Culture may be defined as the accumulation of underlying values, basic assumptions, and visible artifacts and is instrumental in deciding how people behave. During the era of globalization, organizations are always seeking to leverage their positions by going into collaborations, joint ventures with organizations from other countries. Whenever organizations go into business activities with organizations from different countries, there are bound to be cross-cultural management issues between the organizations.
These issues arise out of the cultural differences prevalent in both the organizations and they have been explained by eminent theoristGeert Hofstedein terms of the use of power and organizational politics, practices pertaining risk mitigation and uncertainty avoidance, culture of individualism, collectivism, masculinity and femininity,attitude towards time, short term and long term orientations (Thomas and Peterson 2014). Other models used to enhance this study include Edward Hall’s Cultural Contexts Framework and the World Values Survey framework dimensions.The differences between the organizational cultures in Australia and Malaysia are highlighted in the following paragraphs.
Starting with Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Model:
Power Distance:
Australian organizations exhibit a low power distance while Malaysian firms exhibit high power distance (Adler and Graham 2017). This poses a major issue as a Malaysian firm believes in long hierarchical organizational structure with strong lines of authority whereas the Australian firm believes in employees having equal power in flatter organizations. An Australian organization employee may find his Malaysian counterpart to be incompetent in taking decisions on his own as the Malaysian employee lacks the authority to make the calls.
Uncertainty Avoidance:
The Australian organizational culture has high uncertainty avoidance practices while Malaysian organizations have low uncertainty avoidance (Stahl and Tung 2015). This has potential chance to give way to management issues. An Australian manager may be skeptical about the supply chain of a partnering Malaysian firm. The Australian manager may try to calculate exact ordering times, inventory pileup and inventory turnover time to keep bullwhip effect at bay. This act of calculation may be insulting to the Malaysian firm considering the fact that it never doubted its supplier’s delivery capabilities before.
Individualism vs. Collectivism:
The Australian culture promotes individualism whereas the Malaysian culture promotes collectivism (Moran, Abramson and Moran 2014). The Malaysian organization may be dependent on team activities while the Australian organization indulges its individual employees to take up tasks on their own and deliver. The employee from Australia may be frustrated with the decision making practices of the Malaysian firm’s team.
Masculinity vs. Femininity:
Masculinity refers to the culture where employees consider achievement in terms of money, career growth whereas Femininity refers to the culture which indulges employees to be modest, tender, caring about the quality of life, fostering long term relationships and so on. Both the Malaysian and Australian cultures are inclined towards masculinity, so not much issues are expected to rise out of this attribute (Malek and Budhwar 2013).
Short term Orientation vs. Long term orientation:
The Australian culture is more short term oriented than the Malaysian organization culture which gives substantial chances for management issues to crop up (Malek, Budhwar and Reiche 2015). The Australian manager may be demanding quick supplies from its Malaysian outsourcing partner, but the Malaysian firm may be taking more time to deliver since the weather conditions for delivery may not be favorable at the time. During such instances, the Australian manager deems the Malaysian partner to be incompetent.
Now, taking on Edward Hal’s model framework of High Context and Low Context Cultures (Adekola and Sergi 2016), we can get to various parameters which include Human Relations/ Associations, Interaction/ Communication, Temporality, Learning and Agreements/ Contracts.
Human Relations:
Australian organizational culture is a Low Context Culture. Relationships are taken very lightly and people believe in following rules and regulations strictly. Goals are paid the most importance and are over relationships. Work culture is decentralized and employees believe that their identity is formed through their achievements. On the contrary, the Malaysian organizational culture is a high context culture which emphasizes on long lasting relationships, collectivism and most importantly people and relationships are paid more importance than achieving goals (Howitt et al. 2013). There’s a lot of chance of issues cropping up from this difference. An Australian manager may be ready to sign in big contracts with a Malaysian firm after the first meeting, while the Malaysian firm may feel uncanny about the quick approach of the Australian manager.
Interaction:
Since the Malaysian organization culture is a high context culture, there’s a lot of non-verbal communication including expressions, gestures, postures, tones during a conversation (Jano et al. 2015). Further, communication may be implicit and employees tend to take disagreement personally. The Australian culture indulges a low context culture which focusses on more explicitly communicated words which act as a medium for ideas, information and opinions. The Australian manager may fail to understand the project requirements of the Malaysian firm while having a business meeting. He may have to ask about the requirements more explicitly which in turn may offend the Malaysian clients as they expect their words to be understood rather than explicitly told.
Temporality:
The Australian culture supports a dynamic environment where tasks are to be delivered on deadlines and change is believed to be the constant (Klarsfeld et al. 2014). One must save time to utilize it better. The Malaysian culture creates the environment for slow changes, more stability. An Australian consultant may think that its Malaysian client is not interested in its services if the client delays to arrive in a business meeting by a couple of hours.
Learning:
The organizational culture in Australia values fast learning and how efficiently it is being grasped. Thinking methods are inductive and individual learning is preferred. On the other hand, the Malaysian organizational culture values accuracy in learning and how well it is implemented. Thinking methods in this culture are deductive and group learning is preferred (Haslam et al. 2014). An Australian client may be very fast to respond to global changes and implement ERP in its business process. However due to faulty consultation, the ERP system fails to deliver the safety stock indication and the company finds itself to be out of inventory amidst customer orders.
Proxemics:
The Malaysian culture believes in nodding their heads to seal a deal which may be offending to an Australian manager who believes in shaking hands to seal deals.
Agreements:
An Australian manager would try to get a contract signed or even demand a completely furnished e-mail from a Malaysian consultant regarding all the tasks it is supposed to perform, but the consulting firm may be reluctant to do so because it is in its culture to have verbal contracts and perform tasks over given words.
Further exploring the World Values Survey Framework Dimensions,
Traditional values vs. Secular rational values:
An Australian consultant may discuss recent economic or political challenges facing Malaysia, to show they have been doing research on the country and are interested and committed. But the Malaysian client might feel their country is being criticized by this approach (Cummings and Worley 2014).
Survival values vs. Self-expression values:
The Malaysian supplier may be ready to provide palm oil from its vast palm reserves but the Australian edible oil manufacturer may not be ready to sign the deal thinking of the environmental constraints.
References
Thomas, D.C. and Peterson, M.F., 2014. Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage Publications.
Adler, N.J. and Graham, J.L., 2017. Cross-cultural Interaction: The International Comparison Fallacy?. In Language in International Business (pp. 33-58). Springer International Publishing.
Stahl, G.K. and Tung, R.L., 2015. Towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies: The need for positive cross-cultural scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(4), pp.391-414.
Moran, R.T., Abramson, N.R. and Moran, S.V., 2014. Managing cultural differences. Routledge.
Malek, M.A. and Budhwar, P., 2013. Cultural intelligence as a predictor of expatriate adjustment and performance in Malaysia. Journal of world business, 48(2), pp.222-231.
Abdul Malek, M., Budhwar, P. and Reiche, B.S., 2015. Sources of support and expatriation: a multiple stakeholder perspective of expatriate adjustment and performance in Malaysia. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(2), pp.258-276.
Adekola, A. and Sergi, B.S., 2016. Global business management: A cross-cultural perspective. Routledge.
Howitt, R., Doohan, K., Suchet?Pearson, S., Cross, S., Lawrence, R., Lunkapis, G.J., Muller, S., Prout, S. and Veland, S., 2013. Intercultural capacity deficits: Contested geographies of coexistence in natural resource management. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 54(2), pp.126-140.
Jano, Z., Noor, S.M., Ahmad, R., Saad, M.S.M., Saadan, R., Bokhari, M. and Abdullah, A.N., 2015. Website usability and cultural dimensions in Malaysian and Australian universities. Asian Social Science, 11(9), p.1.
Klarsfeld, A., Booysen, L.A., Ng, E., Roper, I. and Tatli, A. eds., 2014. 9.78 E+ 12: Country Perspectives on Diversity and Equal Treatment. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Haslam, S.A., van Knippenberg, D., Platow, M.J. and Ellemers, N. eds., 2014. Social identity at work: Developing theory for organizational practice. Psychology Press.
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.
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