HW 6: CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE Introduction A good culture is an important factor in a successful business. If a company has a good culture, it can significantly affect not only the employee’s performance, but the performance of the company as a whole. Most companies these days already have a defined culture . For example, Wal-Mart’s culture is that they strive for excellence by having “everyday low prices.” They set their culture of excellence and then work as a team to achieve that. With FedEx, it is “quality driven management,” meaning that FedEx’s main focus is on conducting management that drives high quality. There are many different concepts/values of culture that will be discussed in this paper: individualism vs. collectivism, power For example, in many Asian cultures, it is considered best practice if everyone understood their hierarchy in society and behaved accordingly. Chinese business culture dictates what exactly one should call their superiors, and any variation of this is considered rude and disrespectful. Supporters of power distance believe that the lower must always obey the higher and the higher must be the one to protect the lower. However, in today’s society is it not enough to be a low power distance leader or a high power distance leader. It is important to have flexibility in your ability to manage up and down the cultural scale (Meyer, & Bachrach, D. 2015, p. 114). Cultures who adopt low certainty avoidance usually tend to be more receptive to change versus cultures who adopt high certainty avoidance. People in the high certainty cultures tend to shy away from innovation and follow a more “by the rules” type approach and are afraid of change. For example, say a manager was working on a new strategy for the entry of a new software. A recent survey stated that there is only a 55% probability of success. A manager with low certainty avoidance (manager 1) will want to go ahead and introduce this software to the market despite the 55% chance, while a high certainty avoidance manager (manager 2) will not risk introducing the new software to the market to play it safe. While manager 1 risks introducing his product to the market for the sake of innovation, manager 2 would rather wait until the market becomes more volatile and the success chance returns a higher probability. Achievement vs. Nurturing Orientation Achievement vs nurturing orientation, also known as ‘Masculinity vs Feminity,’ is a competitive versus cooperative view of conducting business/working with people. Achievement oriented people tend to be more goal driven and competitive. Whereas, nurturing oriented people are more easy going, and enjoy working alongside other people (‘OB Mod 2a—Personality
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
