Page 438 - Cultures and Organizations

Intercultural Encounters 403

As mentioned before, biculturality implies bilingualism. There is a
difference in coordination strategy between most U.S. and most non-U.S.
multinational organizations. Most American multinationals put the burden
of biculturality on the foreign nationals. It is the latter who are bi- or mul-
tilingual (most American executives in multinationals are monolingual).
This goes together with a relatively short stay of American executives

abroad; two to five years per foreign country is fairly typical. These execu-
tives often live in ghettos. The main tool of coordination consists of uni-
fi ed worldwide policies that can be maintained with a regularly changing
composition of the international staff because they are highly formalized.
Most non-American multinationals put the burden of biculturality on their
own home country nationals. They are almost always multilingual (with
the possible exception of the British, although even they are usually more
skilled in other languages than the Americans). The typical period of stay

in another country tends to be longer, between five and fifteen years or

more, so that expatriate executives of non-American multinationals may
“go native” in the host country; they mix more with the local population,
enroll their children in local schools, and live less frequently in ghettos.
The main tool of coordination is these expatriate home country nationals,
rather than formal procedures. 21
Biculturality is difficult to acquire after childhood, and the number of

failures would be larger were it not that what is necessary for the proper
functioning of multinational organizations is only task-related biculturality.
With regard to other aspects of life—tastes, hobbies, religious feelings,
and private relations—expatriate multinational executives can afford to,
and usually do, remain monocultural.
Chapter 9 argued that implicit models of organizations in people’s
minds depend primarily on the combination of power distance and uncer-

tainty avoidance. Differences in power distance are more manageable than
differences in uncertainty avoidance. In particular, organizations head-
quartered in smaller-power-distance cultures usually adapt successfully in
larger-power-distance countries. Local managers in high-PDI subsidiaries
can use an authoritative style even if their international bosses behave in a
more participative fashion.
Chapter 3 opened with the story of the French general Bernadotte’s
culture shock after he became king of Sweden. A Frenchman sent to Copen-
hagen by a French cosmetics company as a regional sales manager told

Geert about his first day in the Copenhagen office. He called his secretary

and gave her an order in the same way as he would do in Paris. But instead