6. Differences in National Culture often cited but few practical methods to analyze and overcome the collaboration and learning difficulties. = Frustration.
8. Challenges are caused by more than National Culture: Additional Professional& OrganizationalCulture have impact on venture performance.
9.
10. Influences Organizational Culture (employee handbook, expected behavior at this company, company benefits, recognition, privilege, etc.) Do Taiwanese and American professionals speak the same language? If so, what is it? If not, how to we understand & manager it to reach success?
11. To achieve: increased performance (higher sales, lower costs, increased market feedback, better product development opportunities) better brand recognition, advertising efforts, etc.) We have three levels of culture to contend with: National C: Legal Systems, Business Purpose, Equality, Fairness Professional C: Trade language, sales activities, managerial communications, relationships, shared expectations, compensation⊠Organizational C: Benefits, rights, perks, recognition, authority, accountability, office size, furniture, To achieve: increased (value adding) performance (higher sales, lower costs, increased market feedback, better product development opportunities) better brand recognition, advertising efforts, etc.) What we need to understandâŠ
12. Marketing Alliance Product customization Distribution selection Sales & service Up selling Co-Branding Value Creating Activity Effectiveness R&D Alliance Knowledge transfer Innovation centers Product development Research facilities International alliances differ in primary value creating activitiesâŠdepending on what stage they are in (e.g. start-up, mature) or what industry they are in (tools, electronics, autoâs)⊠The stages will require different kinds of activities as they progress calling for different resources to be devoted to the venture. Thus the cultural needs will vary over time, requiring greater cross-cultural cooperation.
13. Partner Compatibility Underdeveloped Failure of âSensemakingâ or the failure to comprehend, understand, explain, attribute, extrapolate and/or predict new stimuli. Failure to consider the differences in how each firm approaches the tasks Alliances fail to achieve their goals because the partners fail to recognize the difficulty in working together⊠What I say and single out and conclude are determined by who socialized me and how I was socialized, as well as the audience I anticipate will audit the conclusions I will reach. --Weick:Sensemaking in Organizations (1995, 62)
14. Acquired early in life: Family socialization Schools, play Influence is long and lasting â holidays, ceremonies, National Culture Reinforced by Economic institutions (social security, federal bank) Political Parties Recreation Deep values common to members. Shared norms, values and priorities that together are known as their peoples: âdesign for livingâ Hofstede (1991) found that 50% of the differences in managers attitudes were influenced by National Culture.
15. Stem from a lack of shared norms or values. Lack of common understanding may limit the partners interpretation of the others strategic intent National Culture Challenges Research by Barkema & Vermeulen (1997) found that: Long term orientation Uncertainty avoidance Had them ost impact on the success of international alliances. However, other evidence suggest that differences in national culture can be beneficial ⊠people are more willing to spend additional effort on avoiding misunderstandings.
16. Forms a kind of social control that identifies appropriate behaviors and attitudes for organizational members to display Organizational Culture (Company) Provides closer clues to membersâ behavior than does national culture It provides members with an organizational identity and collective commitment. Social or normative glue that holds an organization together⊠it expresses the values or social ideals and the beliefs that organization members come to share. (Smircich, 1983) Brown (1988) in a study of Japanese and western Firms found that differences in organizational culture have a profound negative impact in venture performance. Firms spend too much time on cooperation than on the business itself.
17. Organizational Cultural differences negatively impact the inter-organizational learning Organizational Culture Challenges Organizational Cultural differences negatively impact the employee satisfaction and effectiveness in interactions Domestic alliances also suffer from the same organizational performance issues. As a result, International Venture Partners with dissimilar organizational cultures will be less likely to effectively achieve the alliance's primary goals. (even when the necessary resources are available)
18. Developed through socialization members receive during occupational or academic training (company or industry or university) Professional Culture âŠWhen a group of people who are employed in a functionally similar organization share a set of norms, values, and beliefs related to that occupation. Reinforced through professional experiences and interactions. Lead to a broad understanding on how their occupation should be conducted Trice and Beyer (1993) argue that an individuals professional culture is the most organized, distinctive and pervasive sources of sub-culture in work organizations. (accounting, marketing, sales, engineering)
19. Separate professional cultures lack a shared set of basic knowledge because their occupational socialization involved different material Professional Culture Challenges Often lack experience communicating with members outside their professional culture. Communication is impaired Frustration emerges from a lack of âCommon Groundâ When ventures need employees from different professional cultures to interface on a project⊠we expect difficulty, specifically: Again, energy must be diverted from value creating business activities to simple activities that form a basis to communicate and interact with one another.
21. Summary The three challenges inhibit the effective interaction of individuals from different cultures. This then decreases the likelihood that the alliances pooled resources will be shared, combined and leveraged in a manner that achieves the ventures goals.
Based on Work by Sirmon and Lane (2004)David Sirmon and Peter LaneClemson University. Durham, NH USAâA Model of Cultural Differences and International Alliance Performanceâ, 2004. JIBS. 35, 306-319. www.jibs.net.
International alliances offer firms opportunities to draw uponknowledge and capabilities not currently controlled or availablewithin their home country (OECD, 2000). Among other benefits,this can help firms share costs, enter new markets (Glaister andBuckley, 1996), supplement their capabilities (Inkpen and Dinur,1998; Hitt et al., 2000; Lane et al., 2001), seek more radicalinnovations by integrating knowledge from different areas ofscience and technology (Lubatkin et al., 2001; Nummela, 2003),and create common platforms for products and services (Moweryet al., 1998; Caloghirou et al., 2003). However, internationalalliances also bring However, the conclusion that national culturedifferences alone disrupt knowledge sharing between partnersrecently has been questioned. Pothukuchi et al. (2002) suggestedthat the importance accorded to national culture differences oninternational alliance performance may be overstated because moststudies have failed to consider or specify the influence oforganizational culture differences as well. Whereas national culturerelates primarily to deep-seated values, organizational culturerelates primarily to shared beliefs in organizational practices andprocesses (Hofstede et al., 1990). Examining a large sample ofinternational joint ventures, Pothukuchi et al.(2002, p. 258) found that âthe presumed negativeeffect from partner dissimilarity on IJV performanceoriginates more from differences in organizationalculture than from differences in nationalcultureâ.challenges not found within domestic alliances.
The stages will require different kinds of activities as they progress calling for different resources to be devoted to the venture. Thus the cultural needs will vary over time, requiring greater cross-cultural cooperation.Year -1, year 1, year 2, year 5, year 10.Regardless, an effective pooling of complementary resources is necessary for value creation at each stage of the ventures lifecycle.
P1: The complementarity of partnersâ resourcespositively affects alliance performance only whenthose resources are related to the primary value creatingactivities of the international alliance,and when the employees involved in thoseactivities interact effectively.Thus, assuming that the appropriate resources aremade available, understanding why some internationalalliances fail to create value effectivelyrequires the exploration of systematic differencesin the partnersâ employeesâ socialization. Threesources of such socialization are explored in thispaper: oneâs nation, oneâs organization and oneâsprofession. We address each in sequence.The interaction of the employees involved in theprimary value-creating activity of the alliance islikely to be driven by sensemaking. Sensemaking isthe process of placing stimuli into categories inorder âto comprehend, understand, explain, attribute,extrapolate, and predictâ (Starbuck and Milliken,1988, 51). Because sensemaking is shaped bypersonal experiences, the interacting employeescan differ in their categorization and linking of stimuli.
National cultureAs stated previously, national culture refers todeeply set values that are common to the membersof a nation (Hofstede, 1991; Hill, 1997). It is asystem of shared norms, values, and priorities that,taken together, constitute a âdesign for livingâ fora people (Hill, 1997, 67). Importantly, nationalculture is learned, and provides meaning to âhowthings ought to beâ and âhow things ought to bedoneâ for individuals in a country (Berger andLuckmann, 1967; Terpstra and David, 1991). Theseshared beliefs are acquired early in life through apersonâs primary socializing in families, in schoolsand at play (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Terpstraand David, 1991). Further, the influence of nationalculture is strong and long lasting. For example,Hofstede (1991) found that national cultureexplains 50% of the differences in managersâattitudes, beliefs, and values, and Laurent (1983)found that managers of multinational organizationsretain many of their original national valuesdespite routinely working in culturally diversesituations.No nation is expected to have a completelyhomogeneous national culture, but national differencesare clearly seen in economic and politicalsystems (Albert, 1991; Thurow, 1993), educationalsystems (Calori et al., 1997), and other institutions(DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Hall, 1986; Clegg andRedding, 1990; Sorge and Maurice, 1990). Thus,national culture differences between alliance partnerscan challenge the development of successfulrelationships.These challenges stem partially from the lack ofshared norms or values (Park and Ungson, 1997).This lack of common understanding may underminethe partnersâ interpretation of each otherâsstrategic intent, which is crucial in global marketsand partnerships (Hitt et al., 1995). Further, a lackof shared norms and values may reduce effectivecommunication (Rao and Schmidt, 1998), trust(Aulakh et al., 1996; Doney et al., 1998) andknowledge sharing in joint ventures (Parkhe,1991; Mohr and Spekman, 1994; Lyles and Salk,1996). These problems, in turn, have been found tolead to lower alliance performance (Lane et al.,2001).In one noteworthy study, Barkema and Vermeulen(1997) examined the influence of differences inpartnersâ national cultures on international allianceperformance using Hofstedeâs (1980, 1991) dimensionsof national culture. They found that partnerdifferences in two of the dimensions (uncertaintyavoidance and long-term orientation) had a strongnegative relationship with the survival of thecollaboration over several different periods. However,the other three dimensions of national culture(individualism, power distance, masculinity) didnot. Differences in uncertainty avoidance and
Develop outside your company or even country.Do not fit within any single organizational culture