Organizational Science Abroad: Constraints and Perspectives PDF
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Organiza tional Science Abroad Constraints and Perspectives Organizat iona} Science Abroad Constraints and Perspectives Edited by Chimezie A. B. Osigweh, Yg . Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Organizational science abroad: constraints and perspectives / edited by Chimezie A. B. Osigweh, Yg. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4899-0914-5 ISBN 978-1-4899-0912-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0912-1 1. Comparative management. 2. Comparative organization. 3. Management—Cross- cultural studies. I. Osigweh, Chimezie A. B., 1955- HD30.5.0735 198 8-28572 658—dcl9 CIP © Springer Science+Business Media New York 1989 Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher To my special family; Dr. Arthur ("Sir") Hougland Dr. Magaret ("Madam") Hougland Amy Hougland Chris Hougland John Hougland Contributors Nancy J. Adler, Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Wiktor Askanas, Faculty of Administration, University of New Bruns- wick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada William Aussieker, Department of Management, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California Schon L. Beechler, Graduate School of Management, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kim S. Cameron, Graduate School of Business Administration, Univer- sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Cary L. Cooper, Manchester School of Management, University of Man- chester, Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, United Kingdom Charles J. Cox, Manchester School of Management, University of Man- chester, Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, United Kingdom Robert Doktor, Department of Management and Industrial Relations, College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Hawaii Dexter Dunphy, Australian Graduate School of Management, Univer- sity of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia Sarah J. Freeman, Graduate School of Business Administration, Univer- sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan W. Harvey Hegarty, Graduate School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Richard C. Hoffman, College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware vii viii Contributors Myung Un Kim, Graduate School of Business Administration, Univer- sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Yasumasa Kondo, Department of Commerce, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan Chimezie A. B. Osigweh, Yg., Department of Management, School of Business, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia Vladimir Pucik, School of Business Administration, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan S. Gordon Redding, Department of Management, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Fritz Rieger, Department of Management, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada Rolf E. Rogers, Department of Management, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California and Department of Management, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii Uma Sekaran, Department of Management, College of Business and Administration, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois Jeannette Shi, Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia Coral R. Snodgrass, Department of Management, College of Business and Administration, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois Richard M. Steers, Department of Management, Graduate School of Management, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Jeremiah J. Sullivan, Department of Marketing and International Busi- ness, Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Teruhiko Suzuki, Department of Commerce, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan Rosalie L. Tung, School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Durhane Wong-Rieger, Department of Management, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada Foreword Organizing consists of making other people work. We do this by manip- ulating symbols: words, exhortations, memos, charts, signs of status. We expect these symbols to have the desired effects on the people con- cerned. The success of our organizing activities depends on whether the others do attach to our symbols the meanings we expect them to. Whether or not they do so is a function of what I have sometimes called "the programs in their minds"- their learned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting-in short, a function of their culture. The assumption that organizations could be culture-free is naive and myopic; it is based on a misunderstanding of the very act of organizing. Certainly, few people who have ever worked abroad will make this assumption. The dependence of organizations on their people's mental pro- grams does not mean, of course, that we do not find many similarities across organizations. Some characteristics of human mental program- ming are universal; others are shared by most people in a continent, a country, a region, an industry, a scientific discipline, or even a gender. A global, rather than national, organizational science weighs both sim- ilarities and differences. The two are each other's inseparable comple- ments. Similarities are only of interest for traits that could also have been different, differences only for what could have been similar. Weighing similarities and differences is not a matter of numbers: Mr. Fujisawa's dictum, which heads Chapter 2 of this book, represents the voice of common sense (or of wisdom, which is the same thing) and reminds us that one difference, if overlooked, may offset nineteen similarities. Research in multinational organizations, including my own work, has shown that people in similar positions but in different countries often do the same things, but attach quite different meanings to what they do. Daily practices vary less than underlying values. This also means that across national borders practitioners will cooperate more easily than theorists. Those of us involved in organizational science ix x Foreword often tend to forget that we, too, are children of our national and profes- sional cultures, and that our minds have also been programmed by this background. Being theorists by profession, we operate precisely in the area where consensus across borders is most difficult to obtain. Paradox- ically, what applies least abroad is our theories, not our practices. In human history, countries or areas that for a period wielded con- siderable political and economic power have usually, with some delay, also exported ideas to other parts of the world. This has been true in the West for, successively, the Mesopotamian civilizations, Greece, Rome, the Arabs, the Renaissance Italians, Western Europe, and the United States. We are presently witnessing a shift toward Japan, and, as this book shows, China may be the next country to watch. Asia, from India eastward, had its own internal transfers of ideas in the past millennia, but now, for the first time in human history, East and West seem to meet in an integration of ideas. In the meantime, we should realize that a dominant country's ideas frequently are built upon those of its predeces- sors in the history of domination. U.S.-dominated organization science had inherited from Europeans: Durkheim, Fayol, Marx, Freud, Lewin, Weber. Chapter 7 of this book illustrates to what extent Japanese organi- zations have been influenced by U.S. examples. What is probably also new to the present era is the fact that no country will ever again on its own exercise as much domination as some did in the past: neither politically nor economically nor ideologically. We will have to live in an interdependent world whether we like it or not. For organizational science, this means that the field will become a very different game from the mainly U.S.-centered discipline of the past dec- ades. Contributions of people with quite varying mental programs will have to be recognized. This is no less than a paradigmatic shift, in the sense of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1970). In fact, it is a shift not toward one but toward a whole series of new paradigms. Paradigmatic shifts, as Kuhn has shown, are not smooth transitions, and those educated in the old ways may experience such a shift as nonsensical, irrelevant, threatening- anyway, it will meet with considerable resistance. The book in front of you represents a courageous attempt at sup- porting such a paradigmatic shift. Across its chapters, it interestingly illustrates various stages of transition from a U.S.-centered to a globally interdependent approach. Its authorship, while predominantly North American, includes many persons who are in some way bi-or multi- cultural: It is the marginals, both in countries and in disciplines, from whom basic innovations can be expected. One striking feature of the U.S. organizational science paradigm is Foreword xi its fascination with the role of management. "Management" is an Amer- ican invention. The assumption that there should be a special class of people who are needed in order to make other people work, and the assumption that these managers represent the vital core of the organiza- tion, that they "are" the organization much more than all the other members, are by no means universal. They are not shared by, for exam- ple, most Japanese, nor were they held by the German fathers of organi- zational science. I have been amused by the number of times I have seen my own research described in U.S. sources as "a comparative study of managers' values" -whereas in fact I studied employees' values. I hap- pen to believe that management and managers can only be understood in relationship to the kind of people managed. For example, I believe that Japanese management without Japanese employees is like the sound of one hand clapping. The editor, Professor Chimezie A. B. Osigweh, should be congratu- lated for a timely and stimulating volume, composed of chapters by some of the best experts in the field. As the book's subtitle emphasizes, it represents work in process, in a field in which I sincerely hope that work will always remain in process. May it help many readers along on the road toward a truly global, multiparadigm organizational science. Geert Hofstede Maastricht, The Netherlands
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