Managing a Multicultural Workforce
Posted on April 11, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
This article discusses the methods and techniques of managing a multicultural workforce or how to manage the work force in different countries.
Many people are probably less skilled at dealing with cultural differences than they think they are. Most people might say, of course, there are cultural differences among people from different cultures, but many, once abroad, would blunder into simply treating the people there the same as the people at home.
The problem stems from what international management writers call the universality assumption of motivation; the motivation theories wrongly assume that human needs are universal. For example, an American manager in Chile might assume that employees there are as enthusiastic about “participative leadership” where the boss ask what the workers think is best as the best way to motivate the workforce like in the USA. While this might not be the case. Such assumptions are not uniquely American. Everyone everywhere tends to assume that everyone thinks and feels more or less like they do. But, in fact, people and cultures are different in many ways. In this article the link between culture and the consequences for managers and managing will be briefly discussed.
Different Values
One way people around the world differ is in terms of their values. Values are basic beliefs people hold about what is good or bad, important or unimportant. Values are important to managers because our values shape how we behave.
When Professor Geert Hofstede studied managers around the world, he found that societies’ values differ in several ways:
◗ Power distance is the extent to which the country’s less powerful members accept and expect that power will be distributed unequally. At the time, Hofstede concluded that acceptance of such inequality was higher in some countries (such as Mexico) than it was in others (such as Sweden).
◗ In individualistic countries like Australia and the United States, all members are expected to look after themselves and their immediateate families. In collectivist countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, society expects people to care for each other more.
◗According to Hofstede, societies differ also in the extent to which they value assertiveness (which he called “masculinity”) or caring (“femininity”). For example, Austria ranked high in masculinity; Denmark ranked lower.
◗ Uncertainty avoidance refers to whether people in the society are uncomfortable with unstructured situations in which unknown, surprising, new incidents occur. People in some countries (such as Sweden, Israel, and Great Britain) are relatively comfortable dealing with uncertainty and surprises. People living in other countries (Greece and Portugal) tend to be uncertainty avoiders.
Leadership in a Multicultural Environment
Leadership means influencing someone to willingly work toward achieving the firm’s objectives. The manager dealing with people from other cultures needs to keep in mind that cultural differences affect how managers exercise their leadership authority. Hofstede found large differences in the power distance (inequality) people in different cultures will tolerate. For example, people in Argentina appear more tolerant of large power differences, people in Sweden less so.
Findings like these have practical managerial implications. They help to explain why managers from different countries seem to have different mindsets when it comes to doing business. For example, if a manager in a large power distance society attempts to reduce the distance by acting more accessible and friendly, his or her subordinates may not react well to such friendliness from their boss. In that context, it’s not surprising that leaders in some countries (for example, Spain, Portugal, and Greece) tend to delegate less authority than do leaders in others such as Sweden, Japan, Norway, and the United States.
Motivation in a Multicultural Environment
Similarly, the motivation techniques managers use in one country may not work well in another. For example, in his famous needs hierarchy theory, American psychologist Abraham Maslow said that people are motivated first to satisfy their basic physiological needs (food and water) and only then will they be motivated to satisfy (in ascending order) their security, social, self-esteem, and self-actualization becoming the person you believe you are capable of becoming) needs.
However, he based his theory on Americans. In other societies, people’s needs don’t necessarily revolve around the self as much as around social relationships. Thus, in China, social needs might come first, then physiological, security, and finally self-actualization needs. Not surprisingly, in Asia, paying an incentive to a work team for how well it performs is very popular. In America, individual incentives are more popular.
