4. Culture and teamwork
Culture is simply "the values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects
that constitute a people's
way of life" (Macionis, 1993). Research examining the relationship
between culture
and
performance in organizations has tended to focus on people's attitudes, values,
beliefs, sources of motivation, and satisfaction and is commonly assumed to predict
behavior.
Although alternative categorizations exist (e.g., Trompenaars, 1993), the most
commonly used description of cultural comparisons has been developed by Hofstede
(1980; 1991). Hofstede conducted the most exhaustive cross-cultural study to date
(questionnaire data from 80,000 IBM employees in 66 countries across seven
occupations) and established four dimensions of national culture. The four dimensions
are the following:
Power Distance: The extent to which the less powerful members of
institutions and organizations accept that power is distributed unequally.
Individualism/Collectivism: The extent to which a society is a loosely knit
social framework in which people are supposed to take care only of themselves
and their immediate families, as opposed to tight social frameworks in which
people are integrated into strong cohesive groups that look after them in
exchange for loyalty.
Uncertainty Avoidance: The extent to which people feel threatened by
ambiguous situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid
them.
Masculinity/Femininity: The extent to which the dominant values in a society
tend toward achievement and success and away from caring for others and
quality of life.
Research has shown that social dynamics vary according to the norms individuals
hold concerning appropriate social behavior and that these norms vary across cultural
settings (Triandis, 1989). For example, direct confrontation of one's boss may be
acceptable in one culture and avoided in another (Adler, 1986). In fact, preliminary
empirical studies have demonstrated large cross-national differences in attitudes regarding
task performance across several work domains (Hofstede, 1980; Merritt, 1996; Merritt
and Helmreich, 1996). Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect that societal culture exerts
important effects on team members' knowledge of acceptable team skills, on members'
attitudes toward teamwork, and on team behavior.
4.1 Research on culture and teamwork
Several notable studies have examined the attitudinal differences among workers of
different cultures (Evan, 1993). Hofstede (1985) explored a matched sample of
employees in a single, multinational corporation in 40 countries. He found wide
differences in attitudes toward collaboration. Individualistic countries were more likely
to reject collaborative work, preferring to work on their own, whereas collectivist cultures
preferred collaborating with others. In related work, Kelly and Reeser (1973) examined
the differences between American managers of Japanese ancestry and those of Caucasian
ancestry. Similarly, a study by Pizam and Reichel (1977) examined the differences
between Israeli managers of Oriental ancestry and those of Western ancestry. In both
studies, cultural differences were observed in areas such as respect for formal authority,
commitment to long-term employment, paternalism with respect to subordinates, and
interest in teamwork.
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