NATIONAL CULTURE

Survival of the fittest For centuries, national cultures helped societies to prosper in stable environments. Now, they can hinder organisations which operate in dynamic environments. As a consequence, methods are needed to optimise the influence of national cultures

by Stephen Fox

ecent editions of Engineering Manage- ment Journal have included several R articles which have made reference to

the influence of national culture. In these, it has been explained that organisations will struggle to do well where their national culture is badly matched to their current environment. In particular, it has been argued that national culture can affect organisations’ abilities to formulate effective strategies’, develop success- ful innovations*, and design world class products).‘. This article describes how national cultures develop; explains why the slow evolution of national culture leads to difficult- ies for organisations all over the world; and provides an example of what can be done to overcome this universal problem. Further, it is proposed that organisations need to develop methods which can help them to match national cultures with the pressures experi- enced in rapidly changing environments. The article concludes with a brief survey.

How national cultures evolve We are most familar with physical manifesta-

tions of national culture such as Coca Cola from America and Samurai swordsmen from Japan. Sometimes, these physical manifesta- tions can provide an insight into the assump- tions which exist at the heart of a culture. For example, Japanese Samurai swordsmen took pride in standing in the open, making cere-

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monial speeches, and then fighting with graceful movements. This ritual behaviour quickly became inadvisable after AD 1543 when two Portuguese adventurers introduced guns into Japan. Rather than embrace this foreign technology, and modernise their practices, the all powerful Samurai took steps to eliminate guns. It was not until three hundred years later, when Commander Perry’s US fleet visited, that the Japanese decided they would have to commit themselves to gun productioni. This example illustrates the enduring nature of national culture. The Japanese developed a suspicion of all things foreign during the many centuries when they were an isolated island people. Although Japan has not been isolated for several generations, recent reporting suggests that this aspect of their culture still persists. For example, foreign businesses operating in Japan such as Kodak and IBM are perceived as having a much more aggressive attitude towards their employees than Japanese companies6. Further, it is reported that ritual still plays a major part of modern Japanese life including business’. This example also illustrates that often societies will only act against their existing cultural preference when they have to do so in order to survive. When Commander Perry’s fleet arrived it was heavily armed and the Japanese realised that if they had to mount a defence they would not be able to do so.

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The word culture comes from the same source as the verb ‘to cultivate’, and similarly it is concerned with the way human beings act upon nature. In different geographical regions, and latterly nation states, peoples have had to contend with different environmental pressures. For example, some regions are Samurai swordsmen from Japan blessed with fertile lands and temperate not to wave their arms about as climates whilst other much as Americans. The idea of regions are much more people sitting quietly on a roller- difficult to survive in. coaster ride might seem bizarre to

manifestations of national culture such as Coca Cola from America and

However, the blessing of a favourable environment has often brought with it the bane of invasion by peoples hardened in harsher landscapes and crueller climates. Throughout history, peoples have had to learn how to deal with what their environments bring them. The Japanese, for example, had to learn how to deal with being on an isolated island. In the past, the pressures of everyday life stayed the same for centuries at a time. Eventually, through trial and error, the best ways of dealing with these pressures emerged. These were repeated over and over again for decade after decade. Thus, the solutions to daily pressures became so obvious that they ceased to warrant discussion or even thought. Over time, the best ways of dealing with daily pressures disappear from human consciousness and become the absolute assumptions at the core of a society. It is in this way that a society’s culture slips beneath the awareness of its people. Culture becomes the means by which peoples communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about attitudes towards life. It is the framework by which existence is interpreted and actions are guided8.

When considering the influence of national culture on organisational performance, it is important to remember that no national culture is better than any other. Rather, each society’s dominant values are particularly well matched to some types of environments, and less well matched to others. Also, it i s important to realise that ethnocentric analyses, i.e. applying the standards of onc’s own society to people outside that society, is unlikely to reveal the potential effectiveness of an organisation’s culture. For example, a US company making roller-coaster rides had to redesign its seating because it found that people in the Far East tend

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Americansq. %t, this moderate behaviour is consistent with the low key attitudes prevalent in Japanese companies which have taken market share from American businesses7.

The benefit of culture has been that over time it enables peoples to deal with their environ- ments effectively. Australian aborigines, for example, developed a culture which enabled them to live in the driest continent with the most infertile soils. They developed the funda- mental assumption that smaller populations were preferable. This enabled aborigines to enjoy an abundance of food in good years and a sufficiency in bad years, rather than having fluctuating populations that periodically exceeded their resources and starved to death. Provided an environment stays the same as when a culture was developed, that culture can create social harmony and a prosperous economy within the constraints of the resources available. For example, early Euro- pean visitors saw Austrialian aborigines as being backward. However, explorers such as Robert Burke and William Wills died because, unlike aborigines, they could not figure out how to sustain themselves within the constraints of the resources available. Subse- quently, colonists did not create a literate, food producing, industrial democracy in Australia. All those elements were imported into the country from more favourable environments’.

The problem with national cultures The problem with culture i s that it develops

very slowly. One cultural dimension which illustrates this particularly well is the extent to which societies value individualism over collectivism. When human beings live as hunter-gatherers in small bands they tend to have a relatively individualistic culture. As

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people begin to live as village groups in sedentary agricultural communities they tend to develop a more collectivist culture. Then, when people form industrialised urban societies and live in nuclear families they once again begin to value individualism above collectivism. This basic pattern is affected by a number of common factors. For example, nations experiencing high birth rates tend to value collectivism more than similar nations with lower birth rates''. This slow development of culture may have been of benefit in the past but today it can shackle organisations to values which are incongruous with rapidly changing environments.

Examples of cultural inertia in the face of environmental change can be found in countries which have been colonised. For example, although the Romans were in England for about 400 years, the indigenous culture did not become Roman. Further, when the Romans pulled out, the physical manifestations of their culture such as engineered roads and heated buildings fell into ruin. English people might have been better off in AD 100 if they could have adopted the culture of the Roman colonists. However, the absolute assumptions at the core of a society can not be changed in response to the promise of material rewards. Instead, colonised societies often cease to function well because although their cultures do change they seldom become congruent with the new environment which has been imposed upon them. This phenomenon of cultural inertia in the face of environmental change is not restricted to national upheavals such as colonisation. For example, the British car care company Kwik Fit expanded into France in the 1990s but withdrew when it discovered that French managers would not work closely with operatives". These events correspond with research on national cultures which indicates that managers in France are much more likely to distance themselves from operatives than British managed0.

There is a wealth of research which indicates that national culture has a significant influence on organisations'*. The challenge facing Britain, and every other nation, is that the environments which organisations must operate in are changing more and more quickly: far too quickly for any national culture to keep up with. Moreover, new environments bring new pressures. For example, organisations can no longer expect to prosper just by improving their traditional product strengths. In many

sectors, product weaknesses which have long been tolerated are becoming less and less acceptable. Increasingly, organisations must attempt to transcend fundamental attribute trade-offs such as sophistication versus price; quality versus availability; and personalisation versus delivery time. Furthermore, many organisations are having to deal with an increasingly diverse range of materials, plant and processes. This means that for every order, whether it be for a car, a building or a patient treatment, the preparation of information and the processing of materials becomes more and more complex. The more customers an organisation has the worse these problems become. For example, the recent deterioration in the reliability of Britain's rail transport has been attributed to more people travelling by train. Curiously, little attention i s paid to the influence of our national culture in debates about the failings of Britain's transportation system. This is suprising because a wide range of diverse social groups in many organisations contribute to the provision of public transport. In these types of broad multi-organisation arrangements national culture can have a particularly strong influence.

Culture optimisation methods In every country, organisations, starting

with government, need to acknowledge the influence of national culture and then develop methods to optimise it. This may seem a far fetched idea, but a few methods which optimise the influence of national cultures have been established already. For example, over the past 25 years, concurrent engineering has been adopted by an increasing number of British and American companies. This involves designing products and their related processes and systems simultaneously. Designers from all phases of the product life-cycle work in parallel with the objective of developing products which achieve the best available balance between market considerations and technical constraints. This approach arose quite naturally in Japanese companies from their more collectivist national culture. However, as the following quote about Ford in the 1970s illustrates, a very different approach tends to arise in British and American companies: 'There was little or no interaction, and no problem solving. The stylists would say, 'If you were half-decent engineers, you could make it like we designed it,' and the engineers would say, 'if you were half-decent industrial

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designers, you’d be able to design something that could be built’. There were loggerheads everywhere, and, of course, we didn’t push leading edge technology.’ At that time, Ford, like many other British and American compa- nies, was divided into a series of functional cbzmneys. In other words, tall vertical self- contained departments, each with its own aims and perspectives, viewing other functions as part of problems, rather than part of their solutions. It was only when Japanese com- petition began to push Ford towards insolvency that the limitations of this individualist approach were acknowledged. Then, Ford began cbzmney breaking and set about establishing concurrent engineering. The results were spectacular, for example, the number of cars arriving at dealers needing repairs fell from ten % to one %.

Although Ford learnt from Japanese culture, it kept those aspects of American culture which are well-matched to the pressures facing a global car company. For example, Japanese organisations can be relatively slow to make decisions as they place great emphasis on achieving a consensus through procedure. By contrast, American companies can make decisions more rapidly. For example, in 1981 when the design of a new car called the Taurus was at an advanced stage, fuel price projections came down from $3.40 per gallon to $1.50 per gallon. Straightaway, the design of the Tauras was changed. The wheel base was increased, capacity was upped from five to six passengers, and the engine went from a four-cylinder to a V6. However, once the decision was made, it was concurrent engineering that brought the car to market quickly with reduced production costs and quality problems. As the executive with overall responsibility for the Taurus said, ‘Had the team not been in place to do things simultaneously instead of sequentially, this decision would have delayed the car at least 18 months’]’.

In the 1990s, Chrysler, another American car company, created a method for combining concurrent engineering and rapid decision- making. It unites functional specialists in vehicle platform teams and locates them together in a large room where each specialist has a line of sight to every other specialist. This has made a major contribution to Chrysler’s introduction of innovative new models”. Figure 1 illustrates that American national culture provided an unsound base for their car companies in the 1970s. Figure 2 illustrates that

Japanese national culture provided a sound base for their car companies during the same period. Figure 3 illustrates that synthetic cultures developed within American automotive com- panies during recent years provide an enhanced base for the design and production of world class cars. These synthetic cultures have been established and maintained through culture optimisation methods.

It is important to note that Ford, just like Samurai swordsmen a century before, only acted against their cultural preference when they recognised that they had to do so in order to survive. This is an extremely high risk approach to survival, and it could be argued that the British car industry has been virtually wiped out because many companies failed to act against their existing cultural preferences soon enough.

The examples of Ford and Chrysler show that methods can be developed to harness the congruous aspects of foreign national cultures and filter out the incongruous aspects of indigenous national culture. The overall hypothesis of the recent EMJ articles is that many British organisations urgently need to develop such methods. Further, it has been argued, with numerous illustrative examples, that failure to do so will lead to serious economic and social problems. Organisations providing public healthcare, transport, utilities etc., are a source of particular concern because they are unlikely to be pushed into acting against existing cultural preferences by well- functioning global competition. It will not he possible to develop effective methods without up-to-date information about how British culture manifests itself today within private sector businesses and public sector institutions. You can make a Contribution to this important survey by completing the following question- naire. This is based on extensive research that was carried out some years ago and now needs updating. There are only eight questions. The first two questions ask about British organisa- tions in general. Then, there are six questions specifically about your organisation. Please note that the more realistic your answers are, the more benefit the survey will have. Also, please note that there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, A pilot study has been carried out to ensure that the questionnaire can be completed in ahout five minutes. The survey is concerned with broad trends rather than particular organisations. Accordingly, the questionnaire is anonymous. Results will reported in EMJ but

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Negligible

To answer each question, please write one 4 in one of the five spaces provided.

Minor Considerable Major Determining

Negligible

2) How much influence did you think national culture had on the performance of British public sector institutions before you read the EMJ articlefsj?

Minor Considerable Major Determining

British Other European North American Asian Australasian

0.19% of the time

I 0-19% of the time I 20.39% of the time I 40.59% of the time I 60.79% of the time I 80.99% of the time I

20.39% of the time 40.59% of the time 60.79% of the time 80.99% of the time

6) How often do bosses consult with their subordinates before making a decision?

0.19% of the time

I 0.19% Of the time I 20.39% of the time I 40.59% of the time I 60.79% of the time I 80.99% of the time I

20.39% of the time 40.59% of the time 60.79% of the time 80.99% of the time

8) How often does short-term problem solving take precedence over long-term problem prevention?

0.19% of the time I 20.39% of the time I 40.59% of the time I 60.79% of the time I 80.99% of the time

Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire

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Fig. 3 Today, only synthetic

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the paradigm ljne the paradigm line

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no reference will ever he made to individual responses.

It may he preferable for you to complete the questionnaire online. It can be found at http:// www.iee.org/OnComms/pn/management/ culturequestionnaire.cfm where you will also find all three articles in the series on the influence of national culture on organisations. Alternatively, photocopy or cut out the questionnaire which appears at the end of the article and send or fax it to Engineering Management Journal, IEE, Michael Faraday House, Six Hills Way, Stevenage, Hem. SG1 2AY, UK (fax +44 (0)1438 313465).

Fig. 1 In the 1970% American national culture did not match pressures facing car companies

References 1. Vision culture, EMJ, 2002, 12 (l), pp3l-39 2. A framework for innovation, EM], 2002,12 (4),

~ ~ 1 6 3 - I 7 0 .I

3. Designing transcendent products, EMJ, 12 (3),

4. Managingproduct personalisation, EM], 2001, pp131-138

11 (4). ~ 1 7 9

Fig. 2 In the 197Os, Japanese national culture matched pressures facing car companies

. ... 5. Diamond, J.: Guns, Germs and Steel, Vintage,

London, 1998 6. Thomson, R.: Foreign company jobs lose

allure, Financial Timer, 19 March 1993, p3 7. Bruderer, W.: Bridging the divide, Financial

Emes, 3 April 1993, p16 8. Trompenaars, E: Riding on the Waves of

Culture, The Economist Books, London, 1993 9. Trompenaars, E and Woolliams, P.: First-class

accommodation, People Management, 22 April 1999, pp30-37

10. Hofstede, G.: Cultures and Organisations, Harper Collins, London, 1994

11. Thompson, J.: Strategic Management, 4th Edn, Thomson Learning, London, 2001

12. for example, Axelsson et al: Decision style in British and Swedish organisarions, British

fournal of Management, (2) pp67-79, 1991; Schneider, S.: Strategy formulation: the impact of national culture, Organimtion Srudier, (10) pp149-168, 1989 13. Pascale, R.: Managing on thc

Edge, Penguin, London, 1990

14. Hamel, G.: Leading the revolution, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachussetts, USA,2001

1

0 I E E 2002

Stephen Fox is a freelance project manager.

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