Page 368 - Cultures and Organizations

Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 333

managers silently adapt the foreign ideas to fit the values of their subordi-
51
nates. A country in which this has happened a lot is Japan. Not-so-wise

managers may try an unfitting approach once, find out it does not work,

and fall back into their old routine.
The existence and functioning of grievance channels, through which
lower-level organization members can complain about those at the top, is

obviously very much culturally influenced. Grievance channels in large-

power-distance environments are difficult to establish. On the one hand,
subordinates will fear retaliation (for good reason); on the other hand, there
will be more unrealistic and exaggerated grievances, and the channels may
be used for personal revenge against a superior who is not accessible oth-
erwise. Uncertainty avoidance plays a role too: allowing complaints means
allowing the unpredictable.
The term empowerment became fashionable in the 1990s. It can refer
to any kind of formal and informal means of sharing decision-making

power and influence between leaders and subordinates. Earlier terms for
such processes were participative management, joint consultation, Mitbestim-
mung, industrial democracy, worker representation, worker self-management,
shop floor consultation, and codetermination. Their feasibility depends on the

value systems of the organization members—of the subordinates at least as

much as of the leaders. The first cultural dimension involved is again power

distance. Distributing influence comes more naturally to low- than to
52
high-PDI cultures. Ideologies may go the other way around; in the IBM
surveys, the statement “Employees in industry should participate more in
the decisions taken by management” was more strongly endorsed in high-
than in low-PDI countries; an ideology can compensate for reality.
Classic mid-twentieth-century U.S. leadership models such as Douglas
McGregor’s Theory Y (discussed earlier), Rensis Likert’s System 4, and

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s Managerial Grid refl ected small but not
very small power distances (in the IBM studies, the United States ranked
53
moderately low on PDI). They all advocated participative management
in the sense of participation by subordinates in the superior’s decisions, but
at the initiative of the superior. In countries with still lower PDI values—
including Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Israel—models of management
were developed that assumed the initiatives could be taken by the subor-
dinates. In the United States this concept tends to be seen as infringing
on management prerogatives, but in the lowest-PDI countries people do
not think in those terms. A Scandinavian was cited as remarking to an
American lecturer: “You are against participation for the very reason we