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Management and Culture Diversity

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Management and Culture Diversity
1 Introduction
The cultural issue associated with the development of globalisation seems to become more and more outstanding in business field, especially in an international context, which makes the management and development of people require considerations of culture diversity and related challenges. A company that is able to deal with culture diversity functionally may obtain the intangible cultural competitive advantages in the industry field it belongs to; vice versa, it may lose such important advantages because of its poor management of potential cultural conflicts. In this article, the relationship between cultural issue, management style and performance, which mainly focuses on the potential problems and the possible strategies that may help depress them in International Joint Venture Corporations, will be discussed based on Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions theory. More specifically, to manage a cross-cultural company effectively for the purpose of maximising its productivity, following three issues will be proposed in the text: the first one is about how to clearly identify the nature and implications of national culture diversities within an international working team; the second one refers to how to establish a basis for building knowledge and awareness on culture diversities and an example of explaining and managing the expatriation issues will be given in more details; and the third one is concerning how to set a framework for developing a high performing team, where the cultural issues will be thought over.

2 Three Issues Referring to Managing the Relationship between Cultural Issue, Management Style and Performance
2.1 Identifying and discussing the nature and implications of culture diversities
Before embarking on any other activities, it should be essential and important to get a clear understanding of the nature and implication of culture diversity because national culture is reflected in the designs of a company as culture influences a



References: Bi Pengcheng and Xi Youming (2002) Research centre of Chinese Management, http://rccmi.xjtu.edu.cn/knowledgebase/llyj/display.asp?llyj_autoid=75, accessed 27/02/08 Victoria D Paul Evans, Vladimir Pucik and Jean-Louis Barsoux (2002) The Global Challenge: Frameworks for International Human Resource Management, McGraw-Hill Zhao Shuming (2006) Challenges in HRM research in China Transnational operation (2002), http://library.crtvu.edu.cn/wwwroot/xueke/uploadfilelunwen/2006102322713470.pdf, accessed 28/02/08 IBM: Penetrate Performance Management Culture (2006), Lu, Lung-Tan and Lee, Yuan-Ho (2005) “The Effects of Culture on the Management Style and Performance of International Joint Venture in China: The Perspective of Foreign Parent Firms”, The International Journal of management, 22(3), pp 452-462 Inkeles, A Hofstede, G. and Bond, M. H. (1988) 'The Confucius connection: From cultural roots to economic growth ', Organizational Dynamics 16(4): 4-21. Hofstede, G. (1991) Culture and Organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill. William Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim (1995) "Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication," in Bridges Not Walls, ed. John Stewart, 6th edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 429-442.

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