Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

618 M IRIAM E REZ
Subprinciple #1
Globally implement task-oriented managerial practices
Locally implement interpersonal-oriented practices
Subprinciple #3
Understand yourself and the
cultural values you hold
Subprinciple #4
Implement employee-related
management practices that fit in
with the cultural values
FIGURE 33.2 The four principles of global management
Subprinciple #2
Identify the cultural
characteristics of the countries
with which you conduct business
The first subprinciple: Globally implement task - oriented managerial practices
and locally implement interpersonal - oriented practices
Research has demonstrated that managers should differentiate between two groups of
values and practices: those pertaining to the execution of tasks and operations, and those
pertaining to interpersonal relationships with employees, peers, superiors, and customers
(Berson, Erez, and Adler, 2004 ; Erez and Shokef, 2008 ).
Task - oriented practices enable managers to cope with the highly competitive global
work environment, where the competition is on market share, customers, new products,
and prices. To cope with such demands, managers of multinational and global organizations
should uniformly share the values of competitive performance orientation and customer
orientation. They should agree on the importance of their task - related managerial roles
of planning and coordination, and initiating changes and innovation, wherever on the
globe they manage business units.
On the other hand, interpersonal practices pertain to the relationship between managers
and subordinates, peers, superiors, and customers. These relationships should be
tuned to the diverse local cultural values and norms. Therefore, interpersonal practices
should be loosely implemented, respecting the diverse local cultural values. To maintain
the fit between interpersonal - related management practices and local cultures, managers
need to identify the variations in cultural values.
The second subprinciple: Identify the cultural characteristics of
the countries with which you conduct business
Managers and employees in different cultures bring to their workplace their cultures ’
behavior codes and norms. These norms and cultural values shape the organizational
processes and managerial practices. Therefore, different managerial practices, in particular
the relational ones, are implemented in different parts of the world within the same global