The role of Organisational culture in merging processes

"Challenges and opportunities in mergers and acquisitions: Three International case studies - Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; British Petroleum-Amoco; Ford-Volvo"
Alzira Salama, Wayne Holland and Gerald Vinten


There are certain important issues to be considered when implementing an acquisition or merger process, that are most of the times not taking into account as a crucial part for the success by key managers in both organisations. It is usual that the decision for merging or acquiring another company is driven by financial expectations rather than for a learning opportunity in multiple areas. The creation of value is extremely important, and can only be achieved by people, when they share knowledge, skills and collaborate in order to create benefits and work for a better future for both companies, which in the long term can become a very important competitive advantage for the company that will be difficult to copy and overcome by its competitors.


An acquisition and a merger, can be seen from the point of view of a marriage, and if we analyse it this way, one can get to see that there are going to be some opportunities to take advantage of, and of course some challenges that must be overcome in order to work efficiently. In that order of ideas, if we are talking about a successful acquisition, one must say that it implies the fact of an effective integration between two companies into a single group that will work together and joint efforts in order to achieve the goals for the new organisation. It is exactly the same as a couple who is getting married and is combining efforts and skills in order to make their union work and improve their lifestyle and to assure a better future together.

Some key opportunity points that an acquisition process offers are:

• Learning: There is a huge opportunity in this sense, to learn and improve processes by learning from the other party in what they do best. In this way, both companies are being benefited in different areas, and that will help them to get better as a whole. For instance, that is one of the opportunities of the Volvo-Ford acquisition, employees and engineers from Volvo taught and shared knowledge regarding safety and ergonomics with the employees working in the US in the Ford section. On the other hand, employees in Sweden feel more attractive to the dealer market now that both companies are working together since they are learning from Ford in this field.

• Renew market position: For instance, when a company wants to enter to another country, this is a good way to achieve that faster in a successful way, because the acquired company is already known in its home market, it knows the customer better than the new company, its prefferences, what they dislike, etc.. They also have a supply chain and a distribution chain with them (if applies) and have many advantages that can be passed to the new company. Is not that much about the physical assets but about the knowledge.

• Create a new and strong cultural organisation: By unifying the best of both companies and learning about each other's values and beliefs, better business practices can be achieved and implemented and in the long-term they would become a very important competitive advantage for the new organisation that will be difficult to imitate by the possible competitors.

As in almost every relationship there are a few challenges that must be surmounted:

• Create potential synergies: Can lead to a superior performance, but, in order to do so, one has to trak and do a post-acquisition work with the employees of both companies, because there can be a series of conflicts among them in which they will call themselves "us", the other party "them" but there has to be a work in order to achieve that they call the new organisation "we".

• Create a common identity or culture: Is difficult to reach a point where employees from both companies, that are usually from different countries or regions will consolidate a common identity, due to the idea of losing their own national or even organisational identity and accepting the other partie's one. There has to be a communication effort from managers in order to show them the importance of the other company for them and how being integrated could result in greater benefits for both parties.

• Integrating in terms of management and physical assets: The integrating process itself is a big challenge for the main executives in charge, because they have duplicated management and assets from which they will have to choose from, it is more likely for them to choose the best one of each but since the integration team is formed by executives from both companies, to reach a consensus in this phase could be difficult, so what is best is to be very objective and less subjective, leave emotions and affect to one's assets behind, but it is not an easy task. Like in a marriage, it is not easy to say that one is leaving the house for which worked so many years to buy it and worked so hard decorating it, in order to go to another one that might be bigger or prettier, there are sentiments attached to physical assets and of course to people.

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.

Personality, perception and attribution + attitudes and values

Summary of the reading: "Organizational capital as competitive advantage of the firm"
Gregorio Martín-de-Castro, José Emilio Navas-López, Pedro López-Sáenz and Elsa Alama

The aim of the document, was for the authors to describe the characteristics of strategic resources and capabilities and why they are important within the organisation's frame, then according to some field work that they did in the Spanish knowledge Society Research Center they discuss the importance and the nature of intellectual capital. They also explain the concept of organizational capital.

To begin with resources and capabilities, the authors state that resources are basic units of production that are ready for the company, on the other hand, capabilities are organizational routines which happen from the combination and coordination of different resources. There is a key difference between both of them, mentioned in the document which is "resources are independent, simple and static, as opposed to capabilities that are collective, complex and dynamic." There are some relevant characteristics that they must complete:

• Inimitability: They must be hard to copy for the competitors.
  
• Value: The effectiveness of the resource in order to compete in a certain industry.
  
• Apropiability: When the company owns the rents derived from both capabilities and resources.
  
• Durability: Life expectancy of both.
• Insubstitutability: There is no resource or capability that can replace them.
• Non-transferability: Is not easy to buy or sell them in the market.
  

There is an author named Barney (1991) who states that "the resources that are simultaneously rare and valuable can generate competitive advantage, and if these resources are also hard to imitate, irreplaceable and hard to transfer, they will sustain the advantage".

Nowadays is known that almost all the economic wealth is derived from knowledge, but managing such valuable asset for the company is not an easy task because of its measuremet and identification. This knowledge can be clasified as "intellectual property assets that are focused on technological knowledge and infrastructure assets that are focused on organizational knowledge" according to Brooking (1996).

According to the study and workfield realized by the authors of this document at the Spanish Knowledge Society Research Center in Madrid, they could identify in the inellectual capital assets five components:

• Human capital
• Technological capital
• Organizational capital
• Business capital
  
• Social capital

The authors focused their study in order to "justify the strategic analysis of the main components of organizational capital: culture, structure and organizational learning" .

Regarding culture as a sustainble competitive advantage for the organization the authors state that "organizational culture adds financial value for the company and relates it with the competitive environment". It is not easy to imitate because is not easy to describe, it implies history and certain conditions of the company itself, is difficult to transfer because it can't be bought or sold in a market and has a long life expectancy.
Secondly, the structure as a sustainable competitive advantage is difficult to imitate and transfer to competitors because it represents several ways of communication, cooperation and integration among the different members of the company.The last of all is the organizational learning as a sustainable competitive advantage we can say is the best of all because is hard to imitate, to transfer and to replace because it is related to every organization in particular, it is developed gradually in the company to all the people working there and it has a long life expectancy even if some members leave the company.

The Pygmalion effect

This concept was first introduced to explain the relation and the result of the power of expectations. All supervisor has at some extent expectations of its subordinates and at the same time they communicate this expectations in a conscious or unconscious way, in that way, people understand and read what they're communicating in also a consciuos or unconscious way and their performance strongly depends on the expectations they have understood and received from their supervisors.

For instance, if the supervisor has positive expectations and express it to a group of employees it is more feasible for the employees to reach their goal and keep motivated because what the supervisor thinks is very important and affects their performance in a positive way, in this case. But the opposite can happen too, the supervisor might not have much expectations on its team or perhaps in one employee in particular, so in this way, the performance of the team might not be very successful. The supervisor doesn't have necesarily to tell them in words what his expectations are but he can express it in an unsconscious way and the group might pick it up. For instance, he might talk and interact with the group more frequently than with one person in particular, so this person can feel forgotte, useless and pushed away by the supervisor, so in consequence, its performance might be lower that the rest of the group because is thinking that the supervisor doesn't have much hope or expectations on its role in the company.

There are challenges arising from the internationalization of the company because one has to deal with different cultures. For instance, if there is a person from a country where the hierarchical structure is very vertical and there is none or very little interaction between managers or supervisors and employees, and this person goes to a country where the hierarchical structure is horizontal and there is a lot of communication between managers and employees, meaning that has a low PDI (Power Distribution Index) is more feasible that in this situation the Pygmeon effect takes place more deeply than in the other country, not meaning that in countries with a high PDI cannot be seen but for instance the expectations from managers to employees can be communicated in a more unconsciuos manner. Going back to the person going to the country with low PDI, can be a critical change for its performance, because for instance he or she could feel more appreciated in the company just because for the fact that the manager is talking to him or her and might think that has very positive expectations about his or her work in this company.

The relation between national culture and organisational culture can be explained utilising the concept of the pygmalion effect, in the way that depending on the culture, there are forms of communication within a country and an organisation. For instance both cultures can coincide in the same and perhaps in this culture the expectations that the manager has over the employees will not be that strong for them in order to affect their performance, but on the other hand, the opposite case could happen as well.

Organisational behavior, national and organisational culture

An organisation's performance depends strongly in its employees and human resources rather than in machinery or technology itself. In order for the working parties to perform effectively, there must be an acceptance of behavior within the organisation and among all the employees.
It can be seen that in a globalized world, there are many influences which direct people's behavior to a certain way, but as humans there are two perspectives exposed by authors Nelson, D.L & Quick, J.C that try to understand the human behavior regardless of the culture and other factors that difference people.

First of all there is the internal perspective, which contemplates all the factors inside the person in order to understand its behavior, for instance factors as thoughts, feelings and needs are of vital importance for this perspective. Second, there is the external perspective which aims to consider all the external events and environment that might explain the person's behavior towards certain situations. There are also several different disciplines such as psychology, sociology, engineering, management and so on, that have contributed to make a complete overview of people's behavior within an organisation.

In order to fully understand the role of behavior within the organisations, it is important to know first what an organisation is. According to the authors previously mentioned "Organizations are open systems of interacting components which are people, tasks, technology, and structure. These internal components also interact with components in the organization's taks environment". Organisations are entities wich hold a main goal or purpose with a mix of ingredients that allow them to work effectively, in which human reources is highly valued. This goal or main purpose is most of the time providing the best product or service in which the organisation operates and in order to do that is necessary to go through a process in which there is an input (people, raw materials, information, resources), a transformation process (management, production) and finally and output that in most of the cases would be the product or service that the organisation is supposed to deliver. There are also, two types of organisations in terms of the internal system operating, for instance, the formal organisation aims to lead people to think about the organisation in a very rational way making very important the role of legitimacy and official throug policies, objectives and mission and vision statements.
On the other hand, there is the informal type of organisation, which is the less visible part of the organisation, contemplating factors such as values, attitudes, feelings and beliefs of worker's and employees within the organisation. In this context there is also important to hightlight the role of change in organisations, there are several factors that can result as challenges for managers to handle according to every different situation, these factors are mainly globalization, workforce diversity and ethics.

Another equally important thing about organisations is globalization and culture. In a globalized world, it can be seen the increasingly important role of culture within organisations, in a daily basis and in many ways, like for instance in essential processes as decision making. Nowadays, for managers and working personal it is of vital importance to inquire and study culture for different reasons, like for instance predicting results and the impact of future negotiations within the business environment, to plan strategies and product development according to the country ,and many others.

It is important to understand the meaning of national cultural and the organisational culture in order to have a greater look of the big picture of the business environment. The national culture could be described as a sumatory of all those values and beliefs that are common to a human group and transmited from generation to generation, and that makes it different from another one. At the same time, the organisational culture is a set of expectations, norms and goals that are common to a group or an organisation to be more exact and that can change from one organisation to another.
Therefore, for managers the big challenge resides in succesfully linking and making work the two types of culture within the organisation in order for all the working parties to be motivated and perform effectively.

Approach to Hofstede's PD (Power/Distance) cultural dimension

According to Hofstede, this dimension "refers to the degree of inequality that exists - and is accepted - among people with and without power. A high PD score indicates that society accepts an unequal distribution of power and people understand "their place" in the system. Low PD means that power is shared and well dispersed. It also means that society members view themselves as equals." There could be several business implications because of different cultural behavior within the organisation.

For instance, imagine a Japanese company which has a high PDI (Power Distance Index), so they expect subordinates to comply with the manager's orders and reccomendations. But, because we are in a globalized world, there is an american employee who is going to work in the Japanese organisation for a certain period of time. In his home country (US) there is a low PDI, meaning that is normal for him to interact in a similar way with his manager and the decision making process can be shared between them. For a japanese, this is can't be possible at all. So, there could be a cultural clash regarding the organisational behavior of the two countries.

Now, let's see it from the other way around, the japanese employee is going to work for the american company, for instance, his manager would expect him to provide some feedback, to interact and make the decision process together according to the company's necessities, but the japanese might not feel comfortable doing this because of his organisational behavior and national culture, is not natural for him to do so and maybe the manager could misunderstand what is happening and might think that the employee is not motivated to do his job at all.

Is there a corporate culture in every organisation?

I do strongly believe that there is a corporate culture in every organisation indeed. It can be described in six words, as the author says, is "How we do things around here". Every organisation, doesn't matter how small or big it is, they have a way of doing things, a set of normsf and behaviors based on the beliefs, priorities and values that all the employees have in a daily working basis. It can be either implicit or explicit, but it will always be there, as long as there are human beings working for the company.

The company can directionate the corporate culture in order to fit the business and the context of the organisation and its goals. For instance, an explicit way to do it is to create a good statement of the mision and the vision of the company and make emphasys on the training of the future employees in this area, so they will know what is the goal that the company seeks to achieve and what the company expects from them. Another way, that I see is possible for the company in order to implement and direct its corporate culture is to keep an eye on the employees, work on their motivation, don't forgeting that they're people who might have career aspirations, no matter what their role in the company is, it would be good for the company to have conferences and meetings with all the employees where they can see what the company has achieved thanks to the effort of every single person working there, so they can feel more involved with the goals and it can becomes a sort of corporate culture with the time.

There is another way in which the corporate culture is represented in the company, the implicit way, is more common in small groups of employees or for instance in different areas of the company, is more "local" and it can vary from area to area in the same company. The use of certain lenguage, and dress code are part of the implicit way of corporate culture.

I think corporate culture can be modified, althought it is not an easy task. It requires time, patience, leadership from the managers and acceptance of the employees about the new issues that are being modified. It is a long term task, we cannot expect people to change the way they are used to work, their beliefs and their way to interact within the company and with their workmates and managers from one day to another, it requires time. For me, that is the main factor, time, things can be done but we need to be patient and perseverant in order to make it work.