Page 102 - Harnessing the Strengths

Dilemma 3: Parts Versus the Whole ■ 85

and people were highly motivated by the idea that their
achievements had an effect on the organization.
In Europe and Asia this reward system generated quite
a lot of resistance. In Europe, the diffi culty was due to cer-
tain fi scal limitations, but in Asia, it was not obvious why
the system did not work. It seemed so simple: If you are in
America, you apply a personal reward system. In Asia, you
win people over by using the team reward system. Finally,
in Europe you do everything to avoid taxes. Simple, right?
However, it is not as simple as it seems. Such a decentralized
approach works well enough in a multinational organiza-
tion, but for a transnational organization with multicul-
tural teams, the reward system will need to be adjusted to
accommodate the greater diversity of the team.
Let’s go back for a minute to the prickly problem of
Peter Webber. How can he create a reward system that will
constructively bring Moroccan, American, Japanese, and
Dutch employees together? Moroccans and Japanese are
traditionally raised to be more group oriented while Ameri-
can and Dutch managers are more accustomed to measure
individuals against each other. Obviously, then, for the
Americans and the Dutch, it is easier to accept that the one
who produces the most results wins the highest bonus. This
approach, however, does little to promote cooperation with
the Moroccans and the Japanese.
The process of internationalization requires a new kind
of logic and a new approach to management and reward
systems. Obviously, there are many approaches that are
unsuccessful. One of these is to ask all the employees to
take a course on individual responsibility in order to be
accountable for their own creativity. On a group level this
is called “individualization of the community.” The prob-