Design and presented by

HENRY CHIKE OKONKWO

Groups and organizations evolve and for them to exist continually, even society, there is need for them to agree and live with the assumptions as to what constitutes external adaptation and internal integration.

They need to ascertain what is real, how to determine truth or falsity of something, how to measure time, how space is allocated what human nature is, and how people should get along with each other.

Furthermore, different societies have evolved different answers to questions bordering on the aforementioned facts and different cultures in the world influence how

groups and organizations within them evolve.

Thus, an individualistic behavior would be taken for granted in a U.S company, just as teamwork would be taken for granted in a Japanese company. Even a merger or a joint venture coming from companies of the two extreme could be difficult.

The dimensions to be reviewed in this chapter were originally developed by Talcott Parson and were later advance into a set of value dimensions by Kluchhohn and Strodtbeck in order to do their comparative study of four cultures in the U.S southwest, namely: Anglo, Hispanic, Mormon, and Navajo.

To a larger degree the dimensions overlap such as those promoted by Hofstede (2001, first published 1980), Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars (1993, 2000) and others. Schein (2004) also adds to the dimensions and are listed below namely:

The nature of reality and truth: the belief as to what is accepted to be true and real. How true and reality is determined and discovered.

The nature of time: the belief as to what constitute lateness and being present; how time is defined and measured and its importance to culture.

The nature of space: how space is allocated; the symbolic meaning of space and the person; intimacy and privacy.

The nature of human nature: what it means to be human; the basis of being human; is the human nature good or evil? Is it neutral? Are human beings prefect?

The nature human activity: what are the right things for human beings to do whether as individuals or as an organization in relating to their environment. It also addresses what should be the appropriate level of activity and passivity.

The nature of human relationships: what is the right way for people

to relate to one another? In what form should people relate one to another? Cooperatively, competitively, being individualistic, competitive, collaboratively, or communally. Again, how is power and love distributed?

The above listed deeper dimensions clearly will influence how external adaptation and internal integration issues are handled.

Furthermore, the above listed deeper dimensions reflects that for an organization to attain its goals, it got to determine what constitutes truth, how they treat time, what is space, and how they value human relationships.

Again, the measurement system and assumptions of how to take corrective actions is dependent on the nature of truth and the appropriate psychological contract for employees.

Also, the kind of ideas that borders on measurement system, corrective actions, language and conceptual systems, status systems, reward systems, rules for intimacy can certainly be seen as directly connected to deeper assumptions about truth, time, and space and human relationship, human nature and human activity.

When any new group forms, its members will bring with them cultural assumptions at this deeper level.

The different background orientation of persons coming together to form a new group may create for difficulty of cooperation amongst them, but as members get to know themselves, they will gradually develop some common assumptions- somewhat different from member’s original assumptions.

It further implies why some joint venture succeeds and some other fails. E.g is the case of a French HR manager who had to give up his “frenchness” in order to survive working for DEC (an American company).

It is important to understand these assumptions so as to be able to compare organizations and sub units within the organization, and to transcend in relating as to comparing it with national and ethnic culture on a broader scale.

An important part of every culture is a set of assumptions about what is real and how one determines or discovers what is real.

Such assumption tells members of a group how to determine what are relevant information and how to interpret information, when to act with it, and what action to take?

At DEC for instance, reality and truth were defined by debate and by pragmatic criteria of whether things work. Whereas at Ciba Geigy much more emphasis was given to research results from the laboratory and to the opinions of those considered wise and experienced.

Even though both companies originate from west, yet, these disparities exist, thus, portraying a broader cultural context.

External physical reality: this is the level at which things can be argued out and determined empirically objectively.

For instances, if two people are arguing about whether or not a piece of glass will break, they can hit it with a hammer and find out or where two managers are arguing over which product to introduce, they can then agree to do a market test and establish criteria to resolve.

Different cultures have different assumptions about what constitutes external physical reality.

The physical reality of the spirit world in some cultures is unlike what obtains in other cultures. An experience with an Indian shaman can be a vivid example.

Social reality: this refers to those things that members of a

group regard as a matter of consensus, that are not externally, empirically testable.

If a people believe in something and define it as real, it

becomes real for that group, as sociologists pointed out long ago.

In the international context, there is no way to test who is

right about a territorial conflict or a belief system, as the continuing war in the Middle East has amply demonstrated.

One of the reasons why business decisions are often difficult to make and why management is an intrinsically complex activity is the lack of consensus on whether a given decision area belongs in the realm of physical or social reality.

However, consensus has to be reached on the standard at

arriving at a decision and not necessary to on the ultimate substance of the decision of winning or losing for example.

Individual reality: this refers to the extent a given person has

learned from his or her own experience, which therefore has a quality of absolute truth to that person.

Again, what some has come to imbibe as true may not be

revealed to any other person. One cannot move forward in life if he cannot clearly articulate his

actual experience. As individuals, we must have some kind of consensus on whose

experience to trust; having to become accustomed to a traditional, lineal society lifestyle or the pragmatic, individualistic societal concept.

Most times, it is not possible to objectively define culture without having to verify and see it from a social point of view that makes it become the only sound basis for judgment. Else one would be prone to discomfort and fear if he does not understand what is happening and how to feel about it.

A useful distinction can be found in Hall’s (1977) differentiation between what he calls high-context and low context cultures and Maruyama’s (1974) contrast between unidirectional and mutual causal cultural paradigms.

In low-context, unidirectional culture, events have clear universal meanings. Whereas in high - context, mutual causal cultural paradigms, events can be understood only in context, meanings can vary, categories can change, and causality cannot be understood without difficulties.

Though this distinction has more meaning when one compares countries or large ethnic units, it has usefulness for organizations as well.

For example, DEC was a high-context culture in which the meaning of words and actions depended on who was speaking and under what conditions. By contrast, Ciba Geigy was a low- context culture in which messages tended to have the same meaning no matter whom they were coming from.

When we refer to “language”, we often overlook the role of context, but as we all know too well from our own cross-cultural travel experiences, language is embedded in a wider context in which nonverbal cues, tone of voice, body language, and other signals determine the true meaning of what is said.

A useful dimension for comparing groups on their

approach to reality testing is an adaptation of England’s (1975) moralism –pragmatism scale.

In his study of managerial values, England found that

managers in different countries tended to be either pragmatic, seeking validation in their own experience or moralistic, seeking validation in a general philosophy, moral system, or tradition.

He found out that Europeans tended to be more moralistic, whereas Americans tended to be more pragmatic.

If we apply this dimension to the basic underlying assumptions that a group makes we can specify different bases for defining what is true as shown below:

Criteria for determining truth Pure dogma, based on tradition and / religion. Revealed dogma; i.e. wisdom based on trust in the

authority of wise men, formal leaders, prophets, or kings. Truth derived by a “rational- legal“ process (as when we

establish the guilt or innocence of an individual by means of a legal process that acknowledges from the outset that there is no absolute truth, only socially determined truth).

Truth as that which survives conflict and debate.

Truth as that which works, the purely pragmatic criterion. Truth as established by the scientific method, which

becomes, once again, a kind of dogma, especially in the social sciences, where even the scientific method is a matter of consensus among social scientists.

This dimension not only highlights the basis on which truth is determined but also can be related to how to avoid uncertainties and how to tolerate ambiguity.

Some researchers argue that higher tolerance levels in certain managerial areas are associated with more effectiveness, but those results may apply only in broader cultural contexts that are more tolerant of and even value ambiguity.

For the purpose of analysis, we shouldn’t sweep under the carpet of the fact that, where there is no unified underlying assumption by the members of a group, the group will not evolve as a group in the first place.

At DEC, reality was defined as pragmatic and the level of tolerance of ambiguity was high, which is unlike Ciba Giegy where tolerance of ambiguity did not function well and even operated much closer to the moralistic end of the dimension.

How a group test for reality and makes decisions also involves consensus on what constitutes data, what is information, and what is knowledge.

Because of the ongoing revolution in ICT, what might consist as information to an IT “professional” might not go down well if applied to senior managers. Thus, requiring that there must be a degree of consensus on which information is relevant to the task at hand for a group to make realistic decisions.

Dougherty’s research on new product development teams showed that when such groups do not develop a common definition of relevant information, they are more likely to come up with products that do not make it in the marketplace (Dougherty, 1990).

She identified five separate “thought worlds” that operate in the functional specialists who are usually brought together in product development teams.

Each member of the team believes that he or she “knows a lot” about the team’s customers, but what these members know turns out to be very different.

The engineers know just how big the product should be

and some other technical details. The manufacturing people know what the potential

volumes are and how many models might be needed. Marketers/ business planners know in general whether or

not the market exists, the size of the potential market, the price and profit level, even the market trend.

The field salespeople know what the potential customers

will use the product for, what user’s specific are, and how important the product are to customers relative to competitors’ products.

The distribution people know how the products will be sold, what the merchandize plans are and how many sales channels there will be.

Until there is the ability for these professionals to come together and to understand that despite their differences, there must be a consensus in product development , they will not succeed in the market place.

In summary, one of the most important dimensions of culture is the nature of how reality, truth, and information are defined.

Schein, E. (2006). Organizational culture and leadership (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

THANK YOU