How does culture affects management?

Answer 1

Culture affects management by affecting the values and beliefs that managers hold towards their job, coworkers and employees, and the organization. For example, in western management, business values focus mostly on transactions, or selling something to a customer. For these values, managers mostly need strategic management competencies, in order to complete more and larger transactions. However, in Asian management systems, there is more focus placed on building social capital. For example, in Korea, the government makes most of the decisions about businesses, so managers need to build strong relationships with government officials over time in order to influence major decisions that will be made in the future about their company. In addition, most if not all Korean business decisions and partnerships are made by using connections or who-knows-who. So for managers in Asia, strategic management competencies and social capital competencies are equally important, because no business can get done without them.

Culture also affects the way managers manage human resources. For example, in Korea, there is a strong, centralized, hierarchical structure to every company. Koreans strongly believe in the Confucian values of authoritarianism, paternalism, masculinity, and high power distance. So, for example, when giving assignments, managers will be deliberately vague about details, because if they are too direct and explain in too much detail it is seen to belittle the employee. Conversely, employees will never ask questions if they don't understand how to do something, because questioning a senior is not allowed in their society. They will also never contradict a manager's decision, because they can cause him to lose face, and their job will then be in jeopardy. This causes a lot of miscommunication problems, as you can see.

Culture also affects management by being an intrinsic part of the way an employee views their job and their longevity at their job. In western countries, managers and higher business officials typically work for many companies throughout their career, honing their skills in different ways, and sometimes even starting their own companies towards the end of their careers. In Korea, if a manager tries to change countries, it is considered a betrayal, or a traitorous act and they will be ostracized from all of their friends, and possibly family if they got the job through family connections. Recently, this has begun to change as recessions and competition for higher level jobs have made Koreans more likely to change companies, and it has caused a lot of problems for Korean companies and Korean society because it is increasing mistrust between companies and individuals about how much the company should invest in the individual, and how much the individual should invest in the company.

*Note, this answer is all about Korea and east vs west because this is the topic of my PhD and it was easy for me to write quickly. If you are talking about other cultures, there will be other differences.

Answer 2

An organization culture is a set of actions and traditions that have been shaped by the older members of the organization and has influenced the new recruits. Management decisions may be affected by the organizational culture when the manager either refuses to go against the traditions or are wary of suddenly changing the way the organization is run.