Although the cultural relativity of management practices has attracted a great deal of comparatively recent attention by academics and practitioners, the teaching and learning of such practices, in terms of both content and style, are still viewed by many as a culture-free universal matter.

National Culture and Organizations

The last three decades or so have seen a lively debate on the role of national culture in the shape and operation of business organizations. Some commentators have emphasized the universality and similarities between organizations (Kerr et al ; Cole ; Hickson et al ; Form ; Negandhi).

Others have emphasized the uniqueness of organizations, given their cultural contexts (e.g. Meyer and Rowan ; Hofstede ; Lincoln et al ; Laurent ).

However, as Tayeb argues, the two sides of the debate are not mutually exclusive; rather they complement one another. That is, certain aspects of organizations are more likely to be universal [such as shop-floor layout, hierarchal structure and the division of functions], whereas other areas are more culture specific [such as human resource management, management styles and control procedures]

What is certain is that organizations and their employees do not live in a vacuum, separated from their societal surroundings. To begin with, national culture as a set of values, attitudes and behaviors includes also those which are relevant to work and organization. These are carried into the workplace as part of the employees' cultural baggage. Work-related values and attitudes [such as power distance, tolerance for ambiguity, honesty, the pursuance of group or individual goals, work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit] have been argued to be part of the cultural identity of a nation.

Moreover, society at large has certain expectations from its organizations and exerts influences on them, through various formal and informal means. Political, social, and economic institutions and factors, such as economic structure, trade unions, social stratification, educational systems and pressure groups, can all exert their own influences in turn on the organization.

As Amado et al point out:

'[The] genius would seem to reside in the aptitude for integrating cultural reality into management modes, rather than ignoring it or establishing it into one-sided, imperious determinism and then sitting back passively to suffer the consequences. If the way such organization functions can be seen actually to "work", it is also because they are in step with the cultural reality on which they are based, which they can even be said to reflect. In other words, there really does exist a sort of cultural resonance between the organizations "micro" context and the "macro" context of society, this resonance helps in understanding the equilibrium of an organizational system, as strange as it may seem at first glance'.

Japanese and American Companies

Societal context can also influence the means by which managers may perform their tasks and implement organizational strategies and policies. A comparison between Japanese companies from a collectivist culture, with those originating in an individualist one, say that of the United States, shows that the 'whats' may be universal and similar but the 'hows' are different and the differences appear to be culture-specific (Tayeb ).

The similarities between American and Japanese companies are primarily because the countries are fundamentally capitalist entities. They ultimately pursue profit maximization. The approaches are different but the objectives are the same. In the American firms, the managers may go for short-term profits to satisfy their shareholders and to satisfy the performance criteria set for them by their bosses. Their Japanese counterparts might choose to achieve profits via long-term growth strategies and market dominance. Both must tackle issues such as economic recession, labor costs, competition and the like. A Japanese company might choose, in response to economic down-turns, to reduce labor costs by cutting the managers' pay; its American counterpart might respond to similar conditions by laying off a significant number of manual workers and some white-collar workers, with a paltry 1 percent pay cut for the executives (The Economist . The roots of these different approaches can be traced to their respective socio-cultural backgrounds (Tung ; Briggs ; Tayeb ).

The Japanese employees' and employers' behaviors may be related to their collectivism, the inclusion of the workplace in their in-group, their sense of duty and indebtedness to one another as members of a group and their value for face-saving. Since suffering a humiliating loss of face in World War II, their determination to succeed economically in the world has intensified group cohesion among members of society, with the feeling of being all part of one big family.

By contrast, Americans belong to a very individualistic nation, where people pursue mainly their own interests and those of their immediate family - the in-group definitely does not include the workplace. The primary commitment and loyalty of individuals do not therefore lie with the company or any other larger groupings of which they may be a member.

These characteristics seem to be reflected in the culture of business organizations. The Japanese company typically considers its employees as an asset rather than a liability; it invests in their development, has a long term view of their relationships, and hires employees (especially the skilled core work-force) on a long-term basis, training them through rotation in various functional departments in order to enhance their flexibility. Employees, in return, display a high degree of commitment and loyalty to their work organization.

The American company and its employees typically have a short-term perspective. Employees join their work organization as a step on their career development ladder, leaving the company when better prospects beckon elsewhere. The company, on its part, hires and fires the employees at will, recruiting them to fill specified slots - flexibility is not an objective.

At a more operational level, two studies are of particular relevance to the 'what' and 'how' argument, the first by Tayeb and the other by Misumi .

Indian and English work-related attitudes

Tayeb, in a cross-cultural comparative study of Indian and English work-related attitudes and values and organizational structures, suggested that, although in modern industrial societies business organizations tend to develop similar structural configurations in response to similar task-environments, the means by which they achieve these configurations differ depending on the particular socio-cultural characteristics of the society in which they operate and from which the bulk of their employees come.

She found that matched-pair Indian and English organizations were similar in such universal dimensions as specialization and centralization but differed considerably on the amount of consultation or delegation of authority which took place within them. English managers consulted their subordinates more widely before decision-taking and delegated authority further down the hierarchy than did their Indian counterparts. Additionally, English employees communicated with each other to a far greater extent than did the Indian employees.

The differences between the two samples were consistent with the cultural differences between Indian and English people as a whole (Tayeb ). Later studies, such as those conducted by Lincoln and Kalleberg and Smith et al arrived at similar conclusions.

Leadership Style

Misumi's theory of leadership style is based on the argument that behavior must be understood in terms of genotypes and phenotypes,

the core intention of an action and the manner in which that intention is expressed in a particular cultural context.

In other words, there may well be certain underlying universal structures in the behavior of managers which are 'genotypic' or inherent in the superior-subordinate relationships. But these genotypic structures will be expressed in a variable manner, which is affected by numerous factors in the specific environment of a particular manager.

For instance, a Japanese manager might show his concern for an employee by taking an interest in his private life, such as arranging his marriage for him or helping him to solve personal problems, whereas American or British managers show the same concern by providing their employees with appropriate equipment so that they can perform their job properly (Smith et al ; Tayeb ).

East and Central Europea and the former USSR

In transition economies, such as those of East and Central Europe (ECE) and in the former Soviet Union (FSU), it is particularly difficult to study such patterns of work-place interaction, as the work environment is changing rapidly and with it the attitudes and behavior of managers and other employees alike.

What should not be underestimated, though, is the strength of the pre-1990 culture in former command economies. It can be argued that the old elites still have significant power in society, particularly in government and privatized companies. What may be suggested, however, is that the same conditions prevail, the structures and layout of facilities being basically similar to equivalent industries abroad but the local cultural differences having a marked effect on the workplace and management decision-making.

Just as the rest of Europe is a mosaic of management styles (Stenton ), so are the ECE and FSU regions. It would therefore be quite erroneous to consider these cultures as an amorphous whole. For example, power distance in Poland is high but not as high as in France (Yancouzas and Boukis ). The Russian Federation has a larger power distance than both these countries, whereas in the Czech Republic the power distance dimension is similar to the comparatively low UK value.