Cross-Cultural Management: Literature Review on Culture & Business

This literature review examines the critical relationship between culture and business in a globalized world. It explores how organizational culture impacts business operations, success, and competitive advantage. The review defines culture and its various dimensions, emphasizing its role in shaping employee behavior, productivity, and customer satisfaction. It highlights the importance of a strong and well-developed culture in fostering employee engagement, reducing turnover, and managing workplace challenges. The review also discusses cultural barriers, such as language differences, non-verbal communication, and religious beliefs, and suggests strategies for overcoming these obstacles through cross-cultural training and understanding. Furthermore, it introduces Hofstede's cross-cultural dimension model, which provides a framework for understanding cultural differences and their impact on management practices. The analysis concludes that organizational culture is a key determinant of a company's future growth and success, emphasizing the need for companies to create a favorable and healthy working environment. The review stresses the importance of addressing factors such as communication, language, and religion to build a strong and effective organizational culture.

Running head: Cross cultural management
Cross cultural management

Cross cultural management
(Literature review on “culture and business”)
In today’s globalization world, various challenges and issues are faced by the companies
when initiating the business activities and operations in the foreign market. Culture plays a
fundamental role in expanding and exploring the business activities globally. The company
cannot attain long-term goals and objectives without maintaining a corporate and strong culture
within the organization. The below literature review demonstrates the information about the
culture and business. It explains that how culture helps to gain competitive benefits in the
marketplace. It depicts how an organization can flourish its business operations by maintaining a
strong and heavy culture within the organization. More detail of the task has been detailed
below.
Culture is an empirical part of the each and every organization. Shwalb, Shwalb and
Lamb (2013) define that culture is a cumulative deposit of knowledge, beliefs, experience,
attitudes, values, meanings, religion, notion of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the
universe, and material possessions and objects acquired by a group of people for attaining the
desired objectives and goals. As per McFarland and Wehbe-Alamah (2014), culture is the arts
and other manifestations of human intellectual attainment regarded collectively, the customs,
ideas and social behavior. Thus, culture refers to a human-made environment which includes all
the material and non-material products of group life that are transmitted from one generation to
other. Turner, Fiske, and Hodge (2016) stated that culture encompasses of implicit and explicit
patterns of behavior and actions obtained by human beings. It has been further defined that
culture is complex which includes knowledge, arts, law, custom, beliefs, and any other
capabilities and habits obtained by man as a member of the community. In this way, it plays a
vital role in society as well as the organization. According to literature given by Leininger
(2011), culture may be defined as a collective programming of the mind which differentiates the
members of one group or category of people from another. It has been analyzed that culture is a
fuzzy set of basic values, assumptions, custom, behavior that are exchanged by a group of people
and that affect the each member’s actions and behavior. If the company maintains a favorable
and strong culture in the workplace then it will help to maximize the outputs and returns in the
competitive market (Perry, 2012).
2

Cross cultural management
No company can grow and survive its business activities and operations without
analyzing and maintaining a strong and well-developed culture. It has been noted that there is a
strong relationship between culture and business in the workplace. If the company maintains a
favorable working environment and culture in the workplace then it will help to satisfy the needs,
requirements, and desires of the consumers in the marketplace. It has been revealed by Laroche
(2012), culture is the expression and appearance of nature in people modes of thinking and
living. One of the significant advantages of the culture is increased performance and
productivity. If the employees find their working environment to be satisfactory then they are
going to be happier working in that environment. Thus, happiness is likely lead to improve and
enhance the productivity and performance of the workers and organization as well. In addition, it
has been noted that happiness is also lead to several motivators for the workers because they feel
happy and do their work effectively and efficiently within the organization (Briscoe, Tarique,
and Schuler, 2012). A good and well developed cultural fit means that employees and managers
would be less stressed in the workplace, therefore; it reduces poor performance and turnover
within the organization. Having a great and dynamic culture also helps in handling and reducing
the issues and grievances that are occurring in the workplace among the employees. After the
various researchers, it has been stated by Brewster Mayrhofer and Farndale (2012), culture is
cumulative and it is shared by a group of people in the organization. Along with this, culture
provides ideas, customs, values, beliefs, and assumptions to people in order to survive life better
way (Primecz, Romani and Sackmann, 2011).
It has been revealed that culture makes an important contribution to the business in order
to attain desired long-term mission and vision. Planning can be done with the help of well
developed and effective culture. Through well developed and dynamic culture, the people can
easily interact with each other (Burke, 2010). Having a strong culture in the workplace helps to
beat and overcome the competitors widely. The organizations with clearly well developed and
codified culture enjoy better labor cost advantages within the organization. The company is
having strong and dynamic culture enjoy great customer and worker loyalty. According to
Tarique and Schuler (2010), a strong and unique cross-cultural management increases and
enhances the revenue and profitability of the companies. The companies with adaptive and well-
3

Cross cultural management
developed culture foster effective and unique succession in the leadership ranks. Various
strategies and policies can make successfully and effectively with the help of strong and effective
culture (Rowley and Jackson, 2010). Jonsen, Maznevski, and Schneider (2011) have a point of
view that culture is essential to attain competitive benefits in the marketplace. The workers at all
level in the company validate and notice the factors of culture in order to increase and enhance
the returns and revenue in the competitive market. Along with this, strong and unique culture
helps to make unity between employers and employees in the workplace. If an employee adopts
the shared norms and customs of the company, it unifies management and employees. With the
help of good and strong corporate culture, leaders can enhance and motivate the workers
effectively. If the people maintain a strong environment and culture in the workplace then it
helps to save the cost of the firm. The strong culture also improves and enhances the skills,
talents, and knowledge of the employees (Salvendy, 2012). It has been found that culture is
transmitted behavior, languages, actions, arts, signs, symbols, norms, beliefs, ideas, and rituals
etc. that is shared and learned in a specific social group of the same ethnicity, religion and
nationality.
In today’s era, various cultural barriers are faced by the organization due to lack of
training and poor communication. There are billions of people in the world who are unable to
understand and know English language and they are failed to communicate in English properly.
It creates misunderstanding and issues in the workplace (Burke, 2010). To handle this issue, the
company should provide cross-cultural training and coaching to the workers in order to
understand and know the language of different countries. It will help to maximize the efficiency
and potential of the employees as well as organization. It has been analyzed that signs and
symbols also create obstacles and hurdles in the organization. Non-verbal communication cannot
be relied upon in collaboration and communication between people from different cultures. Thus,
it is one of the significant challenges for the organization. It has been analyzed by Saunders
(2012) that cultural differences cause actions and personality differences such as body language,
manners, norms and communication etch that leads to misunderstandings and miscommunication
at the workplace. One of the significant barriers is a religion that could affect the progress of the
firm (Oye, Salleh, and Noorminshah, 2011). The religion issue disrupts communication and
collaboration as it creates a particular image of an employee who follows other religion. People
find it difficult to talk to an employee who follows different religion and culture. As a result, it
4

Cross cultural management
creates differences and barriers in opinions and thoughts. All these issues are faced by the
companies in today’s competitive world. To make strong culture and effective communication,
the causes of communication and cultural barriers shall be eliminated and reduced as much as
possible. It has been noted that cross-cultural understanding shall be increased as it decreases
communication barrier caused by cultural differences. It has been further revealed by Tseng
(2010) that cultural barriers may influence the productivity and outcomes of the firm. It has been
analyzed that there should not be discrimination on the basis of age, sex, gender, and religion. A
good and strong culture helps to increase the number of customers and it also increases market
share of the company. Maintaining a dynamic culture in the workplace leads to employee
engagement within the organization. Resistance to change can be reduced with the help of strong
and well developed culture in the organization (Shwalb, Shwalb, and Lamb, 2013). If an
organization maintains a heavy and strong culture at the workplace then it will help to expand
and flourish the business in the international market. The organization can easily identify and
evaluate the policies, plans and strategies of the competitors. Having a corporate and strong
culture helps the leaders to reduce and eliminate the complaints and issues of the workers that are
rising in the workplace. It also explores and expand the knowledge and experience of the
followers because all the people work together therefore they learn from each other at the
workplace (Briscoe, Tarique and Schuler, 2012). In this way, it helps to develop and build good
communication and coordination among the different departments of people. Leininger (2011)
that culture is an important key of company’s success and growth that determines the values,
norms and customs of people.
To understand and evaluate the culture of different countries, Hofstede cross-cultural dimension
model is developed by Hofstede who described that interaction between national culture and
organizational culture. There is six dimensions of Hofstede dimensions model that have
discussed below.
Power distance: This dimension explains that how a culture manages inequality and partiality in
relation to power and money. It maintains a relationship between power and health. It explains
that lower level and follower are responsible for perceiving the inequality and power.
Individualism vs. collectivism: One of the significant dimensions of Hofstede cross-cultural
model is individualism and collectivism. The individualism dimension focuses on the unification
5

Cross cultural management
of the culture. In this dimension, people are expected to take care of themselves and their family
first whereas, in collectivism, people are connected with groups within that population they are
working together. Basically, this dimension is easy to observe in a culture (De Mooij and
Hofstede, 2010).
Masculinity vs. femininity: This dimension represents a culture’s preferences for attainment the
goals and objectives. By using this dimension, the company has been to reduce the
discrimination between man and women at the workplace (Briscoe, Tarique, and Schuler, 2012).
Uncertainty avoidance: This dimension displays the level of comfort its employees feel towards
ambiguity and uncertainty. Under this dimension, people focus on the future risks and challenges
to beat the competitors in the international market.
Long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation: The long-term orientation plans are made for
long time period whereas short-term orientation plans are made for the short time period. It helps
to gain desired objectives and targets within the organization (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010).
Indulgence vs. restraint: The dimension measures and evaluates the happiness of people.
Indulgence refers to a society or community that permits relatively free gratification of natural
and basic human desires related to having fun and enjoying life.
In this way, it has been stated that cross-cultural dimension model helps to reduce and avert the
cultural differences and barriers at the workplace. The strong and unique culture is also so
important to adopt organizational changes in the workplace. The heavy and strong culture helps
to explain the benefits of organizational changes in the workplace. Culture is used to understand
and know different behaviors of people in different countries within an organization context (De
Mooij and Hofstede, 2010).
In the above-mentioned analysis, it has been concluded that organizational culture is one of the
effective and foremost parts of the each and every company that determine the future growth and
success. The organizational culture is affected by many factors such as communication,
language, and religion. Therefore, the company should focus on these factors to make a
favorable and healthy working environment and culture within the organization. The
organizational culture may also influence the productivity and effectiveness of the workers and
6

Cross cultural management
organization. Now it is recommended that the organization should maintain a strong and positive
working environment and culture at the workplace to enhance and increase the number of
consumers within the organization.
7

Cross cultural management
References
Brewster, C., Mayrhofer, W. and Farndale, E. eds., 2012. Handbook of research on comparative
human resource management. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Briscoe, D., Tarique, I. and Schuler, R., 2012. International human resource management:
Policies and practices for multinational enterprises. Routledge.
Burke, R.J., 2010. Workplace stress and well-being across cultures: Research and practice. Cross
Cultural Management: An International Journal, 17(1), pp.5-9.
Burke, R.J., 2010. Workplace stress and well-being across cultures: Research and practice. Cross
Cultural Management: An International Journal, 17(1), pp.5-9.
De Mooij, M. and Hofstede, G., 2010. The Hofstede model: Applications to global branding and
advertising strategy and research. International Journal of Advertising, 29(1), pp.85-110.
Jonsen, K., Maznevski, M.L. and Schneider, S.C., 2011. Special review article: Diversity and its
not so diverse literature: An international perspective. International Journal of Cross Cultural
Management, 11(1), pp.35-62.
Laroche, L., 2012. Managing cultural diversity in technical professions. Routledge.
Leininger, M.M., 2011. Theory of culture care diversity and universality. New York.
McFarland, M.R. and Wehbe-Alamah, H.B., 2014. Leininger's culture care diversity and
universality. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Oye, N.D., Salleh, M. and Noorminshah, A., 2011. Knowledge sharing in workplace: Motivators
and demotivators. International journal of managing information technology, 3(4), p.71.
Perry, N., 2012. Hyperreality and global culture. Routledge.
Primecz, H., Romani, L. and Sackmann, S. eds., 2011. Cross-cultural management in practice:
Culture and negotiated meanings. Edward Elgar Publishing.
8

Cross cultural management
Rowley, C. and Jackson, K., 2010. Knowledge Management. In Human Resource Management:
The Key Concepts (pp. 152-169). Routledge.
Salvendy, G., 2012. Handbook of human factors and ergonomics. John Wiley & Sons.
Saunders, M.N., 2012. Organizational trust: A cultural perspective. Development and Learning
in Organizations: An International Journal, 26(2).
Shwalb, D.W., Shwalb, B.J. and Lamb, M.E. eds., 2013. Fathers in cultural context. Routledge.
Tarique, I. and Schuler, R.S., 2010. Global talent management: Literature review, integrative
framework, and suggestions for further research. Journal of world business, 45(2), pp.122-133.
Tseng, S.M., 2010. The correlation between organizational culture and knowledge conversion on
corporate performance. Journal of knowledge management, 14(2), pp.269-284.
Turner, G., Fiske, J. and Hodge, B., 2016. Myths of Oz: reading Australian popular culture.
Routledge.
9