Cross Cultural

(2,643 words)

Since the 1980s and 1990s, the term "personnel management" or "personnel administration" has been changed and replaced by the term "human resource management" (HRM), according to Clark and Mallory (1996). In Foot and Hook (1999), Legge (1995) states that "The concept of human resource management first appeared in the 80s and the use of the term grew in the 1990s. Its meaning and the range of activities it encompasses have been examined and described by a large number of business writers and researchers." Since the 1990s, the role of HRM has become more crucial.

Cullen and Parboteeah (2005) clearly state that "human resource management (HRM) deals with the entire relationship of the employee with the organization." Consequently, in accordance with Cullen and Parboteeah (2005), the major HRM functions are formed of recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal, compensation, and labor relations. Moreover, Clark and Mallory (1996) emphasize that "we will suggest that differences in national cultures leads to different ways of thinking about management and organizations and thus notions of HRM may be culturally relative.

In this coursework, however, the focus will be on the cross-cultural aspect that related to HRM. As a result, the attention will be paid on the international human resource management (IHRM). There is not much difference between HRM and IHRM. To illustrate, the basic functions of HRM still remain but 2 issues has been added. According to Cullen and Parboteeah (2005), the first mentioned issue is the employees in multinational company are varied in nationalities. The second is manager in charge must adapt and apply HRM policies to the national cultures, business cultures and social institutions where the business is established. In addition, the definition of multinational company, given by and Parboteeah (2005), "is broadly defined as any company that engages in business function beyond its domestic borders." This can be assumed that the roles of HRM in multinational company, or so called IHRM, is unavoidably dealing with people from different thoughts, believes, and, more importantly, cultures. Therefore, the study of culture, which is related to HRM, should be taken into account.

Every human has their own patterns of everyday activities such as walking, speaking or thinking. Those actions can be learned since early childhood until the last day of their lifetime. However, even obtaining the entire pattern that required to settle down in one place, it might be insufficient in another place (Hofstede, 1997). Differences between cultures are the main cause of that situation and conflict can happen in daily life, in business management and, without doubt, in human resource management.

The word 'culture' comes from the concept of Social anthropology and Sociology which usually describes the role and interactions receiving from norm and values. There are many aspects of 'culture' that people can focus on. According to Hofstede (1997), 'culture' in Western languages usually means improvement in mind in specific areas like education, art, and literature. However, these aspects have meanings in narrow senses but if discussing culture in multinational companies, where many types of peoples with different thoughts, beliefs and feelings have to work together in corporative way, the aspect used will have to be broader.

Hofstede (1997) gives the definition of culture as a collective phenomenon, shared with people who live or lived within the same environment, which is where it was learned. It distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another. In addition, Harris and Moran (2000) note that culture impacts behaviour, morale, and productivity at work, including values and patterns that influence company attitudes and actions.

As people have many different aspects of culture from where they had learned, the approach that HR manager deal with employees should be in different way too - especially in Multinational companies. To bring the high efficiency in work, HR manager should understand the different aspect of culture. And to depict the culture clearly, the attention should be paid on the layers of the culture.

According to Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998) the culture can be classified into 3 layers which are the outer, the middle, and the core. The outer layer is explicit product. The middle layer is norms and values. And the core is assumption about existence.

The outer layer of the culture consists of all the things that can be observed but not knowing completely about norm and values or the real meaning inside those things. These can be called explicit culture which involved with both tangible and intangible things like language, food, agriculture or fashion. HR manager has to be careful not to misjudge workers from thing that he or she encounters for the first time since it may have some implications lying.

The middle layer contains norms and values of the society. While norms are described things that should be done in society, values are regarded as things that individual or group believes is right or wrong, good or bad.

The core contains basic, implicit assumption that people react to nature with the aim to solve the problems with unconsciousness. It is the core behavior that we use to survive the situation efficiently with unawareness.

In Multinational companies, HR manager needs to have more skills than domestic companies since the operating systems need more abilities and the employing systems involve with international workers. In order to work in international organization, they need to handle with many different aspects of culture in one time - from their culture of origin, the culture which they are working for and the culture of the organization which employs them (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998)

Specific attributes required is to differentiate one culture from another in organization and find the most appropriate way to cope with that culture. The important role of international human resource management is to find the right employees who can fit in the culture of the companies and find the right methods to manage the resource to be high effective. Apart from the important role of IHRM to find the employees who are suitable for the job, communication should be considered as a key to improve working competency because in multinational company, the culture is vary from one person to another. The communication will provide a chance for the employees to blend into the company.

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the