Managers' Forum ~ Book Reviews

This book is a very practical guide to help the manager of a culturally different workforce understand why managerial and motivational techniques are not universally effective.  The workforce can be multicultural in the
manager's home country or the manager can be transplanted into a different culture of a foreign country.  The entire book is based on the fact that the manager has to understand himself and the cultures of his workers to be truly effective.

The premise of the book is a method of managing diversity called the self-knowledge approach.  By self-knowledge the author's mean the set of motives that cause people to act.  These self-knowledge motives are:

                Self-enhancement, the need to feel good about ourselves
                Self-growth, the desire to improve to face new challenges
                Self-consistency, the need to have continuity in our lives

In addition to self-knowledge motives, cultural values affect the way workers respond to managerial techniques.  One of the primary cultural values that determine how an employee will respond is whether she is self-focused or
group-focused.  In addition, the power distance or power differential will affect employee responses.  A low power differential means the worker is accustom to having an input into the decisions that affect him.  A high power differential means that the individual will not challenge orders given from those in authority.  Based on these four cultural values, combinations can be created and countries (regions of the world) can be identified with these
different cultural profiles.  As examples:

                United States-          self-focus/low power differential
                Spain-                  self-focus/high power differential
                Taiwan-                         group-focus/low power differential
                Saudi Arabia-           group-focus/high power differential

Once this ground work is laid, the rest of the book is devoted to applying the self-knowledge approach to various areas of management.  The topics covered include:  communication, motivation, transforming a group into a team, effective leadership styles and obtaining commitment.  Each management topic applies the different cultural profiles to help determine which management style will work most effectively.  The benefit of this book is not only the suggestions that are provided to help achieve the best results, but the awareness that is promotes to help managers realize that there are differences in their employees and a cookie cutter approach to management with everyone is not effective.  Although the authors are dealing with cultures based on different countries, the principles explained can be used to apply to "different" cultures within the same country.

Even though this book wouldn't be classified as entertaining, I think it would be beneficial reading to everyone who has leadership responsibility.

Earley, Cristopher & Erez, Mirian.  The Transplanted Executive: Why You Need to Understand How Workers in Other Countries See the World Differently, Oxford Univ. Press, 1997 ISBN:019508795X

 

Contact Us!