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from the promote-them-to-where-they-can-do-the-least-damage dept.
Geert Hofstede's "Culture's Consequences" is one of the most influential management books of the 20th century. With well over 80,000 citations, Hofstede argues that 50 percent of managers' differences in their reactions to various situations are explained by cultural differences. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has determined that culture plays little or no part in leaders' management of their employees; this finding could impact how managers are trained and evaluated globally.
"We all want a higher quality of life, a desirable workplace environment and meaningful work -- no matter our home country," said Arthur Jago, professor of management in the Robert J. Trulaske College of Business at MU. "In management theory, we focus more on leaders' differences rather than their similarities. By analyzing the data in a new way, I found that managers across country borders and across cultures are more alike than different."
Crud. Does this mean you can't get away from PHB's no matter where you go?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Francis on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:00AM
I don't personally buy their assertion. That's not what I saw working in China. Granted, I only worked at a small number of companies in one context and it might not generalize. However, what I saw was a very Confucian style of management practice at basically all the schools I worked at. The better schools realized that foreigners are foreign and should mostly be left alone, but it was an extreme top down set up at all of them where you probably wouldn't be explained why the decision was made or told what the goal of it was, you'd be told the what to do and then be expected to do it. And that was if I was lucky, as often as not, I'd be given a long list of things I wasn't allowed to do with no information at all about what they were looking for.
I found it absolutely shocking how little accountability there was on the part of the people making the decisions for the decisions they made. Granted, language schools in China attract the lowest class of managers they have, but still.
I experienced that at enough schools in enough parts of the country that it's probably not an anomaly and is a feature of a facet of Chinese culture that you probably won't see anywhere outside of Asia.
The only way that the claim that culture isn't a factor in management style is if you define it to be a part of the environment.