Cross Cultural Management: Cambodia And Turkey

Cultural dimension of Hofstede’s theory

Discuss about the “Cross Cultural Management between Cambodia and Turkey”.

The name Cambodia is derived from the French word Cambodge that came from the word Khmer which means “born of Kambu”. Cambodia is located between Vietnam and Thailand under the mainland Southeast Asia. The most central place economically and culturally is lowland flood plain of Tonle Sap Lake and Mekong River. Though Cambodia has coastline on Thailand that coast is separated from central flood plain through the mountains. Thereafter, during 1950s roads and railroads were constructed for providing ready access to coastal port towns (Mazanec et al. 2015). The economy of the country is dominated by the agriculture of wet rice and the iconic image of countryside is one of the rice paddies that are scattered with sugar palms. The people of Cambodia mostly speak in Khmer language and the people mainly belong to the Vietnamese, Mon and various other Asian languages.

On the other hand, Turkey is located at crossroads of Balkans, Middle East, Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean. With regard to population and territory Turkey is among larger nations and the land area of Turkey is more than any of the European state. Turkey’s modern history started in the beginning of the 20^th century and after the country became repuplic, the leaders from Turkey started working for modernizing the location and brought various fragments together that was formed during war. The economy of the country is still developing and it is the wide mix of traditional agriculture and modern industry and 30% of the country’s employment consists of agriculture (Bakir et al. 2015).  Major agricultural products of Turkey are hazelnuts, citrus, sugar beets, grains, cotton, tobacco and livestock and the main industries of Turkey are food processing, textiles, electronics, petroleum, steel, paper, lumber and construction. Turkey’s climate is temperate and has wet and mild winters, dry and high summers. 

This theory establishes the framework that revolves around the cross-cultural engagements that were formed by Geert Hofstede. Collectively the dimensions state the cultural impact on the society base on different cultures, relationship among behaviour and values in association with analysis of various factors. To be more specific, this theory takes into account significant approaches of culture and delivers them the rating based on the comparison scale (Hofstede 2017).

The style of leadership can be explained from various aspects and can be stated in different ways. The style of leadership is the one that employs the person based on the environment that is to be used and the groups on which the style is to be used. The leadership style under Hofstede’s concept includes the power distance, individualism and masculinity (Mladenovi? et al. 2017).

Leadership styles

Power distance states the level at which the person is comfortable with the distribution of authority or power of any organization. The people from Cambodia have high level of power distance as compared to the Europeans. The culture of the country honours the referent powers and observes a clear demarcation among the subordinates and superiors, old and young. Obedience, allegiance and respect to the superiors or the higher authorities considered as highly desirable (Saleem and Larimo 2017). On the other hand, in Turkey, the major decisions are always taken by the most important and elder people for favouring the other people in group. The head of the family always takes the household decisions. However, as the people are now getting stronger, independent, educated and divorced parents, the situations are also getting changed. In the same way, the business and education world, leaders are no longer exist but the bosses feels themselves as superior to others.

It is the measurement of strength of ties of the people with others in the community. A community with high level of collectivism score will have strong group consistency and therefore, will exhibit the high level of respect and loyalty among the members whereas under individualism the ties among the individuals are loose and everyone is expected to take care of her or him or the immediate family (Gholipour and Tajaddini 2014). Cambodia falls under high collectivism society and therefore the group welfare is valued higher as compared to the individuals. On the other hand, Turkey falls under highly individualism society and the people are generally concerned about themselves, their families and immediate families. In working place also the employees are concerned about themselves and do not consult while taking any decisions.

It measures the level at which the culture values the traditional female and male roles. Under the traditional male roles the virtues are competitive and assertive and the traditional female role virtues are caring and modesty. A culture that has high score for masculinity creates a gap among the men’s and women’s values and a culture with low masculinity values the women (Hofstede 2014). Cambodia falls under the predominant feminine culture and they place high value on the people, nurturing and life quality. Meeting the basic requirements are sufficient to fulfil their needs. On the other hand, Turkey falls under the border of feminine or masculine culture. Boys don’t reveal their emotions and they don’t cry too, however, they are supposed to protect their women. Their most important goal is to earn money whereas the women are supposed to take care of their kids, husband and families. With the changing time, the women are now getting educated, earning money and stand by the all problems of the life (Minkov and Hofstede 2014).

Power distance

Long-term orientation is concerned about the future, short-term social or material success and short-term gratification. It states the scenario with regard to the adaptability, perseverance and persistent. It is defined as the way of communication that includes voice tone, body gestures, physical distance among the communicators, weather, time of the day, societal norms, place of the communication, situation and external factors (Degens et al. 2017). Two type of approaches are there – low context and high context. High context mainly assign the importance to the surrounding of a message and the secondary importance to message itself. Under the high-context communication more time is required to take any decision and perform the transactions as compared to the low context cultures. On the contrary, low context cultures allocate the primary meaning of objective communication message and then the secondary meaning to context. Under the low-context communication it emphasizes accuracy, speed and efficiency. The low-context communications are logical, action oriented, linear and big part of the data is formalized and explicit and the communications are supposed to be proceeded in explicit, verbal and rational way.  Cambodia falls under the high context communication and prefers the implicit language and collect most of the data from the communication context instead of using the actual code. The people from the country tend to share their experience through communication. In the same way, the employees communicate for conveying various emotional response and they expect the group members to follow and know the required protocol while interacting (Beugelsdijk, Kostova and Roth 2017). Further, they consider it inappropriate for publically discussing the problem of an individual. Criticism, if required, is indirectly or privately done. Questions regarding the issues are talked about to deal with the issues and find out a positive response. On the other hand, European countries like Turkey fall under the low context communication culture. The information transmitted by explicit, direct and clear way. There are very little or no gap for the communication from the receiver’s as well as transmitter’s ends. Moreover, the clear and direct transformation of information is appreciated whereas, the ambiguity is not liked (AlAnezi and Alansari 2016).

Unlike the other aspects of Hofstede’s concept decision making style is not same as the organizational and management aspect. The decision making approach is useful means to understand the managers, their problem solving approach and the decision making ability for interacting with other people in  the organization. The culture of the country has an impact on the decision making process by the managers or others to solve the problems (Upadhyaya, and Rittenburg 2015). Cultural contingencies for decision making process are as follows –

5 steps for decision-making	Cultural variations
	Problem solving approach	Acceptance of situation
1.      Recognition of Problem	Situations shall be changed	Few situations shall be accepted instead of changing
2.      Search of information	Gathering the facts	Gathering the possibilities and ideas
3.      Alternative construction	Future-oriented, new alternatives can be changed and learnt	Future-present-past oriented alternatives substantially cannot be changed
4.      Choice	The responsibilities of decision making are delegated and decisions are taken quickly	The senior managers takes the decisions and the decisions are taken slowly
5.      Implementation	Process is slow as the single person is responsible for all the responsibilities	Process is fast as it involves participation from all groups

Collectivism vs. Individualism

Segregation of the styles of decision making are made on the basis of democracy and autocracy as opposite poles of same scale (Rienties and Tempelaar 2013). Six alternatives under the decision making style are as follows –

Serial No.	Type	Definition for decision-making style
1.	Autocratic	Generally, the person involved makes his own decision or solve the problem using the information that is available without consulting the subordinates
2.	Consultative	Generally, the persons consults the subordinates and then take the major decision after analysing various alternatives
3.	Pseudo-consultative	The person consults with the subordinates, however, it does not mean that he considers their ideas while making decision
4.	Participative	The person analyze and share the issues with the subordinates under the group, analyse the alternatives and then arrive at the major decision
5.	Pseudo-Participative	Normally the person analyze and share the issues with the subordinates under the group, analyse the alternatives to establish the right decision and inform the subordinates regarding what he thinks to be right and then carries out the process of decision vote.
6.	Delegatory	Generally, the subordinates are asked to take the decision on their own.

The consumer’s decision making style in Cambodia is involved with the mental orientation strategy the consumer has towards the choice selection. The people in Cambodia are of participative or delegatory type as they falls under highly collectivism and the manager does not make their own decision without discussion it with their subordinates (Samaha, Beck and Palmatier 2014). Further, in Cambodia the group welfare is valued higher as compared to the individuals. On the other hand, Turkey falls under highly individualism society and the people are generally concerned about themselves, their families and immediate families. In working place also the employees are concerned about themselves and do not consult while taking any decisions. Further, they make their decision based on the autocratic type of communication and the person involved makes his own decision or solve the problem using the information that is available without consulting the subordinates (Putnam and Gartstein 2017).

The difference in culture has an impact on the creation of efficient team management. While managing teams, various things those are required to be taken care of for the positive performance of the team are –

• Creation of various opportunities for the members of the team and knowing each other better (group orientation) regarding their work capabilities and experience (individual orientation)
• Find out the thinking and judgements of the team members and what they think about the efficient team member and efficient leader (preference of power distance). The team members shall be asked regarding what they feel as barrier in performing the efficient team work. The answer shall be different based on the cultural difference. These answers shall be discussed and acknowledged (Chien Iet al. 2016).
• Set the protocols for the team for leadership, communication, meeting, conflict management and decision making, which in turn will reflect the languages and cultural diversity of the team.
• Human interactions shall be tracked through preparing the questionnaire so that the potential culture can be identified and the issues can be processed before it reaches at the serious level.
• The fact shall be acknowledged that not meeting with the team members face-to-face may have negative impact on the members.
• Time shall be taken out for learning something regarding the difference in culture represented within the team. If possible, a culture mentor shall be found out.
• Shall speak distinctly and shall avoid the usages of jargon, sport analogies and telling of the jokes.
• Summarize and paraphrase the discussion more frequently.

In Cambodia, as they fall under highly collectivism culture, group welfare is valued higher as compared to the individuals. The management before taking any decisions consult their team members and the decisions are taken for the benefit of the team. On the other hand, Turkey falls under highly individualism society and the people are generally concerned about themselves, their families and immediate families. In working place also the employees are concerned about themselves and do not consult while taking any decisions. Further, they make their decision based on the autocratic type of communication and the person involved makes his own decision or solve the problem using the information that is available without consulting the subordinates. The managers are less concerned about the team members and while making decisions the views of the team members are generally ignored.

It states the level at which the societies have control on the desires and impulses. As per Hofstede, the culture is collective programme of the mind that segregates among different category of people. Cambodia falls under indulgence nature and believes in freedom and enjoyment of the people in group whereas, Turkey falls under restraint culture and does not allow freedom and enjoyment of the people in group.

Femininity vs. Masculinity

It is the tolerance level of a society for ambiguity and uncertainty. Under the Hofstede’s concept the high value is placed on the time of the people and their requirement of their freedom and privacy and it acknowledges the individual accomplishments. Further, the system based on the valuation of feminity or masculinity. Further, the education and thrift are considered as positive values whereas the people who are willing for compromising will have lower valuation. The value system of Cambodia is based upon its collectivist nature (Kim 2017). It values the independence and self-sufficiency, self interest of the group over the individual interest. However, in Turkey as the people are of individualism nature, it does not value the group enjoyment and values the concentration on self or maximum to the dear and near ones and are concerned about fulfilment of their own goals, needs and interests.

Conclusion

As per the above discussion it is concluded that as far as the international business is under consideration, the cultural dimensions plays an important role. The manner, in which the different cultures are viewed, can assist the manager to sail and understand the various concepts of   international business. With regard to the cultural dimensions, Cambodia’s business market significantly varies with that of Turkey. The people from Cambodia have high level of power distance as compared to the Europeans, whereas the people from Turkey have low level of power distance. Further, the Cambodian people have collectivist and feminist culture. They prefer to take the decisions collectively and concerned about the team members benefits. Further, they value their women as like the men. On the other hand, turkey has individualism and masculinity culture. They are concerned about themselves or their near and dear ones. Further, the women are supposed to do the household works and take care of their babies, husbands and family members. In Cambodia, important decisions are taken only after discussing the points with subordinates whereas in Turkey, the decisions are mainly taken by the top level management people or the head of the family.

References

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