Principles of Organizational Behavior, 3rd Edition

28Make Management Practice Fit National Cultures and the Global Culture

MIRIAM EREZ

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

This chapter focuses on the interface between cultures that takes place in the global work context. This change in focus is driven by the changes in the work environment, as more and more people around the world work for multinational and global organizations that cross geographical zones and cultural borders.

Organizational behavior (OB) principles should take into consideration the context in which they are implemented and the work context that may be shifting from local to global. This global context is characterized by economic interdependence across countries, a free flow of capital, and goods, knowledge, and labor moving across national and geographical borders (Erez and Shokef, 2008; Govindarajan and Gupta, 2001). It is not very difficult to understand why Thomas Friedman used the metaphor World Is Flat as the title of his book, in which he reviewed the factors that are flattening the global business environment, including historical, technological, and communication issues (Friedman, 2005).

Yet, is the world really flat, and are managers developing identical or nearly identical principles for managing organizations and people around the world? The answer, as reported both by practitioners and researchers, is “no.” Cross-cultural differences in values, norms, and accepted modes of behaviors still exist, and they differ across cultures.

The next ...