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ASHESI UNIVERSITY COLLEGE - Ashesi Institutional Repository ...

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3. Discomfort with rigid formalityIn organisations, it is accepted and standard for operations to be carriedout in a formal and officious manner. However, the study revealed thanmany Ghanaians are not comfortable with rigid formal restrictions at workand these restrictions appear to be heightened when interacting with theforeign managers. One of the respondents commented on his difficultyrelating to the foreign managers because of the standard of behaviour that itis believed is expected of them. He revealed that he likes idle chatoccasionally with the people he works with to share jokes, but he issometimes unsure as to the boundaries expected when relating to foreignmanagers. Without laid out boundaries as to what to do and what not to do,it may be difficult to relate. As one of the managers said, “they are not likeus so you never know what to expect”.5.2.2 Power DistancePower distance index measures the degree to which members in thesociety expect power to be evenly or unevenly distributed. This study revealsthat the respondents have a higher power distance than the U.K with 58.2%of the sample, but lower than the study anticipated. Many reasons couldaccount for the drop in power distance. Leung et al (2005) stipulated thatcultures of the world are increasingly converging. This could be a sign of thisconvergence taking place. Through increasing interaction with foreigncultures steady national development, the Ghanaian culture of typically42

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