Page 369 - Cultures and Organizations

334 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

are in favor of it—one doesn’t know where it will stop. We think that is
54
good.” On the other hand, U.S. theories of participative management are
also unlikely to apply in countries much higher on the power distance scale.
Harry Triandis reported the embarrassment of a Greek subordinate when
his expatriate U.S. boss asked his opinion on how much time a job should
55
take: “He is the boss. Why doesn’t he tell me?” One of the critical notes
about the GLOBE research project studying national culture, organiza-
tional culture, and leadership (see Chapter 2) is that the questionnaires
were designed on the basis of a U.S. concept of leadership. 56
The choice of informal versus formal empowerment is affected by
the country’s level of uncertainty avoidance. Thus, both PDI and UAI
should be taken into account, and the four quadrants of Figure 9.1 repre-
sent four different forms of dividing power. In the upper left-hand corner
(Anglo countries, Scandinavia, the Netherlands: PDI and UAI both low),
the stress is on informal and spontaneous forms of participation on the

shop floor. In the lower left-hand corner (German-speaking countries:
PDI low, UAI higher), the stress is on formal, legally determined systems
(Mitbestimmung). On the right-hand side (high PDI), distributing power
is basically a contradiction; it will meet with strong resistance from elites
and sometimes even from underdogs, or their representatives, such as
labor unions. Where it is tried, it has to be pushed by a powerful leader—
by a father type such as an enlightened entrepreneur in the high-PDI,
low-UAI countries (higher right-hand corner) or by political leadership
using legislative tools in the high-PDI, high-UAI countries (lower right-
hand corner). Both mean imposed participation, which, of course, is a
paradox. One way of making it function is to limit participation to certain
spheres of life and to maintain tight control in others; this is the Chinese
solution, in which participative structures in work organizations can be
57
combined with a strictly controlled hierarchy in ideological issues. That

this has a long history too is evident from the story with which Chapter 7
opened: eighteenth-century participative management in the Dream of the
Red Chamber garden.

Performance Appraisal and
Management by Objectives

Any organization in any culture depends on the performance of people.
Monitoring the performance of subordinates is a theme in most manage-
ment development programs right from the lowest management level