Page 60 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

Low Individualism and Masculinity. However, unexpectedly the Serbian managers appeared to have higher scores on Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Collectivism than non-managers. Only on the Masculinity dimension the managerial sub-culture was found less “feminine” in comparison to value orientation of the other employees. Leadership in the Central and Southeast European cultures is in many occasions intertwined with a strong “masculine touch”. Managers, not behaving and acting in accordance with masculine approach and settings, are regarded as “weak” and encounter all sorts of difficulties and obstacles to perform the requested standards.
According to Gerhard (2009) there are two approaches towards the importance of differentiation of OC. The Resource Based View (RBV) emphasised the importance of differentiating OC and style of leadership as paths to sustained competitive advantage. In contrast, the contextual view argues that OC is largely determined by the environment and highlights the role of other, industrial forces such as NC. On average, the conceptual analysis and re-analysis of empirical evidence does not support the hypothesized strong role of NC as a constraint on OC. Therefore, organisations may have more discretion in choosing whether to localize or standardize OC and related management practices, than is suggested by conventional wisdom. An argument for a situational approach to OC is that the influx of the close environment has more impact than the overarching influence of a national culture.
In their latest study Sasaki and Yoshikawa (2014) extended the current state of cultural investigation in the domain of international business. In identifying the main criticism of current knowledge, this study focuses mainly on overcoming assumptions concerning the monolithic nature of NC and recognises the limitations associated with the problem of spatial reductionism in intra-national regional cultures and with introducing it as a unit of analysis, borrowing the concept from the field of economic geography. The monolithic nature of NC as assumed and defended by a number of scholars as Hofstede (1980) showed to be a rather simplistic view on the reality, working with average outcomes. Based on more advanced research techniques, inside a national population, more strata can be recognised, identified and questioned. As argued by Frenken and Boschma (2007, p.635) “The dynamic character of the organisation, acting as an agent of change, is targeted on the accomplishment of ensured SVC through the successful implementation of KT”.
Denison (1997) and Denison et al. (2012) who conducted a research on OC and organisational effectiveness, suggests that every organisation has its own way of doing things that influences virtually every aspect of working life. Thus, OC refers to the
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