1. IHRM – UNDERSTANDING CULTURE
AND MULTICULTURALISM
Amaresh C Nayak

2. Understanding Culture
• A culture refers to a system of shared meaning
held by the organization’s members that
distinguishes the organisation from other
organizations.
• The organization’s culture refers to a system of a
shared meaning.

3. Understanding Culture
• Culture is understood as the customs, beliefs,
norms and values that guide the behaviour of the
people in a society and that are passed on from
one generation to the next.

4. Understanding Culture
• Culture has normative value. It prescribes do's
and don’ts which are binding on the members of a
society.
• Culture is a group phenomenon. Culture applies
to the members of a society. Society's normative
values are binding on each member and not vice
versa.
• Cultural practices are passed on from generation
to generation.

5. Understanding Culture - Characteristics
• Innovation and risk taking.
• Attention to detail: employees are expected to exhibit
precision, analysis and attention to details.
• Outcome orientation: Focuses on results or outcomes
rather than on the techniques and processes
• People orientation: Takes into consideration the effect of
outcomes on people within the organisation.
• Team orientation: The degree to which work activities are
organised around teams rather than individuals.
• Aggressiveness: The people’s aggressiveness and
competitive atmosphere.
• Stability: The organisations activities maintains the statue
quo in contrast to growth.

6. Understanding Culture
• Dominant culture - pervasive and extends to the
whole of a country
• Subcultures exist within the dominant culture.
– Subcultures subsume into the dominant culture to
present a unified culture, typifying "unity in diversity".
• Organisational culture - Every organisation will
have its own distinct culture.
• Occupational Culture - Each profession carries its
own culture and it cuts across dominant cultures.

7. Organisational Culture - Functions
• It has a boundary, defining role that creates a distinction
between one organisation to others.
• It conveys a sense of identity for organisation members.
• Culture facilitates the generation of commitment to something
larger than one’s individual self-interest.
• It enhances the social system stability. Culture is the social
value that helps hold the organizations together.
• The culture serves us a sense-making and control mechanism
that guides and shapes the attitudes and behaviours of
employees.
• Culture enhances the organizational commitment and
increases the consistency of employee behaviour.
• Culture reduces ambiguity among its members.

8. Factors Affecting Cultural Predispositions
• Founder’s philosophy
• Criteria used in hiring
• Actions of the current top management
• Code of conduct
• The degree of success achieved
• Matching new employees values to those of the
organisation
• The top managements preference for socialization
methods.

9. Factors Affecting Cultural Predispositions
• The Learned Modifications
– Stories
– Rituals
– Material symbols
– Language

10. Culture - The Organizational context
• Culture can be defined as
– a cumulative, crystallized and quasistable shared life-style of
people
– reflected in the preference of some states of life over others
(values)
– in the response predispositions towards several significant
issues and phenomena (attitudes)
– in the organized ways of filling time in relation to certain affairs
(rituals)
– in the ways of promoting desired, and preventing undesirable
behaviour (sanctions).
• The most important aspect of organizational culture are
the values it practices.

11. The OCTAPACE
• Openness – The degree of openness of the organisation will be
an important factor in determining the nature of the various
dimensions of HRS being designed, as well as the way in which
these dimensions should be introduced.
• Confrontation – The term confrontation is used in relation to
problems, ‘putting the front’ rather than ‘the back’ to (escaping) the
problems. Confrontation implies facing a problem and working
jointly with others concerned to find its solution. If the culture of
confrontation is low, the organisation needs to have preparatory
work for developing counseling / coaching competencies before
introducing a sophisticated HRDs.
• Trust – If the trust is low, the various dimensions of the HRS are
likely to be seen with suspicion, and therefore, the credibility of the
system may go down.

12. The OCTAPACE
• Authenticity – It is the willingness of a person to acknowledge the
feelings he/she has. Authenticity is reflected in the narrowest gap
between the stated values and the actual behaviour.
• Proactivity – The term ‘proact’ can be contrasted with the term
‘react’. Proaction means anticipating issues and acting to take
advantage of this understanding.
• Autonomy – It is the willingness to use power without fear, and
helping others to do the same on the basis of collaboration.
• Collaboration – This involves working together and using one
another’s strengths for a common use. Collaboration is reflected in
strong and effective teams and inter-teams in an organisation.
• Experimenting – As the value emphasizes the importance given
to innovation and trying out new ways of dealing with such
problems in the organisations.

13. The context of Societal Culture
• The model of Kluchohn, Strodtbeck and
McClelland, six main concerns of a society can
be used to identify various aspects of the
culture.
– Nature Fatalism Vs. Scientism
– Environment
• Structure Ambiguity Tolerance Vs.
Non-tolerance
• Sensitivity High contextual Vs. Low contextual
• Concern Convergent (Self centered or
narcissistic) Vs. Divergent
(Concern for ‘Outside’)
– Time Traditional (past) Vs. Existential
(Present) Vs. Future Orientated

14. The context of Societal Culture
– Collectivity
• Primary Collectivistic Vs. Individualistic
• Norms Other Directed Vs. Inner Directed
• Boundary Particularistic (or embeddedness) Vs.
Universalistic
• Linkage Role bound Vs. Identity bound
– Gender Androgynous Vs. Sexist
– Power
• Tolerance Power distance tolerance Vs. Non-tolerance
• Types Expressive, Conservative, assertive,
expanding

15. The context of Societal Culture
• Indian culture can be characterized as
– Fatalistic
– Context sensitivity
– Tolerant of ambiguity
– Convergent (self centered and indifferent to outside human
ecological environment),
– Future orientated
– Collectivist
– Other-directed
– Embedded
– Role bound
– Androgynous
– Power-distance tolerant

16. MULTICULTURALISM
• Multiculturalism means that people from many
cultures (and frequently many countries) interact
regularly.
• Global firms are repositories of multiculturalism.
• Not that the domestic firms have only
monocultures.

17. Cultural Predispositions
• Ethnocentrism
• The home country’s culture is sought to be imposed on
subsidiaries.
• The MNC exports its HR policies and practices from home
office to foreign locations.
• Ethnocentric policy is justified on the following reasons:
– Need to maintain a unified corporate culture among all
subsidiaries.
• An ethnocentric policy - disadvantages:
– Expatriate managers may not be able to adapt to local
conditions easily and early.
– Expatriate managers are often poorly trained for international
assignments and tend to commit mistakes.

18. Cultural Predispositions
• Polycentricism
• Multinational Corporation seeks to adapt to the local
cultural needs of subsidiaries
• Polycentricism is more pronounced in the context of
human resource practices
• Does not bestow absolute freedom to subsidiary heads as
stand alone units
• Host-country managers visit home offices for extended
periods to get acquainted with the company's culture and
are taught how to protect the nuances of corporate culture,
respecting of course, the host country's beliefs and values.

19. Cultural Predispositions
• Regiocentricism
• Regiocentric approach operates in the same way
as polycentricism
• IHRM practices are applicable to regions.

20. Cultural Predispositions
• Geocentricism
• Subsidiary operations are managed by the best
qualified individuals, regardless of their nationality
• The capable managers adapt easily and well to
different cultures and usually arc bilingual or
multilingual

21. CULTURE DIMENSIONS
• Globe Project
• The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organisational
Behaviour Effectiveness) project team identified nine
cultural dimensions distinguishing one society to another
– Assertiveness - individuals in organisations or societies are
expected to be tough, confrontational and competitive versus
modest
– Future Orientation - future-oriented behaviours, delaying
immediate gratification.
– Performance Orientation - strive for continued improvement
and excellence.
– Human Orientation - individuals are encourage and reward for
being altruistic, generous, caring and kind to others.

22. CULTURE DIMENSIONS
• Globe Project
– Gender Differentiation - role differentiation and gender
discrimination.
– In-group Collectivism - individuals express pride, loyalty, and
cohesiveness in their organisations or families.
– Collectivism/Societal - organisational and societal practices
encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and
collective action.
– Power Distance - power should be unequally distributed.
– Uncertainty Avoidance - relying on social norms, rituals and
bureaucratic practices lo minimize the unpredictability of future
happenings

23. THANK YOU