Social environment.html

The social environment (context), also known as the milieu, is the identical or similar social positions and social roles as a whole that influence the individuals of a group. The social environment of an individual is the culture that he or she was educated and/or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts. A given social environment is likely to create a feeling of solidarity amongst its members, who are more likely to keep together, trust and help one another. Members of the same social environment will often think in similar styles and patterns even when their conclusions differ.

A large global oil company found that employee productivity in one of its Mexican plant was off 20% and sent a U.S. manager to find out why. After talking to several employees, the manager discovered that the company used to have a monthly fiesta in the parking lot for all the employees and their families. Another U.S. manger had canceled the fiestas, saying they were a waste of time and money. The message employees were getting was that the company didn’t care about their families anymore. When fiestas were reinstated, productivity and employee morale soared.

At Hewlett-Packard, a cross-global team of U.S. and French engineers were assigned to work together on a software project. The U.S. engineers sent, long detailed emails to their counterparts in France. The French engineers viewed the lengthy emails as patronizing and replied with quick, concise emails. This made the U.S. engineers think that the French were hiding something from them. The situation spiraled out of control and negatively affected output until team members went through cultural training.

As we understand that organizations have different cultures, countries have cultures too. National culture is the values and attitudes shared by individuals from a specific country that shape their behaviour and their beliefs about what is important.

Which is more important to a manager – national culture or organizational culture? For example, is an IBM facility in Germany more likely to reflect German Culture or IBM’s corporate culture? Research indicates that national culture has a greater effect on employees than does their organization’s culture. German employees at an IBM facility in Munich will be influenced more by German culture than by IBM’s culture. This means that as influential as organizational culture may be on managerial practice, national culture is even more influential.

Legal, political and economic differences among differences among countries are fairly obvious. The Japanese manager who works in the United States or his or her American counterpart in Japan can get information about laws or tax policies without too much difficulty. Getting information about a country’s cultural differences isn’t quite that easy! The primary reason is that it’s hard for natives to explain their country’s unique cultural characteristics to someone else.

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Social environment.html

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