven rudimentary principles on the human resource protocol. These
are:
i) Integrity- employee integrity with the customer
ii) Flawless execution – basic step fashion
iii) Continuous Kaizen- wisdom and ingenuity
iv) Challenger spirit – challenge to achieve goal
v) Self Initiative
vi) Tomoiku – learn and teach method
vii) One Mazda – global initiative maintaining the same approach in all its country
branches (Mazda.com 2017)
According to the administrative body of Mazda, it has been kept intact that in most of the
cases the company’s basic disciplinary policy in human resource department would remain
unchanged despite considering the cultural differences in various countries.
On the other hand, Chrysler’s human resource management policies depend on the home
grown perspective of the eastern countries. During the crisis period it has been found that

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Chrysler’s manager focused on the job cut of the workforce whereas Mazda only carried out its
decision to salary cut without going forward to employee redundancy (Ruybal et al. ). The Asian
companies have always believed in retaining the employees because of their stern orientation
with larger families where as the US society has individual entity thus making the companies
believe in the fact that loss of job for the individuals would not affect the families in greater
sense.
Answer to Question 5:
Though Japan is considered to be more Western in culture than its other Asian neighbors,
the consideration of the American culture can be dealt way far from its Japanese counterpart.
Japanese social culture is closely oriented with its organizational culture. The organizational
culture and workforce considerations are highly impacted upon by the social values and
disciplines (Aswathappa 2013). As a matter of fact, this has been taken into certain consideration
pertaining to the fact that that in most of the cases the employees are highly family oriented and
the head of the families are responsible and support for their financial excel of the families. On
the contrary the American society is quite individual in nature thus giving value to the individual
identity and entity.
In this case Mazda had looked forward to retaining the employees even in the crisis
period because they were responsible to run the families of the large number of the employees
(Brewster et al. 2016.). On the other hand, in USA the white collars are highly valued and they
were not targeted for redundancy. However; the blue collars were not exempted from being
asked for eradicated from the companies because there is an abundance of blue collar labors in
the country (Sparrow, Brewster and Chung 2016).

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