CULTURAL DIMENSIONS IN GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR NIGERIA

 

John N. N. Ugoani

College of Management and Social Sciences, Rhema University, Nigeria

E-mail: drjohnugoani@yahoo.com

 

Submission: 21/01/2016

Revision: 30/01/2016

Accept: 06/02/2016

ABSTRACT

As enterprise operations continue to be globalized through overseas expansions, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions as well as strategic relationships and partnerships transnational organizations need to give attention to issues of culture in human resource management practices as a panacea for prosperity. The global organization is competent if only it is able to bridge the gap between management and culture so that personal relationships with other peoples in the organization and society become in harmony. This is critical because cultural relativity and reality in organizations influence operations. The study was designed to explore possible relationships between cultural dimensions and global human resource management. The survey research design was employed and data generated through primary and secondary sources. The participants comprised of 385 respondents from a cross-section of the population in Nigeria. By Chi-Square test, it was found that culture has a significant positive relationship with global human resource management.

Keywords: Transcultural, Cultural dimensions, Cultural globalization, Hofstede, Transferability, Visible culture, Dangote.

1.     INTRODUCTION

            Perhaps nothing is more crucial for the global business enterprise than the issues of culture and how to effectively manage the people who work in the organization. The hiring and treatment of employees in global organizations often seem so bound up in culture, rules, regulations, and red tape that effective management is frequently extremely difficult.

            Attempts to find solutions to such difficulties provide justification for the current interest in the areas of global human resource management and culture. In management circles, interest in culture is an attempt to grasp the realities of collective life in the workplace that cannot be easily seen and described by means of such identifiers as job titles, organizational charts, among other elements.

            In recent years, culture has been especially critical in explaining the differences in management practices in different countries of the world. Management is always the same: getting the people of the organization to make things happen in a productive way so that the organization prospers and the people thrive. It is also believed that human resource management is the basis of all management activity, but it is not the basis of all business activity.

            Managing resourceful humans requires a constant balancing between meeting the human aspirations of the people and meeting the strategic needs of the business. The human aspirations of people can vary wildly from country to country and from culture to culture, as the case may be. Human resource management signifies a distinctive philosophy towards carrying out people-oriented organizational activities; one which is held to serve the modern business more effectively and efficiently (TORRINGTON; HALL; TAYLOR, 2005; ARMSTRONG, 2004).

            Although plant, equipment and financial assets are resources required by organizations, the people – the human resources – are particularly important. Human resources provide the creative spark in any organization. People design and produce the goods and services, control quality, market the products, allocate financial resources, and set overall strategies and objectives for the organization.

            Without effective people, it may be impossible for an organization to achieve its objectives. Consequently, human resource management practices must take into cognizance the political, cultural and economic dimensions in society so as to be very effective. In general, human resource management is linked to a series of integrated decisions that form the employment relationship; their quality directly contributes to the ability of the organization and the employees to achieve set objectives (MILKOVICH; BOUDREAU, 1997).

            Global human resource management involves the process of employing and developing people in organizations which operate globally. It means working across national boundaries to formulate and implement resourcing, development, career management and remuneration strategies, policies and practices which can be applied to a global workforce.

            This may include parent country nationals working for long periods as expatriates or on short term assignments, local country nationals, or third country nationals who work for the global organization in a local country but are not parent company nationals.

            Sparrow and Hiltrop (1997) note that human resource management may be affected by national culture in definition of what makes an effective manager, such as giving face-to-face feedback, readiness to accept international assignments, expectations of management, subordinate relationships, pay systems and differential concept of social justice as well as approaches to organizational structuring and strategic dynamics.

            These relate to the non material component and culture that involves invisible aspects which cannot be physically seen or touched, rather it is manifested through people’s philosophy. Organizing is culturally dependent; it consists of manipulating symbols that have meaning for the people who are managed or organized; such meanings are associated with symbols which are heavily affected by what was learnt in the course of socialization.

            The lack of cross-cultural applicability of models in global human resource management has spurred researches into worker motivation in different countries. Some of the studies reveal that although needs often motivate employees, these needs may vary dramatically from one culture to another culture.

            The saliency of any one person’s needs is determined by his or her socialization in a given culture and to have comparative advantage, global human resource management practices must be flexible enough to adjust in line with management practices in the local environment (HOFSTEDE, 1980).

            Torrington (1994) argues that global human resource management is in many ways simply human resource management on a larger scale, more complex, more varied and involving more co-ordination across national boundaries. He opines that certainly the same basic techniques of recruitment and training may be used, but these have to be adapted to fit different cultures and local requirements.

            According to Perkins (1997) the intensity of global competition has led to organizational forms that let go the traditional loose-tight options of geographical businesses for governance patterns that have begun to recognize that reciprocity in relationships is the key to success, with an emphasis on local partnering to combine large-scale global brand recognition and local components.

            Torrington (1994) suggests that global human resource management is not just about coping practices from other countries which will not necessarily translate culturally. Neither is it simply a matter of learning the culture of every country and suitably modifying behaviour in each of them which is an impossible ideal because of the robust and subtle nature of national cultures.

            He hypothesizes that global human resource management is best defined by reference to 7c’s characteristics of: cosmopolitan, culture, compensation, communication, consultancy, competence, and co-ordination. He suggests that there are no universal prescriptions for global human resource management and that his 7c’s are critical in effective global human resource management activities.

            Earlier on, Hofstede (1980) in his classic work put forward four cultural dimensions namely: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism and masculinity-femininity that affect global operations. These characteristics and dimensions of culture almost conform to the transnational model of global human resource management in which the organization develops multi-dimensional strategic capabilities directed towards competing globally but also donates local responsiveness to local requirements.

            Comparative management literature continues to explore the question whether or not cultural values significantly affect global managerial practices and the need for the cross-cultural manager to remain sensitive to this possibility for three reasons. First, to avoid attributing a lack of motivation to someone who is only differently motivated, second, so that the manager may use methods to motivate subordinates that are consistent with their motives and structure appropriate reward systems, and to help managers perform a self-diagnosis of their motive structure.

            The issue of culture in management is so pervasive that researchers state “only by being acutely aware of our own cultural biases can we become aware of others”. The assumption that the cultural environment is a major factor for consideration in global human resource management continues to receive great attention by management theorists (PUNNET; RONEN, 1984; BHAGAT; QUAID, 1982; FARMER, 1974).

1.1.        Empirical Evidence

            Hofstede’s (1980) study using survey data from 116000 employees of a major multinational organization is a classic contribution to cross-cultural research, which underscores the significance of culture in determining attitude and behaviour. He sought to discover the criteria that determine national cultural differences, and states that four major dimensions of power distance, uncertainty avoidance. Individualism collectivism and masculinity-femininity affect national cultural equilibrium.

            Power distance is an important dimension of national culture which is a reflection of the degree to which power in organizations is unequally distributed. More specifically, power distance is associated with the degree of centralization of authority and the extent of autocratic leadership. An interesting finding is that lower education and lower status occupations are associated with higher power distance values and that occupations characterized by higher education and higher status have low power distance values.

            Hofstede (1980) posits that the uncertainty avoidance dimension identifies the extent to which a society tends to consider itself threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations.To this degree the society tends to avoid such situations by establishing greater career stability, formal rules, intolerance of deviant ideas or behaviours and a belief in absolute truths.

            At the same time such societies have a high level of anxiety and aggressiveness which creates a strong inner urge to work hard. Management in high uncertainty avoidance countries may also be relatively task-oriented and often affect the exercise of power while belief is placed in experts and their knowledge in organizations. The individualism-collectivism-cultural dimension describes the relationship between an individual and society as a whole.

            For example, Americans view individualism as a contribution to greatness, but the Chinese do not. Hofstede (1980) opines that a country’s degree of individualism is related statistically to its wealth, and there is a .82 correlation between individualism and wealth as measured by Gross National Product (GNP) per capita.

            According to him the masculinity-femininity culture dimension considers the degree of masculinity of a society’s dominant values such as assertiveness, acquisition of money, and not caring for others. He opines that much of the societal masculinity-femininity dimensions are historically and traditionally determined.

            The main finding emerging from the work of Hofstede (1983a) is that organizations are very heavily culture-bound. He posits that this not only affects people’s behaviour within organizations, such cultural influences also limit how much and how well theories developed in one culture can be used in another culture. Some scholars of management conclude that management is culture-bound. In other words, the facts that management practices differ and that people and their environments vary are believed to be persuasive evidence that management theory and principles differ from culture to culture.

            For example, leading involves motivating and communicating. It requires exerting leadership by including employees to contribute to enterprise objectives. Motivating and leading demand an understanding of employees and their cultural environment. For instance participative management may work well in one country, but may cause confusion in another country (GONZALEZ; MCMILLAN, 1961; TUNG, 1979)

1.2.        Statement of the Problem

            Although business operations are being globalized by overseas expansion, and also by mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships, global organizations need consideration of national boundaries and cultures in human resource management practices.

            They are expected to manage globally as if the world were one big market and simultaneously to manage locally as if the world were a vast number of separate and loosely connected markets. The main contextual factors challenging global human resource management and the form of organizations, the extent of convergence or divergence in global policies, and differences between countries, are especially cultural ones.

            Global human resource management faces the critical problems of managing diversity between countries, social systems and legal requirements. Getting the right caliber of people to deal with the much more complex problems that inevitably arise is very important for the global organization to remain competitive in the global market environment.

            Sparrow and Hiltrop (1997) emphasize the implication of different cultural dimensions to managerial qualities. According to them, the Anglo-Saxon nation sees management as something separate and definable based on general and transferable skills, especially interpersonal skills. In other cultures, value is placed on entrepreneurial skills, technical competence, functional expertise, creativity and formal authority.

            Yet in other cultures, management is seen as an intellectually demanding task and management development systems are elitist. Cultural factors such as the level of education, religion, language, as well as other cultural variables as desired for particular products or services, add in making global human resource management difficult.

            Nigeria runs an open economy and will continue as one of the fastest growing economies in the world and therefore will continue to attract multinational corporations (MNCs) thinking of exciting opportunities for expansion. This will have positive implications for the growth of country-based MNCs, with implications of sound global human resource management.

            With the giant strides of the Dangote group, Nigeria can boast of country-based MNC. As the investment of the group grows around the world, it has created the Nigerian brand of a MNC. The Dangote group has a $250m plant in Senegal, Mali and the Gambia. It also has presence in Ethiopia, Cameroun as well as a $500m cement plant in Tanzania among others in South Africa. Dangote cement is in the class of multinational players like Lafarge.

            Its Obajana plant with an annual turnover of 13.25metric tones is reputed to be the largest in Africa. This growth will lead to the development of partnerships with other MNCs as well, which will invariably pose challenges to the quality of global human resource management available in Nigeria. (ONI, 2015; YUSUF, 2015; BABANGIDA, 1998; BEJIDE, 2010; FGN, 2006).

1.3.        Objective of the study

            The study was to evaluate the degree of relationship in cultural dimensions and global human resource management, to serve as a contribution to the debate over the implication of culture on global human resource management.

1.4.        Delimitation of the study

            The study was delimited to Abia in South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Abia State is one of the 36 states in Nigeria and it is believed that responses of a cross-section of the people in the area are a good representation of the responses of the people in Nigeria.

1.5.        Limitations of the study

            The study was constrained by lack of research grant and current literature. It was very difficult to conduct a study of this nature with limited personal resources which disallowed the extension of the scope beyond the borders. However, these limitations did affect the academic content of the study.

1.6.        Hypotheses

            To properly focus on the objective of the study, two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.01 level of significance.

·        Ho: Cultural dimensions have no significant relationship with global human resource management.

·        Hi: Cultural dimensions have significant relationship with global human resource management.

 

2.     LITERATURE REVIEW

            Research finds that there is a high degree of difference in managerial behaviour patterns in different places due to identification of management philosophy, management know-how, and management practice. Management theory is often left to interpretation in different ways in different cultural contexts that seem to justify different managerial styles with reference to human resource management.

            The essential point is that cultural differences exist among various countries and societies, sometimes to a high degree. Even subcultural variations of significant nature in some societies affect the transferability of human resource practices.

2.1.        Transferability of Human Resource Management Practices

            The importance of the differences in cultures cannot be overlooked, especially if basic knowledge of management in one culture is to be transferred to another. This does not signify that a management technique or approach that is successful in one society may not work within another society.

            Rather it simply means that the global human resource manager who would succeed in a different culture should ascertain the extent of change in technique or application required to meet any cultural differences, because the environment external to the organization such as educational variables, socio-cultural variables, political and legal variables, economic variables and language affect management practices (FARMER; RICHMAN, 1965) These variables are components of Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions.

            Socialization processes provide valuable framework into appropriate organizational structure and practice. Societies foster some degrees of conformity and some degrees of individuality among the members. The relative degrees of conformity and individuality tend to vary from culture to culture. Some encourage cooperation; others reward competitiveness.

            Researchers hypothesize that in societies in which the socioeconomic system encourages individual initiative; competitiveness will emerge as part of the dominant culture. On the other hand, a system that encourages less initiative will tend to provide a culture stressing conformity. They assert that cultures vary in the extent to which behaviour is linked to context and situations, and that if cultural conditioning influences cognitive skills, it may also influence attitudes and perceptions.

            Such diversity is increasingly associated with typical differences in cognitive behaviour and diverse meanings of intelligence in different cultural contexts. These are among the basis of some conclusions that each culture demands, fosters, and rewards a somewhat different set of cognitive skills.

            The findings of Gonzalez and McMillan (1961) are among those frequently quoted to show that management is culture-bound. These management scholars, on the basis of a 2-year study in Brazil concluded that “American management experience abroad provides evidence that the uniquely American philosophy of management is not universally applicable but it is a rather special case.

            This lack of universality has to do with interpersonal relationships, including those between management and employees, management and suppliers, management and customers, the community, competition and government, and leads to the assertion that cultural patterns influence how people perceive reality”.

            Those issues such as conformity, achievement, sex, need, time, space and ectrocentrism among a group of attitudes may affect individuals’ work behaviour and attitudes in transcultural situations. Despite the huge argument that management practice is transferable, there are other management scholars who believe that the structure and content of management science are not transferable and that the application of these to specific enterprise situations in the same national culture or along transcultural levels is not necessarily possible. (HOFSTEDE, et al., 1984; UGOANI, 2013)

2.2.        Transcultural Human Resource Management

            Against the backdrop of traditional approaches such as cost-cutting, productivity improvement, technology and access to capital, contemporary approaches to global business strategies point to core competencies; invisible assets, and organizational capabilities as key factors influencing longterm success in global markets.

            This has given rise to renewed interest in human resource management as a crucial strategic management tool that can sustain the competitive advantage of transnational organizations of the 21st century and beyond. The globalization phenomenon among other things, brings human resource management nearer to the strategic focus of the organization, it equally alters the scope and content of its related activities.

            For instance, in the receding years, global human resource selection was based on testing managers for cross-cultural adaptability. At the present time, emphasis is on identifying managers capable of rapid learning across borders. According to Pucik (1984a), formerly, the international reward system stressed the co-ordination and equity of compensation policies; today’s concern is the congruence of rewards with global business strategies.

            Traditional international training centered on cross-cultural knowledge; today’s accent is on developing multicultural teams and networks. Thus, the shift of human resource management activities from the top-down management of global rules and guidelines to a much broader focus on horizontal influence in managerial interactions is pushed forward by a set of inescapable cultural contradictions facing transnational organizations.

            In the context, the essential role of global human resource management is to encourage maximum adaptability and coordination. To provide value to the business organization, human resource management practices in a global enterprise should focus on strategies necessary and adequate enough to secure competitive advantage in a global environment. Among the three specific organizational competencies particularly important to a global enterprise are organizational learning, continuous improvement, and competitive culture.

            This is imperative because of the need for the ability of the global business to continuously improve the quality, cost, and delivery parameters of its products and services, as well as the ability to focus the energy of the people inside the organization on the task of winning in the marketplace. The centrality of the human element in acquiring and enhancing these competencies are very important because very much is influenced by the complexity and dynamism of cultural and global operations.

 

 

2.3.        Competitive Human Resource Management Culture

            The potency of organizational competencies is based on the accumulation of invisible assets; information based organizational skills that are essential for the execution of flexible strategies in global context. A major objective is to run beyond knowledge accumulation towards knowledge creation, and taking into cognizance the fact that a number of variables may affect the quality of the management process, typically; language, experience, willingness to share information, mutual trust, and opportunity to observe new and innovative behaviours, among others.

            Pucik (1984b) opines that an organizational focus on learning and continuous improvement would be difficult, if not impossible to sustain without a corporate culture dedicated to competition. He upholds the need to cut cost and improve performance, yet believes that the “Cause of yesterday’s success may be a cause of tomorrow’s failure”.

            Rather, the responsibility of management today should be to mobilize people’s energy by providing the vision for a winning team, and to create a permanent sense of urgency for everyone in the organization, in tandem with cultural tolerance levels. In this case, a competitive culture is not a threat but an opportunity to build on the creative energy of the people around the global organization.

            Without working constantly towards the possible best outcomes, even the biggest global organization, would eventually fail. Therefore the building and enhancement of a competitive culture is a key human resource management strategy in a global perspective.

            Hofstede’s (1980) work has implications for training based on home-country theories to be of limited use. From a training perspective, the important difference is between a culture-specific and a culture-general approach. Thus, more emphasis should also be on the socialization aspects of management development, since a truly global competitive culture cannot emerge without a sense of common purpose and trust among employees and managers collaborating together on the execution of global strategies.

            Effective global human resource managers need to share core cultural values and learn both multidisciplinary and multifunctional problem solving as well as a collegial style of leadership that can emerge through frequent interaction both on and off the job.

            The theory of competitive culture is a component of the new global dimension of management and multicultural human resource management necessary for breaking through cultural glass ceilings. Clearly, the existence of cultural distance does not automatically imply that human resource management practices cannot be transferred.

            The critical test of cross-cultural skills in human resource management is therefore the ability to differentiate between a legitimate cultural constraint and an attempt to avoid the implementation of important difficult decisions. Cultural diversity should be encouraged as a natural component of global human resource management, not just tolerated as a necessity of globalization (FOMBRUM; TICHY; DEVANNA, 1984).

            In dealing with cultures other than the home-based culture, global human resource management practices should align with the significant local culture, without abdicating individuals’ personal values. This is the essence of competitive culture and it goes a long way in attempts to overcome the multi-dimensional puzzle placed on global human resource management and located at the cross-road of national and organizational cultures.

            Diversity and culture shock can be easily subsumed by competitive human resource management culture through the observation of cultural symbols and enduring visible culture in a transcultural interpersonal interaction. Organizational culture affects employee relations. An employee relation more than other areas of human resource management practice varies considerably from country to country.

            Although some researchers believe that there has been a degree of convergence in recent years in response to increased global competition and new information and communication technologies, it is apparent that substantial differences still remain largely, due to cultural and historical differences.

            The main practical implications associated with this variation in cross-cultural approach is for multinational organizations to have an understandable impulse to strengthen their corporate culture by taking a standard approach to employee relations management across their operations, but also have to take account of local conditions; through the creation of an organization-wide, global strategy which is adaptable to the requirements of the various countries in which they operate (BAMBER; LANSBURY, 1998).

            An organization’s human resources are fragile, its relationship is unpredictable and its permanency uncertain, in spite of these, organizations cannot take the risk of not meeting their moral obligations to people and society which involve giving adequate attention to the beliefs, conventions and general patterns of behaviour that characterize a particular cultural environment (OZIGBO, 2010).

2.4.                    Cultural Globalization

            Globalization as a phenomenon reflects the increasing interactions among persons and institutions across the globe. This interaction permeates all facets of human endeavour. Thus, globalization is a multidimensional process spanning economic, political, cultural, social, environmental, and technological activities.

            The cultural dimension has given rise to what might be termed “cultural globalization”; which manifests through the loss of cultural relativity and cultural pluralism. The globalisation processes are carried out by a number of agents which the principal agents include multinational or transnational organizations.

            They are characterized by strong global demographic, environmental, economic, political, cultural, scientific and technological trends in interdependencies as opposed to localization which emphasizes heterogeneous processes and cultural exclusiveness. Its economic dimension integrates domestic economies into the global economy and concurrently increases economic and labour interdependence across cultural and national boundaries (MOHAMMED, 2006; OJO, 2003).

2.5.        Substance of Empirical Literature

            The multiplicity of cultural linkages and inter connections between states and societies continue to perpetuate the concept of cultural globalization and also lend credence to the imperatives of cultural dimensions embedded in empirical literature. These dimensions and related variables are presented in tables 1 and 2 respectively.

            Globalization is an epochal world view with many implications and consequences that revolve around the belief that management, economic growth, and business expansion could be done without the limitations of national boundaries. Empirical literature eloquently suggests that globalization embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations and transactions expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power that link regions, nations, governments, business, institutions, communities, families, individuals, and countries, as the picture of a borderless world.

            These variables and dimensions have serious implications for the global human resource manager to the extent that success may not be achieved without the creation of an open culture, to accommodate all. (OBERG, 1963; MULLER, 1979; DRUCKER, 1999; AMINU, 2011).

3.     3.  METHODOLOGY

3.1.        Participants

            The sample comprised of 385 participants (178 females and 207 males) ranging in age from 21 to 70 (M = 46 years, SD = 25). 170 or about 44.1 percent of the participants had certificates, 185 or about 48.05 percent of them obtained bachelor degrees, while 30 or about 7.79 percent of the total achieved higher degrees. The participants were generated from the general population across Abia State, Nigeria.

3.2.        Materials

            A 5-point 20 item instrument titled “Cultural Dimensions Questionnaire (CUDIQ)” based on the Cook and Wall’s (1980) British Organisational Commitment scale was used to collect primary data. The instrument was previously subjected to rigorous development and validation procedures and reliability was established with Cronbachs Alpha level of about .81.

3.3.        Data Collection Procedure

            Copies of the questionnaire were administered on the participants by the investigator and two research assistants. All the 385 questionnaire copies were retrieved after four weeks. Secondary data were collected from books, journals, newspapers, etc. The mixed method was used so as to supplement, complement and validate data through each other. Data were verified, coded, classified and found useable for analysis.

 

3.4.        Data Analysis Procedure

            Data were analysed by descriptive and Chi-Square statistical methods. The statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) was deployed to achieve the Chi-Square results.

            The Chi-Square formula used was

x2 =

            Where  = Observed frequencies

             = Expected frequencies, and

             = no. of categories considered

            The results were presented in tables.

4.     PRESENTATION OF RESULTS

Table 1: Hofstede’s (1980) Four Cultural Dimensions

 

Dimensions

Basic Characteristics

1

Power Distance

This is an important dimension of national culture that is a reflection of the degree to which power in organizations is unequally distributed. More especially, power distance is associated with the degree of centralization of authority and the extent of autocratic leadership. Lower education and lower status occupations are associated with high power distance values while higher education and higher status have low power distance values.

2

Uncertainty Avoidance

This dimension identifies the extent to which a society tends to consider itself threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations. To this degree, it tends to avoid such situations by establishing greater career stability, formal values, in tolerance of deviant ideas or behaviours, and a belief in absolute truths. At the same time, such societies have a high level of anxiety and aggressiveness which creates a strong inner urge to work hard. Management in high uncertainty avoidance countries may also be relatively task oriented. This dimension may also affect the exercise of power in organizations. Belief is placed in experts and their knowledge.

3.

Individualism Collectivism

This cultural dimension describes the relationship between an individual and society as a whole. For example, Americas view individualism as a contributor to greatness, but the Chinese do not. Hofstede states that a country’s degree of individualism is related statistically to its wealth, and there is a .82 correlation between individualism and wealth as measured by gross national product per capita.

4

Masculinity-Femininity

This cultural dimension considers the degree of masculinity of a society’s dominant values. Values such as assertiveness, acquisition of money, and not caring for others. This dimension describes a society that shows more or less traditionally masculine patterns, in which much of the societal masculinity-femininity differences must be historically and traditionally determined.

Source: Field work (2016)

Table 2: Torrington’s (1994) 7c’s in HRM

 

Dimensions

Basic Characteristics

1

Cosmopolitan

People tend to be either member of high-flying multilingual elite who are involved in high-level co-ordination and are constantly on the move.

2

Culture

Major differences in cultural background.

3

Compensation

Special requirements for the determination of the pay and benefits of expatriate and host country nationals.

4

Communication

Maintaining good communication between all parts of the organization worldwide.

5

Consultancy

Create need to bring in expertise to deal with local needs.

6

Competence

Developing a wider range of competencies for people who have to work across political, cultural and national boundaries.

7

Co-ordination

Devising formal and informal methods of getting the different parts of the business to work together globally.

Source: Field work (2016)

 

Table 3: Characteristics of Respondents (n = 385)

Variables

Measuring group

Frequencies

Percentages

Sex

Female

178

46.23

Male

207

53.73

Total

385

100

Literacy Level

Certificates

170

44.1

Degrees

185

48.05

Higher Degrees

30

7.79

Total

385

100

Age Range

21-70

385

100

Total

385

100

Dependent Relatives

1-3

75

19.48

4-10

215

55.84

11-20

95

24.68

Total

385

100

Experience

5-10 years

85

22.08

11-15 years

190

49.35

16-above

110

28.57

Total

385

100

Source: Fieldwork, 2016

Table 4: Frequencies VAR00003

No. of categories considered

Observed N

Expected N

Residual

9.00

25.00

43.00

96.00

212.00

Total

9

25

43

96

212

385

77.0

77.0

77.0

77.0

77.0

-68.0

-52.0

-34.0

19.0

135.0

Source: SPSS

 

 

Table 5: Test Statistics

Description

VAR00003

Chi-Squarea

df

Asymp. Sig.

351.558

4

.000

a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 77.0

Source: SPSS

4.1.        Discussion

            From the test statistics, it was noted that the calculated X2 value of approximately 352 was significantly greater than the table value of approximately 13 at 0.01 level of significance, with 4 degrees of freedom. By this empirical result Hoi was rejected while the alternate was accepted to assert that cultural dimensions have significant positive relationship with global human resource management. This is the interest of the study.

            The result supports the work of Hofstede (1980) that culture has a positive correlation between an individual and society as a whole. This implicates the fact that global human resource management would depend much on cross-national cultures to successfully implement policies for the achievement of organizational goals. This is imperative because consensus, before a management decision is taken requires a flood of information and much of the information that is relevant is produced at the place of implementation and culture bound.

            Thus, the demand for information pulls the decision process down toward culture at the implementation level while the need for the decision process to be exposed to corporate strategies pushes it upwards toward culture. The equilibrium point of these two conflicting demands is generally found at the cultural level. The system is effective only if the decision is competent in bridging the gap between management and culture, so that personal relationships with other people in the organization and society become in harmony.

            Empirical literature reveals that individual’s cultural inclination exerts a powerful influence over his or her attitude toward most objects in the physical and social environments. Researchers often consider the cultural factor when attempting to assess employee or people motivation. Also socialization through which one generation’s frame of reference is transmitted to another equally appears to affect human motivation in different cultures. Organizations now evolve an organizational culture to fit their members.

            Organizational culture refers to the character of an organization, its history, its approach to decision-making, its way of treating employees and its way of dealing with the outside world. As a result of the high degree of strategic complexity in global human resource management, organizations operating globally have become highly attracted to a fresh and equally highly attractive vision in the form of organizational culture, which they believe, would capture on a global level their own specific and unique methods of people management.

            Studies show that different organizations even from the same country develop different organizational cultures over a period of time and there is no doubt that the current realization of the potency and reality of organizational cultures represents a move toward the understanding of global organizations and their approaches in human resource management.

            Accordingly, it would be illusionary and an exercise in futility to imagine that recent and short phenomenon of modern global organizations would to any great extent reshape the basic cultural assumptions of their members to an extent that would even approximate the traditional-long national civilizations.

            From the perspective of culture, research establishes the obvious that the organizational culture of long-established large multinational organizations does not seem to reduce transcultural and transnational differences in basic management assumptions across subsidiaries of global organizations.

            Therefore, a conceptualization of organizational cultures in terms of basic assumptions may be exploring for the essence of global organizational culture at a much deeper level than it really lies. It may be adequate to think that the present disposition toward the concept of culture in the field of comparative management and organization studies is a fine attempt at increasing the legitimacy of management across boarders.

            It becomes plausible to argue that instead of locating the roots of organizational culture at the deepest level of basic assumptions, an alternative and possibly more realistic view would probably be to limit the concept of organizational culture to the more superficial layers of implicit and explicit systems of values, norms, expectations, and historically-based traditions frequently repeated and reinforced by their behavioural manifestations and their symbolic meanings.

            Through this approach, organizational members would be seen to be adjusting to the behavioural requirements of global organizational cultures without essentially being too heavily immersed into their distinctive and different ideological and philosophical textures.

            Consequent on this argument, a Nigerian manager working in a French subsidiary of an American organization that insists on an open-door policy may very well leave his office door open-thus adjusting to the behavioural requirements of the organizational culture-without any modification whatsoever of his basic conception of managerial authority.

            Even global organizations with traditional club culture acknowledge and recognise visible cultures in global human resource management as a way of attracting and retaining the right calibre of people, and this is made imperative through cross-cultural learning. For global organizations and within the cultural context, a limited set of ideas that best fit their own history and modes of the organizational members provide the basis of what their organizational culture reflects (HOFSTEDE; SCHNEIDER; LAURANT, 1984; SCHEIN, 1990; HILTROP, 1995).

            The question of organizational culture will continue to attract more and more attention as it is “the sum total of shared values, symbols, meanings, beliefs assumptions and expectations that organize and integrate a group of people who work together, for the achievement of a common goal irrespective of cultural boundaries”.

            Hofstede (1980) finds that cultural variables such as language, age differences, education, and religion account for about 68 percent in explaining differences among people and cultures. Despite differences in entrepreneurial characteristics made possible by the industrialized and non-industrialized nations’ dichotomy, the global firm today faces the all important issue of religious dichotomy among peoples of the world.

            This has obvious implications for the global human resource manager of the 21st Century. From a managerial perspective, it is very necessary to consider the issue of religious tolerance in different cultures, at least for the safety and security of global employees. Modern management theories emphasize the importance of giving employees the opportunity to satisfy their higher level growth needs, including the need for achievement.

            Societies which oppose this theory seem to de-emphasize or even disparage and discourage individual achievements, and consider them as useless. Such cultural emphases are not simply a result of attitudes toward business. They are usually considerably very much fundamental, and religion frequently account for many of the most basic differences.

            Hofstede (1980) finds that while some cultures earthly achievement is part of a person’s religious duty, others teach that concern with earthly achievement is a snare and a delusion, and even see the worldly life as antithetical to religion. Individual achievement-oriented societies often assume that the desire for levels of wealth and material gain is inherent and universal, but research shows that in many cultures the universe may be encouraged by religion, traditional and ideological ways of life.

            Thus, the profit motive inherent in global organizations and which implicates their modes of human resource management should be alert and move toward socio-religious conditions in other cultures of operations. This has implications for multinational corporations in Nigeria because paying attention to cultural dimensions would help in reducing tensions and hostilities against their operations, especially in the Niger Delta region.

4.2.        Scope for further study

            Further study should examine the relationship between culture and performance management in an attempt to resolving the frequent disagreement involving Multinational Corporations (MNC) and indigenous peoples in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria.

4.3.        Recommendations

i.          Decisions affecting indigenous peoples should be based on the visible culture of host communities by MNCs. This will go a long way in forging cordial relationships.

ii.         Governments in Nigeria should ensure that cultural dimensions are reflected in private-public partnership (PPP) agreements with MNCs to ensure positive HRM across borders.

iii.        Top positions in MNCs must reflect a balance adequate enough to cater for the interests of minorities so as to give credibility to management practices by MNCs, across borders.

iv.        People management is critical to the success of an organization; therefore, global human resource managers must be given broad training to provide them with the necessary skills to operate in a globalized environment.

v.         Compensation should reflect the global best practice and be in agreement with the preferences of the host countries. This is important to retain quality manpower for profitable global operations.

5.     CONCLUSION

            Organizations are social systems and they are made up of structures, technology and the environment. The common denominator among the three is people. The human element is involved in the designing, building and the operation of organizational structures and the achievement of corporate goals.

            As a result of increasing business complexity and complexion, vast changes in societal and cultural values, human resource management has assumed more greater scope and responsibilities such that global human resource management has coincidentally become more difficult than hitherto.

            Due to traditional and socio-cultural differences, human resource management at the global level keep changing. Thus, it has become imperative for global organizations to evaluate these changes and respond to them as appropriate in order to keep a contended and committed global workforce without the abdication of its own corporate culture.

            Classic empirical evidence shows that socio-cultural variables such as language, tradition, education and religion are among the factors that collectively correlate highly positively in the explanation of human behaviour in intercultural interpersonal interactions.

            Hofstede (1980) reports a positive correlation of .68 and .82 respectively in different cultural situations. Based on this study it seems very plausible now to agree with the hypothesis of Hofstede that national cultural differences have significant positive relationship with managerial action. The main findings emerging from this work show that organizations are very heavily culture-bound, based on four main cultural dimensions.

            From managerial and leadership perspectives, for example, individualism and power distance are the most important phenomena. People from different cultures create different solutions to a problem, thus reflecting the different design structures appropriate in their cultures. Hofstede also links industrial democracy with his four dimensions of culture.

            Today, the cultural relativity of management policies has profound implication for multinational organizations in Nigeria. For example, similar policies may have different effects in different countries depending on the countries relative position on different cultural dimensions.

            A fundamental dilemma confronting global organizations in human resource management is whether to adapt to the local culture or to change it, but generally speaking, it appears that both adaptation to and maintenance of traditions are necessary because the central task of human resource management is to regulate the management of people in pursuit of the strategic and economic imperatives, but with the added proviso that, in doing so, it must also be in conformity with the institutional and cultural environment in which the organization is embedded.

            Cultures are created from the effort of groups to deal with the basic dilemmas of human existence and an excellent understanding of such dilemmas enables the individual to overcome the inherent challenges and also solve key problems associated with factors such as social values including culture and spirituality.

            Hofstede (1980) identities and measures, from operational dimensions of culture – power distance and uncertainty avoidance, which are measured from high to low; individualism measured against collectivism, and masculinity measured against femininity. This suggests that value systems are consequences of some regional facts such as man’s interaction with nature, literacy level, social mobility, among others.

            He proposes that culture as a type of mental programming which is specific to groups is distinguishable from other mental programming like human nature and personality. The present study found a positive relationship between cultural dimensions and global human resource management. This result is not an exaggeration because to a high degree, it supports the findings of Hofstede (1980).

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