Groups & Teams Overview
A warning for managers everywhere—motivation theories are culture-bound.
American psychologists and scientists developed the theories in this book for the American workplace, and the American culture dictates the behaviors described. Managers working for international companies with remote international teams may find it challenging to apply the suggestions of these theories to everyone on their team.
For instance, Maslow’s theory suggests that humans follow a hierarchy of needs from the need for safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization; this is a typical American point of view. Greece and Mexico, countries with cultures that look for a significant set of rules and guidelines, might have safety at the top of their pyramids. In contrast, Scandinavian countries, well known for their nurturing characteristics, might have social needs at the top of theirs. If these differences are well understood, leaders can adapt accordingly and understand that group work is more critical for their Scandinavian workers, and so on.
What other theories fall short when you stand them up against different cultures? The need to achieve and the concern for performance is found in the US, UK, and Canada, but it’s almost non-existent in countries like Chile and Portugal. The equity theory is embraced in the US, but in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, workers expect their rewards to reflect their personal needs and performance. It stands to reason that US pay practices might be perceived as unfair in these countries.
Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and a former IBM employee conducted pioneering research on cross-cultural groups in organizations, which led to his cultural dimensions theory.
Hofstede defines culture as the unique way people are collectively taught in their environments. He aims to compare and understand the collective mindset of these groups of people and how they differ. He concluded that cultural differences showed themselves in six significant areas. Hofstede created an “index” for each category to show where individual cultures fell along the spectrum:
- Power Distance: This index describes the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. (Latin, Asian, and Arab countries score on the high side, while Anglo and Germanic countries score low. The US is in the middle.) A higher index number suggests that hierarchy is established and executed in society, while a lower index would indicate that people question authority in that culture.
- Individualism measures the degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups. The United States scores very high in this category.
- Uncertainty avoidance: this is defined as a “society’s tolerance for ambiguity.” Cultures scoring high in this area opt for very defined codes of behavior and laws, while cultur