Leadership and management styles

Management styles convergence in East Asia

When comparing two types of management styles, we can find that there are two different forces pushing for convergence and differentiation. Regarding the convergence forces, we can see that they are the ones pushing for similarities, but it is important to have in mind that, convergence is not the same as homogeneous. This forces can help us to build relationships among the parties. On the other hand, we have the differentiation forces, pushing against homogenization, for instance we can say that national culture and other different management sytles are part of this forces. The differentiation forces can help us understand difficulties among the two parties.


During the class time, we had the chance to compare two types of management styles: The Japanese and Korean.

Japanese Management Style:

Not all japanese companies are alike but they do share some characteristics. Market share has been important to all japanese firms, because it is consistent with long term firm value maximization. The relationship with the suppliers are very important, they try to have a long term relationship with them in order to have close cooperation and coordination of the production process and the fast and flexible development of new products. Japanese firms consider consensus building and group loyalty as important principles, they also care about the relationships between management levels. They believe that finding the right kind of customer is the source of value in the Japanese customer contact. The conection between production and product design is essential in the company.

Zaibatsu: were the diversified family enterprises that rose to prominence in the Meji era, they gained position in the japanese economy with no exact parallel elsewhere by subsidies and a favorable tax policy, the government granted them a privileged position in japan's economic development process.

Korean Management Style:

Korea was a japanese colony from 1910 to 1945 so they were strongly influenced by the japanese culture. Some authors belive that the organizational structures in Korea are exactly the same as the ones in Japan. Korea adopted Japan's economic development model during the 70s and 80s, the government intervened a lot in issues such as credit, foreign exchange rations and benefits in export growth, in consequence, the favored firms grew faster and diversified better, and the gap between large and small firms widened.

Chaebol: is a large conglomerate of family controlled firms of South Korea that are characterized because have strong ties with government agencies. They were not allowed to own banks. The government gave them special privileges so they grew larger, but sometimes, they couldn't grow not because they were not profitable but because they couldn't borrow vast funds.

The concept of Isomorphism is also important to mention, it refers to the adaptation to the environment ( local, international), you can't help getting influence and similarities from another companies because otherwise you will become isolated as the world is changing.

Explain the phenomenon of convergence in terms of management styles. What are the forces or factors pushing for convergence?

The phenomenon of convergence, mentioned earlier, refers to the similarities that companies can have in terms of management styles but is necessary to differentiate it from homogenization, because they are not the same, the last one refers to when the management styles are exactly the same, but in convergence they tend to be but there are some differentiation forces that keeps them from becoming the same.

The factors that push for convergence, can be growth and internationalization, in the way that, when a country starts a process of internationalization and in consequence starts experiencing growth, this country tends to adopt the management styles and techniques from other country that has successfully done it before, and that almost in all cases, is a country located in the same geographical region or continent, because, cultural similarities are other reason for convergence. Convergence can be seen easily in regional aspects rather than worldwide.
Isomorphism can be seen both as a cause and consequence of convergence, because companies and organisations feel the need to change as their needs are changing and the world is changing at the same time, because if they don't then they will be isolated. International competition is another force pushing for convergence because again, organisations will try to imitate and learn from the successful management styles that had led them to have a competitive advantage somehow.

In the case of Korean and Japanese management styles, do you think they tend to converge or diverge? Are they likely to converge to each other or to other management styles (Western, Asian, etc).

I do strongly believe that they tend to converge, even thought they have differentiation forces pushing against homogenization of management styles. They tend to converge for several reasons, first of all, Korea was a japanese colony, for that reason was strongly influenced by the japanese culture, so they have several similarities in that aspect. The reason why I think that they converge the most is because, Japan has proven to be very succesful in certain industries which are very important in Korea as well and they do compete in this industries, like for instance consumer electronics, automobiles, semi-conductors and shipbuildings. So if the management styles that had led Japan to success can be adapted into the Korean organisations, they could have thought that they would help them to achieve better results and to improve by learning from them.

They are alike to converge to each other at first, but with the time and as they will be getting more and more international and having contact in commercial terms with some more countries they might pick up the best from the management styles of every country (US, European countries) and they will try to have at the end a mix of the best from every countrie's management style. Still I think that the mix will be composed mainly of Korean's or Japanese's management styles because of their affinity in cultural terms.

Communication + Virtual Teams

Summary: If intercontinental were a sound... what would it be?
Author: Michael Spencer

The global brand team of Intercontinental Hotel & Resorts came up with a challenge of creating their own musical version of their brand's profile, the main idea was to explore the impact that the sound could make in their brand awareness and how it could become part of the brand identity. It is important and interesting to know how arts can be an important catalyst in reinforcing and building better business practices. The outcome was the creation of the global Sound Strategy, which integrated with InterContinental's new approach to guests relations, the idea was to, involve music and play it in public spaces of their hotels, in order to help to have a better position of the InterContinental brand.

The team was thinking about a way in which they could have an impact on the guests and how it could be meaningful to them, but without doing what they were expecting the hotel to do, like for instance having fine dinning or things that you can take for granted in a luxury hotel. They were looking for something more, some experience that the guests could take back home with them. That is why they hired two specialists in the emotional impact of sound to set up an initial development team; The team carried on a study, in which participated guests, executives from the hotel and also from the Holiday Inn, in this workshop they had different stages:

1. Discussion of pre-work: They found out that one of the principal difficulties to face brand managers when making musical choices is overcoming their own subjective opinions. They also had difficulties when trying to explain the musical requirements for the brand, it was a requirement for the music not to be influenced by personal or emmotional attachment.
2. Skills building: The team developed some musical understanding ityand critical assessment sikills by creating structures out of simple elements.
3. Creating sounds for the brand: The group focused in how the brand's characterisctics and imagery might be transposed into aural equivalents. By making use of their new musical skills the group overcame the difficulties in making a literal transition from description to practical execution.
4. Studio functionality: They examined the importance of the logical progression by starting whit practical ideas and advancing to more sophisticated ones, and also, they had the chance to get familiar with a working studio.
5. Review: They had a presentation of their research findings and outcomes of the day. There were several reactions from the executives from the hotel, like for instance, one of the SVP stated that they realised that they had lessons to learn and that they need to be more flexible and learn to leave room for other people's creativity.

After implementing the project, the group came up with some conclusions regarding the whole process and the experience:

• "It is fundamental to the success of any arts-based initiative that it responds to the business imperative of the client."
• "Research into the organisation's econtext and culture is vital in order to respond effectively to any surprises."
• "Any outcomes have to be converted into a practical and easily digested format appropriate for your client."

Summary: "Virtual team concepts in projects: A case study"
Palitha R. Kuruppuarachchi

Thanks to the relatively cheap and new information techologies that have arised lately, the emergence of the so called "virtual teams" has became more popular. They are created according to the organisation's needs, usually to collaborate on projects by utilizing the skills of the employees that are geographically dispersed.


Emergence of virtual teams:
It is possible for this teams to exist regardless of variables such as space, time and cultural boundaries, the main reason for them to keep together is a common purpose and the best way to achieve their goal or purpose is the utilization of the collaborative technologies in order to communicate effectively.
There are both push and pull forces that promote the use of virtual teams. The "business pull" would be the global expansion of the firms and the aim to penetrate new markets, the "technology push" would be the emergence of new technologies that allow the effective communication in a cheap way.

Drawbacks and benefits of virtual teams:
There are certain limitations that one has to keep in mind when setting up a virtual team, such as: multiple time zones, different languages, different approaches to conflict resolution and relatively high investments in trainning and implementation of new technologies. On the other hand, there are several benefits from the implementation of virtual teams, such as the recruitment of talented employees regardless of the distance, saving time and money, allowing the team members to have more time and space to carry on their personal life, etc..
It is important to say that, some benefits may have some negative effects, while some of the drawbacks may have some positive effects, furthermore, this classification of advantages and disadvantages is subjective.

Teams in general:
Regardless of the type of team, if it is virtual team, traditional team, telework, virtual group, etc, the design and support ot teams are vital in leading any team. There are 3 key considerations in order to decresase the adverse effects of teams, according to Hackman and Powell:

1. The team has to be a clearly bounded group of people with a shared-collective responsibility for the outcome.
   
2. The team leader has to establish basic norms of conduct and make these explicit.
3. The reward systems of the organization have to recognize collective performance of the team.

It is common to see that teams in higly innovative and transformational environments often have issues regarding feedback management, establishing a good structure, solving problems and managing relationships.


Virtual teams vs colocated teams
There are several differences between both types of teams, both advantages and disadvantages, for instance, colocated teams have high levels of trust, clear communication, strong leadership, but on the other hand, virtual teams can also have some of these characteristics plus they are more dynamic as their members are dispersed geographically in different locations. There can be several limitations as well for virtual teams, like for instance, the lack of trust, difficulties to build relationships and managing cultural differences.

Based on the article “If Intercontinental were a sound…what would it be?”, Please discuss the implications (potential advantages, disadvantages, challenges, etc.) of using sounds to send strategic messages.

The use of sounds to increase the people's awareness towards a brand has became very popular lately, companies are using them to differentiate from other brands. It is a component of the Audio-visual brand identity that aims to increase the brand's recognition. For instance we might not even notice that companies do it all the time, but when we think about it, we realise that we associate several products to a brand or a concept by just hearing a sound, a song or a melody. For companies, can be challenging to adapt the sound to the message and values that they want to transmit to the public, because it can be very subjective. People react differently to different types of sounds that at the same time induce to several types of emotions. It is very difficult to standardized a sound to cause the same emotion in all the people, regardless of many variables, like age, gender, culture, etc...

But despite all of those challenges, some companies have proven to have success in the implementation of sounds for their brand recognition, for instance, if we think about McDonald's and their "I love it" jingle, it is evident that almost everyone, when they hear the melody and the lyrics will recognize and associate it to McDonald's whitout hearing the brand on it. Besides, McDonald's has approached to almost every country and culture with the same campaing by translating "I love it" to different languages but using the same melody.





In my opinion, the use of sound to transmit strategic messages and increase the brand awareness can be very effective and successful but it requires to make several studies to make sure that the message will be delivered in the way that the company desires due to several variables that can modify it or change it like languages, culture, gender, etc...

Motivation

Summary of the text "Employees motivation theories developed at an international level"
Lefter Viorel, Manolescu Aurel, Marinas Cristian Virgil and Puia Ramona Stefania.

According to the authors, "motivation is one of the main factors that determine the work performance of employees", but we must differentiate this from stimulus,in the way that motivation can be for instance, the main reason for achieving something or to chose to act in a certain manner.

There are different theories exposed by different authors. We will explain each of them:

• Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: Abraham Maslow, the american humanist psychologist published in 1954 a research paper in which he worked for 13 years. In this paper, he develops a "Theory of Motivation" in which he classifies people needs in 5 categories,and place them into a pyramid, these categories are in order from bottom to top: physiological needs, needs of security and safety, social needs, needs of self-esteem and the needs of self-actualization. He states that people tend to satifsty the needs place in the bottom first, and then the ones at the next level become dominant and in this way they move up from one need to another, but in some cases, the inferior rank still exists and they go back to previous statisfied needs.
  This theory has had a great influence over organizations but at the same time has been very criticized because people are different and have different priorities.

• Two factors theory: Developed by Frederick Hezberg, this theory states that "motivation and increase of work performance can only be obtained through the action of the motivational factors, which directly reflect the content of the executed work by the employee on his possition." He reached this conclusion, by studying a group of engineers and accountants for a certain period of time, and interviewing them in a regular basis, he aimed to find out the causes for satisfaction or disatisfaction at work, at the end, he related satisfaction to positive periods of work including promotions, achivements, etc. On the other hand, disatisfactions were related to frustration that could have been caused by different factors of the organisation such as the company's policy, management, salary, etc.
  

• Theory X and Theory Y: The author of this motivational theory is Mr. Douglas McGregor, in his work, he states that all the employees are separated in two different categories. The X category or theory, says that the X employee is the one that lacks of ambition, avoids work and commitment to the company as much as possible, resists to change. This type of employee must be threatened with punishements, controlled and penalized in order to comply with his objectives. The Y employee is the total opposite, is very commited to work, consider normal making intellectual and physical efforts at work and likes to get involved in different responsabilities by being motivated by the associated rewards. He doesn't have to be threatened or forced in order to comply with his objectives and goals in the company.

There are also other theories that are focused on the precesses and on the psychological forces that have an effect on motivation, these theories are called "Process theories". The main ones are:

• The expectancy theory: Developed by Porter and Lawler, states that " there is a connection between the employee's motivation and the certitude of their expectancies". There is motivation when there is a relationship between the work performance and its results and at the same time when this results satisfy a need.
  
• The goal setting theory: Developed by Lotham and Locke, states that the employee's motivation level is higher when the employee set goals and even if they are difficult they are accepted and performance feedback is provided.
  
• The equity theory: States that people is more motivated when they are treated fairly and less motivated when there is no equity in the treat among the employees.
  
• The theory of group personality and group needs: States that, the group resemble individuals in the way tha they develop a personality and share common needs. There are 3 areas of needs in the groups, 2 of them are properties of the group as a whole, which are: the need to accomplish the common task and the need be maintained as a cohesive social unity. The third are is the sum of the individual needs of the group members.
  

There is a new theory of motivation developed by Mr. Adair named the Fifty-fifty rule, in this theory, he states that "a substantial part of motivation lies within a person, while a substantial part lies outside and beyond its control". This theory takes into account the internal perspective of the employee and its motivational factors and the external perspective as well in which the environment affects somehow its motivation.

The European Employee Index:

Was developed in the northern European countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) in oreder to link the employee's satistactcion, sense of loyalty and motivation to another factors directly related to their perception of the job and the working environment. This factors were classified in 7 dimensions that managers can work on in order to improve motivation among its employees. The dimensions are:

• Reputation: perception of the general knowledge of the organisation
• Senior management: perception of general direction of the organisation
  
• Immediate superior: quality of management offered by the immediate superiors
  
• Cooperation: quality of interaction among people in the organisation
  
• Daily work: perception of the specific content of their daily activities at the workplace
  
• Total remuneration: perception of the elements involved in their compensation by doing their job.
  
• Development: perception of the individual acquisition of competences

"No matter the country, the development of human resources adn the daily activity are very important factors for increasing employee's satisfaction."

The Hawthorne studies

These studies were carried out in the early XIX century by the Western Electric company at their Hawthorne's plant. There was a trend of doing this type of studies in American companies by Scientific Management, a school of thinking developed by Frederick Taylor. They aimed to analyze the best way that a worker could perform certain task. The studies consisted in breaking down tasks in smaller and simpler duties for employees, aiming to analyze the variables that could improve efficiency like for instance, the time they spent in each of them, how many breaks they have and how often, how much water to drink, etc.

The company also studied how the physical environment affected the employee's productivity, for instance, at first they focused on evaluating the changes in productivity according to changes in lighting, in order to find the optimum level of light that would lead to maximum productivity, but they also tried by modifying other variables such as music, working hours, temperature, compensation schemes, etc.

Other factors that showed success in increasing productivity was that the employees sometimes felt monitorized so they performed better and also they felt that they were treated in a special way from managers so that had a positive effect in their motivation. To have clean working stations and obstacle free seemed to worked quite good as well.

Personally, I find very important and interesting the studies conducted in this factory, in order to pay attention to small details in companies, that managers usually don't spent too much time on, and how can a small variation on these details cause a big difference in terms of productivity and motivation at the extent that perhaps it can become a competitive advantage for the company. In order to have a big impact in productivity or in some other key areas of a company, one doesn't need to make massive changes in the organizational structure or in other aspects that have already been created, that is why, one has to take into account the studies that have already been carried on and what were the outcomes, in order to know that maybe by making a little change in a very normal and basic aspect of a company one can obtain a big difference in productivity and performance converting it into a important competitive advantage.

These studies also could have been used by the authors of the different motivation theories regarding the external and the internal factors that affect motivation at work, in order to prove and argument their founded theories.

"Flight 001: Motivating employees": Which motivation theory do you think has the most relevance for understanding the behavior of Griffin and fostering her motivation at work?

There are many theories that could fit this case, regarding the motivation issue. But in my personal opinion, the one that fits better is the X and Y Theory, explained before in the blog and developed by Mr. Douglas McGregor, in this context, we can state that, at first, Griffin was located in the X theory, in which, she didn't feel motivated at all, she felt that she could have been replaced at any time, she wasn't very attached to the organisation and wasn't very commited with doing much effort. She felt like if they didn't care about her then why should her care?

When she was moved to the other area of the company, she felt pretty comfortable and that her role in the company was important indeed, that her ideas were taken into account, for that reason she felt much more motivated towards work. This can be explained under the Y theory, because she felt that she could put a lot of more effort at her job and she was very commited to it. We can see that it was a positive change for her, that resulted also in a positive change for the company regarding productivity and that didn't need a lot to do it, just to give attention to employee's behavior.