Submitted by: Submitted by hkmember23
Views: 327
Words: 724
Pages: 3
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 09/16/2011 07:21 AM
Global Culture: Decision Making Process
We live in a world today where companies continue to expand globally to gain a competitive edge by reducing costs to reach for higher profits and to enter into foreign markets. This strategy certainly posses risks as organizational culture will differ among offices worldwide in the strategic decision making process. Managers all over the world must make decisions that significantly affect their organizations however differences in the socialization of managers and the business environments that they face may affect both their decision making processes and the choices they make (Martinsons & Davison, 2007). In this paper, we will compare the differences in the American and Asian leadership decision making process and discover possible advantages and disadvantages of each strategy.
Before we discuss the differences in the decision making process, we must have a better understanding of the culture around us. Managers frequently see culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another; the interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence a human group’s response to its environment (Adler, 2008). Culture provides the frame of reference to these communicative events and contains two aspects in external (social) or internal (individual) reference. The internal frame of reference is called Cognitive Culture. This is defined as the individual’s cultural understanding, self concept of relationships, roles and procedures. However, the external is created by relationships of the component individuals in their social interaction. For example, how language is used, what language is used, the attitudes and intentions expressed are part of the Social Culture. It is extremely important to involve a “cultural frame of reference” in decision making for managers in multi-cultural teams because it allows people with different perspectives to come together and...