Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

MAKE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE FIT NATIONAL CULTURES AND THE GLOBAL CULTURE 625
individualistic cultures, the rule of individual merit serves as the criterion for reward
allocation. Employees receive rewards based on their individual contribution to goal
attainment. Implementing rewards for performance requires the setting of criteria and
standards for performance and an appraisal system for evaluating employees according to
these criteria.
Payment - by- results dominates individualistic cultures such as the USA, England,
and Australia. In collectivistic cultures payment - by- results may violate group harmony.
Furthermore, it threatens the organizational hierarchy, as the most effective employee
may not necessarily be the most senior and respected one. In that case, seniority plays an
important role in the reward structure. Furthermore, when the work design is for teams,
as is often the case, the reward differential is team based.
Managers in different cultures value different work components when evaluating their
employees. Western managers evaluate employees mostly on the basis of performance
effectiveness. Yet, Chinese managers put less emphasis on work performance as a criterion
for rewards, compared with American managers. Rather, they consider the quality of
interpersonal relationships to be more important for work than Americans (Zhou and
Martocchio, 2001 ).
Rewarding for performance is less acceptable in collectivistic cultures and mainly
when it is public. Chinese managers use the rule of equality more often than Americans
mainly with respect to in - group members. However, for out - group allocation, equality is
used when the allocation is public, to maintain face saving, while in - group favoritism often
takes place when allocation is done privately. Similarly, Koreans, as opposed to Americans,
perceive allocators who use equality rather than the merit rule more favorably. Swedish
people use equality more frequently than Americans. The Swedish educational system
discourages competition in favor of cooperation and teamwork.
In addition, the Swedish view the idea of need more positively than do Americans. The
need rule is most highly preferred in India and in other collectivistic cultures, particularly
when needs become visible (Murphy - Berman, Berman, Singh, Pachauri, and Kumar, 1984 ).
The above findings lead to the conclusion that the application of an inappropriate
distribution rule may engender feelings of injustice, mitigating employees ’ motivation.
Therefore, knowledge about cross - cultural differences with regard to preferences of allocation
rules is vital for managers who operate outside their home country.
Teamwork and multicultural, virtual teams
Teams have different meanings in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures. Metaphors
of teams in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, two collectivistic countries, are often in relational
terms such as family and community. On the other hand, Americans use metaphors
involving sport teams, refl ecting an instrumental approach to teams as the means of
accomplishing certain outcomes (Gibson and Zellmer- Bruhn, 2001 ).
Team work and tasks of high interdependence among team members prevail in collectivistic
cultures. Yet, individualists prefer to be personally responsible for their job and
to get personal recognition for their performance outcomes. Individualists are intrinsically
motivated when empowered by their managers and when given the autonomy to craft
their jobs to fit their personal resources. In contrast, collectivists are empowered when participating
in the team decision - making process and when their team voice is being heard.