...To understand how to operate within the boundaries of a foreign country like Venezuela, you must understand its cultural makeup. What does the country of Venezuela look like? Who are the people of Venezuela? What kind of Government represents them? These are just a few questions that will allow for a better understanding and insight on how to approach working within and developing relationships with the people of Venezuela. To better understand the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its great ethnic diversity, it’s important to reference its government, its political organizations, the social and economic wellbeing as well as its military, infrastructure and informational environments. These segments when put together create an overarching...
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... SUmmer semester 2016, 11.06.2016 Table of Contents – Cultural Dimensions according to Hofstede 1. The psychologist Hofstede a) Geert Hofstede b) Gert-Jan Hofstede 2. The cultural dimensions a) Social Orientation - Individualism-Collectivism-Index (IDV) b) Power Orientation – Power-Distance-Index (PDI) c) Uncertainty Orientation – Uncertainty-Avoidance-Index (UAI) d) Goal Orientation – Masculinity-Femininity-Index (MAS) e) Time Orientation – Long-Time vs. Short-Time-Orientation-Index (LTO) 3. Examples – Germany, United States, Venezuela 4. Problems and Discrepancies 5. Conclusion 6. Bibliography 1 Cultural dimensions according to Geert Hofstede Classifying and comparing cultures is strongly connected with the name Geert Hofstede. The Dutch social psychologist, as he calls himself, was born in 1928 in Haarlem(Netherlands) as Gerard Hendrik Hofstede. He went to schools until 1945, that was when he completed the Diploma Gymnasium Beta. From 17 on until he was 25 years old, he studied Mechanical Engineering and ended it in 1953 with a Master’s Degree. After two years of military service he started working in managerial jobs until 1965. He completed his Ph.D. in Social Sciences in part time studies. Already during that time, from 1965 until 1971 he founded and managed the Personnel Research Department of IBM. In this time, he developed the theory of the Cultural Dimensions that are presented in this paper. He worked with...
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...Influence in the Americas: Potential Consequences facing the United States, Brazil &Venezuela Abstract This research seeks to examine the strategic implications facing the United States of America’s due to its benign interest in the Caribbean and Latin America (Americas) given the People’s Republic of China (China) increasing economic interest in the region. It is intended to first define the current security environment of the Americas and the relations between Brazil and Venezuela with that of the United States of America (United States) and China. Thereafter, China’s economic and domestic agenda in the Americas will be examined with hypotheses of the emerging global power potential growth success, challenges or possible collapse in her foreign policy. The likely consequences facing Brazil, Venezuela and the United States will also be examined. The assessment will be done across a continuum of China’s realized economic growth, development of hostile relations due to competition for scarce energy sources or possible collapse due to the country’s internal problems. Finally, the research seeks to encourage proactive thinking by the United States on China’s increasing political and military influence in the region and its possible underlying agenda of becoming the next global super power or hegemony. Introduction A general perception persists in the Caribbean and Latin America that the United States is disinterested in the security of the region with its emphasis...
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...class – no exceptions!!! 1. Employee involvement is increased when managers make clear, forceful decisions for subordinates. a. True b. False 2. Recent corporate scandals have created a lack of trust for management. a. True b. False 3. Elizabeth is the training manager of a Chicago-based company. She is working on a training program for a subsidiary in Venezuela. The training program focuses on work-related cultural differences in Venezuela and the United States. It is very important for Elizabeth to emphasize: a. that both Venezuela and the United States are individualistic countries. b. that both Venezuela and the United States are collectivist countries. c. that Venezuela is a collectivist society whereas the United States is an individualistic society. d. that Spanish is the official language in Venezuela whereas English is the official language in the United States. e. that future orientation is highly valued and rewarded both in Venezuela and the United States. 4. How has technology changed HRM practices? a. The HR function is simpler. b. Recruiting using the web generates smaller, more focused applicant pools. c. Employee training is often delivered on demand rather than through scheduled courses. d. Electronic resumes take more time to evaluate than paper resumes. e. Nearly 20% of HR managers are involved in surveillance...
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...Content Content | 1 | Case I | 2 | Case II | 11 | Case III | 20 | References | 30 | Coursework | 31 | Case Study I The Globalization of Starbucks Thirty years ago, Starbucks was a single store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market selling premium-roasted coffee. Today it is a global roaster and retailer of coffee with some 17,000 stores, 40% of which are in 50 countries outside the United States. Starbucks set out on its current course in the 1980s when the company’s director of marketing, Howard Schultz, came back from a trip to Italy enchanted with the Italian coffeehouse experience. Schultz, who later became CEO, persuaded the company’s owners to experiment with the coffeehouse format – and the Starbucks experience was born. The strategy was to sell the company’s own premium-roasted coffee and freshly brewed espresso-style coffee beverages, along with a variety of pastries, coffee accessories, teas, and other products, in a tastefully designed coffeehouse setting. From the outset, the company focused on selling a “third place” experience, rather than just the coffee. The formula led to spectacular success in the US, where Starbucks went from obscurity to one of the best-known brands in the country with over 137,000 employees and $10.7 billion in annual revenues. Thanks to Starbucks, coffee stores became places for relaxation, chatting with friends, reading the newspaper, holding business meetings, or (more recently) browsing the Web. In 1995, with 700 stores...
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...CASE 41 Tambrands—Overcoming Cultural Resistance Tampax, Tambrands’s only product, is the best-selling tampon in the world, with 44 percent of the global market. North America and Europe account for 90 percent of those sales. Company earnings dropped 12 percent to $82.8 million on revenues of $662 million. Stakes are high for Tambrands because tampons are basically all it sells, and in the United States, which currently generates 45 percent of Tanbrands’s sales, the company is mired in competition with such rivals as Playtex Products and Kimberly-Clark. What’s more, new users are hard to get because 70 percent of women already use tampons. In the overseas market, Tambrands officials talk glowingly of a huge opportunity. Only 100 million of the 1.7 billion eligible women in the world currently use tampons. In planning for expansion into a global market, Tambrands divided the world into three clusters, based not on geography but on how resistant women are to using tampons. The goal is to market to each cluster in a similar way. Most women in Cluster 1, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, already use tampons and may feel they know all they need to know about the product. In Cluster 2, which includes countries such as France, Israel, and South Africa, about 50 percent of women use tampons. Some concerns about virginity remain, and tampons are often considered unnatural products that block the flow. Tambrands enlists gynecologists’ endorsements to stress...
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...CASE 41 Tambrands—Overcoming Cultural Resistance Tampax, Tambrands’s only product, is the best-selling tampon in the world, with 44 percent of the global market. North America and Europe account for 90 percent of those sales. Company earnings dropped 12 percent to $82.8 million on revenues of $662 million. Stakes are high for Tambrands because tampons are basically all it sells, and in the United States, which currently generates 45 percent of Tanbrands’s sales, the company is mired in competition with such rivals as Playtex Products and Kimberly-Clark. What’s more, new users are hard to get because 70 percent of women already use tampons. In the overseas market, Tambrands officials talk glowingly of a huge opportunity. Only 100 million of the 1.7 billion eligible women in the world currently use tampons. In planning for expansion into a global market, Tambrands divided the world into three clusters, based not on geography but on how resistant women are to using tampons. The goal is to market to each cluster in a similar way. Most women in Cluster 1, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, already use tampons and may feel they know all they need to know about the product. In Cluster 2, which includes countries such as France, Israel, and South Africa, about 50 percent of women use tampons. Some concerns about virginity remain, and tampons are often considered unnatural products that block the flow. Tambrands enlists gynecologists’ endorsements to stress...
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...Greet Hofstede`s cultural dimensions Hello everybody. My name is Elchin. Today I will talk about Greet Hofstede`s cultural dimensions. Every manager should have deep knowledge about culture because we live in globalization time. What is culture? Culture is a system of values, beliefs, and norms shared among a group of people. People`s culture affect the values in the workplace. That’s why management processes should be different according to cultures and according to the people from different cultures in the workplace. The most famous study about how culture relates to values in the workplace was conducted by Geert Hofstede. From 1967 to 1973 he did a long research among more than 1 million employees in IBM company. He identified 5 dimensions. These dimension are 1) power distance, 2) individualism versus collectivism, 3) uncertainty avoidance, 4) masculinity versus femininity 5) Confucian dynamism or long term orientation. Let`s briefly review all these dimensions. Power distance. Power distance is about how much a culture accepts or doesn’t accept authority. If people in high positions or in high status show his or her power, rank or status and other people from lower levels accept this behavior; it means there is a high power distance. For example my country Azerbaijan is high power distance country. You cannot joke with your boss; you have to be careful while talking with people from high status etc. And the boss working room is separated from others. But it is not...
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...economic layout to personal life. Just like the case of IPhone, by globalization, companies can collaborate with each other and effectively organize the resource, so that the advantages can be maximized and costs can be reduced. Moreover, globalization also means more extensive market. Nowadays, we can enjoy hamburgers of McDonald’s no matter in which country we are; people also can easily find imported goods everywhere. Expanding business into foreign market has become a trend for more companies. However, global progress also brings some big challenges for us. With the collaboration of economics, various cultural elements, such as values, life styles, and stereotypes, would communicate, conflict, and mix during the process. Thus it also brings difficulties in management for some organizations that start their global strategies. Since the recently trend of global cooperation between different areas and cultures, employees, especially managers, are facing more challenges to work...
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...derived three major components of its compensation system: 1. Wages on a piecework basis 2. A year-end bonus based on a merit-rating procedure 3. Guaranteed employment for workers Although piecework pay system prevails in Western corporations, Lincoln Electric’s bonus rate was one of the highest in the United States, reached approximately 40%~55% of pre-tax at some point. James believed that relating employee’s welfare to corporation’s profits encourages their motivation and dedication to the company. In addition, employment guarantee protected employees’ job security thus ensured efficiency and willingness in production. Nevertheless, another underlying philosophy also contributed to maintain the execution of the compensation system, i.e. James’s belief in the equality of management and employees. The open door policy was practiced under this guideline. Moreover, small numbers of supervisors and equal treatments in parking spaces as well as in dining rooms displayed the philosophy in various aspects. Undoubtedly, it was a well-inherited tradition from the Employee Advisory Board in the early years of Lincoln Electric. Equality promoted expedite and clear communications between employees and managers. Although managers of Lincoln Electric asserted that its compensation system was strong enough to be applied in any...
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...Netherlands. He received his M.Sc. from the Delft Institute of Technology in 1953, his Ph.D. (cum laude) from Groningen University in 1967. Hofstede is most well known for his work on four dimensions of cultural variability, commonly referred to as "Hofstede's Dimensions." These include: Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance, Masculinity-Femininity, Individualism-Collectivism, and Long-Term/Short Term Orientation. These dimensions were arrived in his 1980 publication, "Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values." The study took existing survey data (sample size of 116,000) collected from a multinational corporation (IBM). The result was a score in each of the dimensions for 40 different countries. During 1978-83, the Dutch cultural anthropologist Geert Hofstede conducted detailed interviews with hundreds of IBM employees in 53 countries. Through standard statistical analysis of fairly large data sets, he was able to determine patterns of similarities and differences among the replies. From this data analysis, he formulated his theory that world cultures vary along consistent, fundamental dimensions. Since his subjects were constrained to one multinational corporation's world-wide employees, and thus to one company culture, he ascribed their differences to the effects of their national cultures. (One weakness is that he maintained that each country has just one dominant culture.) In the 1990s, Hofstede published a more accessible version of his research...
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...observed adolescent developments like epigenetic steps of development, meaning that the adolescent’s primary duty during this stage is to form identity (Schwartz & Montgomery, 2002; Chen & Farruggia, 2002). Carol Gilligan (1988) suggested that gender differences had an impact on the human development cycle. The experiences of adolescents across the world are similar through sub-cultural and cultural communities, historical eras, and boys and girls. Universal Similarities All cultures around the world see adolescents as a special time for the person experiencing adolescence. In third world societies of some countries, kids are often uneducated and often get married at a very young age (Chen & Farruggia, 2002). Because of this, the time from childhood to adulthood is lost and these adolescents are thrown into adulthood before they are physically or emotionally mature or into what civilized western worlds call “grown up.” Although this is the case, studies in about 160 societies discovered that just about all of the societies studied recognized adolescence at some point (Chen & Farrugia, 2002). Recognition of adolescence is unique and varies by culture gender, and social standings (Chen & Farrugia, 2002). Similarities and Differences Between Cultures and Sub-Cultures Stanley Hall (1916) conducted a lot of adolescent research and indicated that adolescents are experiencing a chaotic time in their lives. The experience of dealing with raging hormones can be very turbulent in an adolescent’s...
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...In this week's reading the chapters both talk about Nationalism in Latin America. The definition of Nationalism in the book Problems in Modern Latin American History, by James Wood, is the identification of a large group of individuals with a nation. In the book Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, by John Chasteen, it says that nationalists were often urban , middle class, mixed race, or recent immigrants. It is said that Nationalism is one of the most widespread and influential ideologies in modern world history. In this week's reading for James Wood, entitled "Nationalism", it talks about Nationalism and how it affected Latin American countries. An example of how Nationalism affected Latin America is the Cuban war for independence from Spain, which happened from 1868 to 1898. Jose Marti was a apostle of Cuban Independence, in which he earned this title from many years of fighting for this cause. Jose had died on the battlefield fighting for Cuba's independence in 1895. Due to his belief about Cuba being independent, Jose was imprisoned and was also exiled from Cuba. Jose Marti's most famous essay was published in newspapers in both New York and Mexico City in January of 1891. In this essay he talks about the blindness of the previous Latin American governments to what was actually going on in the that region. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 had posed a revolutionary challenge to the neocolonial system. Francisco Madero had led a campaign to overthrow...
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...“Dominga Philomen Laveau” Nikeisha S. Sandy COM360:Advanced Communications in Society(BCH1233A) Instructor: Gina Rollings September 17, 2012 Intercultural communication is defined as communications on face to face level between people of different cultures. “Intercultural communication involves the interaction of persons from cultural communities that are different”( Hinchcliff-Pelias, & Greer, 2004)). Intercultural communication can be extremely difficult at times as there are several barriers to communication. In order to understand the barriers of communication between different cultures, we have to look at the point of view of someone from a different culture. This paper is a narrative based on an interview I conducted of a woman born of one culture and living in a completely different culture. Dominga Philomen Laveau is like a second mother to me. In addition, she is my best friend. The thing that inspires me the most about Dominga is that she always has a new story to tell in regards to her many adventures in life. Dominga has dealt with a great amount of diversity and has been subject to many stereotypes. Born in Trinidad, and raised in Pascal, Venezuela, she migrated to the United States at the age of 17. To this day, she still faces many communication barriers as English is not her first language. The most common barrier Dominga has to deal with on a daily basis is anxiety. When dealing with people that are not familiar with her culture, background, and...
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...has turned into centralized location for the fashion industry. CH is the flagship . Carolina Herrera signed a licensing agreement with STL. The purpose of the licensing agreement was to allow CH to expand globally and rapidly. They began in Spain because of Carolina’s background. From there, they wanted to expand globally due to the market potential. They went to New York and Paris, because of the importance of purchasing power and the idea that they will be considered a luxury brand if they are located in those places. In addition, they expanded to Miami because of the Spanish culture. From there, they were able to expand into Mexico due to the NAFTA agreement between the United States and Mexico. Lastly, they targeted to enter into Asia and the Middle East for further growth opportunities and begin in Venezuela to target South America. The company changed its management model to better grasp individual market demographics and to establish a more concentrated market strategy within each region. To be successful, it was important for CH to understand the demand of each individual country. In addition, it was very important for CH to be well organized and vertically integrated. This would allow them to provide different values of the chain in one Carolina Herrera wanted to be a globalized brand because it provided the opportunity to grow. There was a greater opportunity to turn a larger profit if she went global and her main competitors were global. For her to compete...
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