OB across cultures II
7.What do you mean by individual differences?
In any organisation, employees will be different from each other. Five major
dimensions that results in the sharpest differences among employees include
i) individualism/collectivism,
ii) power distance,
iii) uncertainty avoidance,
iv) masculinity/femininity and
v) time orientation like organizations
(Read up about this in the notes sent.)
8.What is individualism?
This depends on the culture to which the employee belongs to. The cultures that
emphasizes individualism, tend to give importance to individual rights and freedoms.
They have a very closely knit social network and place a considerable attention to
self respect.
9.What is Ethnocentrism?
Ethnocentrism or self reference is the condition where expatriate managers feel like
their homeland conditions are the best. (So, expatriate employees where the need is to
develop cultural empathy to integrate the imported values of the system along with a
social system of the local place where the MNC is functioning. )
10.What is Parochialism?
Parochialism is the predisposition of expatriate managers to see situations around them
from their own perspective that is based on the culture of the home country in which
the organization is based and not from the perspective of the culture of the host country
in which international operation is spread. (So, parochialism is they try to import their
own values into the host country and seek like how it is working over there without
considering the need for the people in the host country and the local culture.)
11.What is Geocentricism?
12.What is Polycentrism?
(Both these questions 11 & 12) to be ignored)
