06/03/2018 The Impact of National Culture on Organizational Culture – HRMBD

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The Impact of National Culture on Organizational Culture

January 25, 2015December 10, 2016 hrdbd

The National Culture of a country is highly dominant and shapes the culture of organizations where
they function (Lindholm, 2000). England (1983 cited in Thomas, 2008) that national culture influences
organizational culture and as such influences the practices of the organizations. According to
Hofstede and Hofstede (2005), national culture is distinctive in the way that it significantly differs not
only in terms of language, religion and other factors but also in terms of the way people of that nation
perceives, behave, act and hold the values in them. Robbins (2003) points out that the formation of an
organizational culture stems from the ideologies of the founders of the organizations, the basis of
which are the values, beliefs and assumptions of the founders.

Buchanan and Huczynski (2004) point out that the behavior of the employees is shaped by its
organizational culture is somehow influenced by the respective national culture, which is supported
by Jung et al. (2008), where they indicate that the employees of a multinational company’s subsidiary
will be influenced by the national culture of their country in terms of the country’s values, beliefs,
customs and others to a large extent compared to the values and assumptions of the company itself.

Joiner (2001) asserts that the inconsistency in the values organization’s culture and national culture
hold by the managers has an adverse impact on the performance of the managers and results in
employee turnover and absenteeism. A set of behavioral aspects (values, beliefs, morals, customs,
assumptions and the like) dictate peoples’ behavior in terms of acceptable behaviors or unacceptable
behaviors (Hofstede, 1984 cited in Parboteeah et al. 2005). The relationship between national culture
and absenteeism, which is associated with the behavioral aspects of the people and very costly for
organizations, is well established and that national culture influence absenteeism as it is assumed that
in certain countries, absences are more acceptable in comparison to other countries (Parboteeah et al.
2005).

Kim (1991 cited in Nes et al. 2007) specifies communication as a cultural framework, which helps in
decoding the message from the correspondent to the recipient. Steinwachs (1999) mentions that the
extent to which the message corresponded by the sender and receiver is influenced by culture. Nes et
al. (2007) indicate the influencing relationship between national culture and organizations’ operations
and point out that due to such relationship, organizational cultures differ significantly in terms of
their international communication pa ern and managing difficulty in communication will depend on
the variety among organizational cultures. Brooks (2006) indicates that the way people of an
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06/03/2018 The Impact of National Culture on Organizational Culture – HRMBD

organization and of a country are communicated is shaped by the national and as such by the
organizational culture. For example, in a high power distance culture, addressing people’s name
should be in terms of using the title of their name instead of using the first name because this may
result in a disappointing work environment and communication can be disconnecting. The use of
language also poses similar kinds of problems in different cross cultural contexts.

House et al. (1999) indicate that national culture shapes the style of leadership and the way leaders
function whereas leaders are the main actors in establishing the culture of the organization, who
influence the organizational culture on a continual basis (Robbins, 2003). Subsequently, the behaviors
of the leaders are influenced and altered in response to the culture of the organization, that is,
organizational culture influences the functions of leaders (Schein, 1992). According to Trompenaars
(1993), the four different types of organizational culture shape the style of leadership. For example, in
a power oriented or family culture, leaders are the people who hold the power and subsequently, in
an organizational culture, leaders expect that their subordinates will carry out the orders given by
them. Role oriented or Eiffel tower culture represents bureaucratic rigid organizational culture where
the power of leaders is basically the outcome of the role that they hold and play and a bureaucratic,
inflexible leadership style is followed. In a task oriented or guided missile culture, the power that
leaders hold is the result of their professional skills and emphasis is placed to a ain the tasks
assigned. Incubator or fulfillment oriented organization culture shows an emphasis on the self
fulfillment of the organizational members. According to Brooks (2006), leadership style takes
different form in terms of the five dimensions of the national culture where he points out that in a
low power distance organizational culture, it is quite easy for the lower level employees to
communicate to their leaders that defines a democratic style of leadership whereas in a high power
distance organization, autocratic leadership is likely to be followed.

Motivation (h ps://hrdbd.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/why-motivation/)of people is also affected by

national culture and organizational culture. For example, Francesco and Gold (1998) point out that
organizations operating in a high context collective culture expect their norms to be respected, in
such cases, motivation of individual behavior is unlikely to have a positive effect. In a high power
distance culture where organizations are highly bureaucratic, employee motivation is much less in
terms of job satisfaction (Parboteeah et al. 2005).

According to Furnham and Gunter (1993 cited in Buchanan and Huczynski 2004), through various
dimensions of national culture, organizational culture is influenced in a variety of ways in terms of
work place characteristics. For example, in a high power distance national culture, organizations have
tall, bureaucratic, centralized organizational structure, where subordinates are expected to perform as
per the direction of the leader and a more privileged structure for white-collar jobs whereas in a low
power distance national culture, organizations are highly flexible, have fla er organizational
structure, and encourage employee participation. National culture with a high masculinity indicates
discrimination in gender roles as fewer women are seen to have higher ranked jobs and work is given
the top priority whereas in a low masculinity culture, discriminations in terms of gender are reduced,
women have access to higher ranked position, and social values are prioritized. High individualism
indicates tasks are more important and initiatives are encouraged whereas low individualism
emphasizes relationship over tasks. In a national culture of high uncertainty avoidance, organizations
are reluctant to take risks and standardized their works while in a culture of low uncertainty
avoidance, organizations encourage employees to be innovative, creative and risk taking with fewer
rules and laws to apply.

References:
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06/03/2018 The Impact of National Culture on Organizational Culture – HRMBD

• Brooks, I. (2006), Organisational Behaviour, FT Prentice-Hall, Harlow, Essex.

• Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A.(2004), Organisational Behaviour. 5th Edition FT Prentice, London.
• Francesco, A-M. & Gold, B. (1998), International Organizational Behaviour: Text, Readings, Cases
and Skills, Prentice Hall, London.
• Hofstede, G. and Hofstede, G. J. (2005), Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind,
McGraw-Hill, New York, London.
• House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Ruiz-Quintanilla, S. A., Dorfman, P. W., Javidan, M., & GLOBE
associates. (1999). Cultural influences on leadership and organizations: Project GLOBE. In W. H.
Mobley, M. J. Gessner, & V. Arnold (Eds.), Advances in global leadership (Vol. 1, pp. 71-114), JAI
Press, Stamford, CT.
• Joiner, T. A. (2001), “The Influence of National Culture and Organizational Culture Alignment on
Job Stress and Performance: Evidence from Greece”, International Journal of Managerial Psychology,
Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 229-242.
• Jung, J., Su, X., Baeza, M., and Hong, S. (2008), “The Effect of Organizational Culture Stemming
from National Culture Towards Quality Management Deployment”, The TQM Magazine, Vol. 20,
No. 6, pp. 622–635.
• Lindholm, N. (2000), “National Culture and Performance Management in MNC Subsidiaries”,
International Studies of Management & Organization, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 45-66.
• Nes, E. B., Solberg, C. A., and Silkoset, R. (2007), “The impact of national culture and
communication on exporter–distributor relations and on export performance”, International Business
Review, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 405-424.
• Parboteeah, K. P., Addae, H. M. and Cullen, John B. (2005), “National Culture and Absenteeism: An
Empirical Test”, The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 343-361.
• Robbins, S. P. (2003), Organizational Behavior, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Schein, E. H. (1992), Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view, Jossey-Bass, San
Francisco.
• Steinwachs, K. (1999), “Information and culture – the impact of national culture on information
processes”, Journal of Information Science, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 193–204.
• Thomas D. C. (2008), Cross-Cultural Management: Essential Concepts, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA.
• Trompenaars, F. (1993), Riding the Waves of Culture, Irwin, Chicago, IL.

Posted by: Farid Ahmed

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