Write the word next to its definition. The sentences in the previous exercise will help you decide on the meaning of each word.
…………… To deserve and get; to control
…………… Organization of people in a series of levels, according to importance or authority
…………… To oppose or to fight someone or something; to stop yourself having something that you like
……………. Downhearted; hopeless, overwhelmed with sadness
…………… Under the authority or power of another, inferior or below another in rank, power or importance
…………… To find out if a fact you think is true is really true
…………… To use something or do something that is bad, in order to succeed or deal with a problem
..………… To give someone or something special attention or treatment
…………… The ability to know something without the conscious use of reasoning
Using the answer line provided, complete each item below with the correct word from the box. Use each word once.
| Resort, hierarchy, intuition, subordinate, resist, accord, command, intuition, ascertain, despondent |
1. Jaime was ……………… after losing her job due to downsizing of the personnel.
2. We need to ………….. whether the project is feasible.
3. When polite requests failed, Paul ………….ed to threats.
4. Beth moved steadily up the company …………… until she was named president. This appointment, the culmination of twenty years of hard work and dedication, put her at the pinnacle of her career.
5. My …………… told me not to accept the job offer which was so fabulous – far too fabulous to be legal. I later repented greatly not to listen to my instinct.
6. The owner of the company is vehement in his insistence that managers implement a plan to communicate better with workers in ………………. positions.
7. The judge ………….ed pressure to lengthen the sentence.
8. Japanese …………… a special reverence to trees and rivers.
9. “Supermodels” can ………… extremely high fees.
B Global Companies
➢ Selection methods can vary not only through cultures but through companies. Do you know about any of them?
➢ What difficulties do you think might me implied in managing multinationals?
Read the article.
Managing Multinationals[21]
Managing a truly global multinational company would obviously be much simpler if it required only one set of corporate objectives, goals, policies, practices, products and services. But local differences often make this impossible.
A fairly obvious cultural divide is one between the countries of North America and North-west Europe, where management is largely based on analysis, rationality, logic and systems, and the Latin cultures of southern Europe and South America, where personal relations, intuition, emotion and sensitivity are of much greater importance.
The largely Protestant cultures on both sides of the North Atlantic (Canada, the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia) are essentially individualist. In such countries status has to be achieved. You don’t automatically respect people just because they have been in a company for 30 years. A young, dynamic, aggressive manager with an MBA can quickly rise in the hierarchy. In most Latin and Asian cultures, on the contrary, status is automatically accorded to the boss, who is more likely to be in his fifties or sixties rather than in his thirties. This is particularly true in Japan, where companies traditionally have a policy of promotion by seniority.
In northern cultures, the principle of pay-for-performance often successfully motivates salespeople. But the principle might well be resisted in more collectivist cultures, and in countries where rewards and promotion are expected to come with age and experience. Trompenaars gives the example of a sales rep in an Italian subsidiary of a US multinational company who was given a huge quarterly bonus under a new policy imposed by head office. His sales – which had been high for years – declined dramatically during the following three months. It was later discovered that he was deliberately trying not to sell more than any of his colleagues, so as not to reveal their inadequacies. He was also despondent not to earn more than his boss, which he thought would be an unthinkable humiliation that would force the boss to resign immediately.
Another example of an American idea that doesn’t work well in Latin countries is matrix management. The task-oriented logic of matrix management conflicts with the principle of loyalty to the all-important line superior, the functional boss. You can’t have two bosses any more than you can have two fathers. French managers, for example, would rather see an organization die than tolerate a system in which a few subordinates have to report to two bosses.
Approaches to selection also vary significantly across cultures. There are differences not only in the priorities that are given to technical or interpersonal capabilities, but also in the ways that candidates are tested and interviewed for the desired qualities.
In Anglo-Saxon cultures, what is generally tested is how much the individual can contribute to the tasks of the organization. In these cultures, assessment centres, intelligence tests and measurements of competencies are the norm. In Germanic cultures, the emphasis is more on the quality of education in a specialist function. The recruitment process in Latin and Far Eastern cultures is very often characterized by ascertaining how well that person 'fits in' with the larger group. This is determined in part by the elitism of higher educational institutions, such as the 'grandes ecoles' in France or the University of Tokyo in Japan, and in part by their interpersonal style and ability to network internally. If there are tests in Latin cultures, they will tend to be more about personality, communication and social skills than about the Anglo-Saxon notion of 'intelligence'.
Though there are few statistical comparisons of selection practices used across cultures, one recent study provides a useful example of the impact of culture. A survey conducted by Shackleton and Newell compared selection methods between France and the UK. They found that there was a striking contrast in the number of interviews used in the selection process, with France resorting to more than one interview much more frequently. They also found that in the UK there was a much greater tendency to use panel interviews than in France, where one-to-one interviews are the norm. In addition, while almost 74 per cent of companies in the UK use references from previous employers, only 11 per cent of the companies surveyed in France used them. Furthermore, French companies rely much more on personality tests and handwriting analysis than their British counterparts.
Many organizations operating across cultures have tended to decentralize selection in order to allow for local differences in testing and for language differences, while providing a set of personal qualities or characteristics they consider important for candidates.
Hewitt Associates, a US compensation and benefits consulting firm based in the Mid West, has had difficulties extending its key selection criteria outside the USA. It is known for selecting 'SWANs': people who are Smart, Willing, Able and Nice. These concepts, all so perfectly understandable to other Americans, can have very different meanings in other cultures. For example, being able may mean being highly connected with colleagues, being sociable or being able to command respect from a hierarchy of subordinates, whereas the intended meaning is more about being technically competent, polite and relatively formal. Similarly, what is nice in one culture may be considered naive or immature in another. It all depends on the cultural context.
Some international companies, like Shell, Toyota, and L'Oreal, have identified very specific qualities that they consider strategically important and that support their business requirements. For example, the criteria that Shell has identified as most important in supporting its strategy include mobility and language capability. These are more easily understood across cultures because people are either willing to relocate or not. There is less room for cultural misunderstandings with such qualities.
Culture
panel interview – a formal meeting at which a group of people is asked questions in order to find out who can best suit a job