Sociology

Incompatibility
Cultural dynamics as defined by Cartwright (1993) is from the origin of anthropologists.  Culture dynamics is used to analyze how a culture in an organization is determined and changed. It includes the values, artifacts, symbols, and assumptions of each culture.  It is affected by interpretation, manifestation, realization, and symbolism.  There is a much research going on at this time about the possibility of assuring a multicultural organization and leveraging that to better profits.  This is logical when many organizations are merging and commerce is so well spread across the world often involving multicultural organizations. Cultures then are thrown into a work situation in which they must get along and work together if they are to survive commercially.  What happens when two cultures do not find a way to get along What if their basic beliefs are so opposite that they cannot find a way to be compatible Is there a time in todays commercial world when there is cultural and commercial incompatibility Most would say no, there is not a time when there is total incompatibility, this writer says yes there is. This paper will explore the reasons to support the writers argument as compared to general belief.

There are many current approaches at understanding cultural dynamics. In each, the researcher is attempting to break down a culture and understand how to combine cultures to work together. Cultural dynamics are much more complicated than this and are often wrapped up in not only the culture itself but also the resources available to that culture. Organizational cultures must become anchored in not only these resources but the deep substance of a culture in order to allow cultural compatibility to occur in an organization. It has not been seen by researchers at this point that this kind of in-depth study is occurring before a corporation is formed. For this to happen culture must be studied by these organizations, not only as an entity that is taking place now but as a history that is held by the people as well as a social realization that is not simple to change.

There has also been much risk in the acquisition and merger of organizations from various cultures in an effort to create organizations that are compatible and profitable. The expectation is that these multicultural organizations appeal to more customers, creating an organization that can get ahead of all the rest. The risk is greater than has been thought as the assumption has been that all cultures can learn to get along in a commercial situation, even if they remain different under other circumstances. However, that has not always shown to be the case. This is beginning to show itself in the high numbers of mergers and acquisitions that have recently occurred and then failed.  Takeover bids are common these days and may very well create some of the issues of failure.  Cross-border mergers have increased by about nine times of what they were just a few years ago.  Many of these takeovers and mergers fail because there is actually a production slow down based of the inability of two or more distinct cultures of people unable to work together.

Culture is dynamic everything about the human is immersed in cultural belief. It refers to everything that makes up a way of life. This includes language, which is the oldest institution medium of expression, thought which is what creates perception of others and understanding of the world, spirituality which is the values system that determines through generations of learning how life will be expressed and interaction which is the human contact and how that give and take of socialization occurs through negotiation, protocol, and conventions.  It is the cumulative deposit of all knowledge in the human function. It affects experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, and spatial relationships, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions. In other words, it is everything the human is. In merging acquisitions the human presence is ask to merge cultures. How can that happen when the term culture meets this definition How can the human change everything ever learned through history about their culture or presence in the world in order to make a profit  This writer believes that this is not possible.

Martin Wight told us that a society of stats that are lacking in shared culture as a part of the expansion beyond its original base will be unstable. This destabilization affects not only society itself but certainly the economic function of a culture that has expanded into one another due to merging acquisitions.  The culture clash that can occur is much greater than just language, dress, and work style. It extends to music and art as well. These things are well ingrained in culture as well as personality. In the Arab countries, for example, women are covered and they certainly not shown in art without their clothing. Yet in the United States, you can walk down the hall of a major building and se seminude art. This is insulting to the Arab politician who comes to America to negotiate a deal in a merger. Music is another issue when American music almost never has any kind of singing without instrumental when many of the Asian countries have instrumental without singing and singing without instrumental. These things are deeply cultural and cause a direct impact on the incompatibility that is often being felt in merging companies.

There are actually several theories that should be considered here. Those are the Theory of Cultural Determinism, Cultural Relativism, and Cultural Ethnocentrism.  Cultural determinism takes the position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs, and values of a people are learned at a level that is as a member of the society. These are not a single persons belief but the beliefs of all of those around the individual. In other words, people are what they learn to be. In this case cultural Anthropologists believe that there is no universal way of doing something and the right way is our way. One can imagine how this collides when two different cultures are attempting to do the same job.  If one is optimistic in using this theory, it might be determined that humans are changeable, so much so that two or more distinct culture could re-learn enough to work together, however on the pessimistic side one must content that people are what they are conditioned by their cultures to be. Many would say that if the pessimistic viewpoint is taken, it is believed that man is a passive creature that is completely molded by his culture. This writer does not agree. It seems that, as previously discussed, man is deeply ingrained in his culture, not only does his culture teach him but he teaches his culture.

The second theory or that of cultural relativism gives the insight that different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no superior or inferior group but just distinctly different groups.  This theory is meant to help one understand the other groups and is based mostly on the theory presented. This writer will ask again, how one culture group realistically evaluates another whether or not it is done by theory. An example of cultural values and how that evaluation happens from another culture is the article by Perlez (2006) called Indonesian province embraces Islamic law, and canings. This is an article that was covered in the New York Times. This is an article that was written right after the tsunami hit Indonesia. This is a province that has participated in the Islamic religion for many years. They put Shariah law into effect right after the tsunami. In Shariah law, public canings are not unusual.

What happens when another culture without the same religious beliefs reads this article Let us for example say it is someone from the United States. First there is shock and disbelief and then there is anger. The person reading the articles believes that this is a terrible practice that the people have nothing to do with and is instituted by the government.   Why is this There is freedom of religion in the United States and that is a basic and important part of the culture so there is no basis to understand the religious practices that are talked about in this articles. The people in the United States that are reading it as practicing what is known as ethnocentricity. It is easy to read the article and ask, how can they do that when there is not an understanding of the practice. When that same ethnicity is applied to a commerce situation where the Indonesians and the United States have merged into one company, can that company survive Many would say yes, they will learn to understand each other and get along. This writer, however, believes there is a limit in which this can happen and those basic beliefs learned in culture would prevent the success of this company.

The third theory is cultural ethnocentrism which is partially explained in the example above.
It is the belief that ones own culture is superior to that of other cultures and what is believed by ones own culture is the culture that is correct. In this type of comparison one takes the factor from the other culture and somehow tries to fit it into their own culture which cases a distortion of the issue. In ethnocentrism, global business is usually in a lot of trouble because the important factors in business are overlooked because of an obsession with ones own beliefs. There may be such a focus on the needs of one culture that the other culture does not receive any advantage from working with the first culture and the differences are recognized but both cultures assume that the other culture will change. This is all a recipe for disaster for many companies. However, like the example, how does one move past the feeling created by their culture to allowing others to have their own cultural ideas  This may be possible in the instance of two cultures that are very close but not in those that are very different in everything about their culture.

There have been many explanations attempted lately to talk about the corporate failures that have occurred between the Japanese joint ventures and the western multinationals.  The studies have identified that cultural differences are the major reason for failure. The suggestion of most of these researchers is that there is a need to do away with the simple way of looking at cultural incompatibility and begin to replace that with an awareness of a combined issue of cultural and economic forces that are ingrained in each of the cultures. This becomes a much bigger issue. It was assumed when many of the Japanese and American ventures took place, that the economic returns would replace the cultural views that were so different. This has not happened and it is clear from earlier theory discussed that this is not possible.

Conceptual styles are another reason why cultural and commercial conflict occurs. Conceptual styles are rule sets that are identified and then analyzed and often used to rate the other culture. There are two conceptual styles to be considered here. One of those is the rational style and the other is the analytic. In each style there is a difference in how one culture might deal with the other in a commercial situation. There is often a case when the conceptual style that is used between two cultural groups is incompatible, culture conflict will occur.  The naive ability of one culture to believe that they can act like the other culture just makes the issues worse.

There are not only cultural issues that are incompatible between countries but also within countries. Let us look at Australia as an example. The Australian indigenous people are culturally different in every way from the people who now occupy the territory. There is a tremendous amount of stress and tension between the two cultures and many businesses as well as attempts at programs between the two cultures have failed. The indigenous people feel they have the right to self-determination which conflicts with those of the territories at this time (very similar to the Indian people in the United States).  Everything about these two cultures clashes and yet they have made several attempts at social programs that combine the needs of the territorial people and the indigenous people. The end result is a program that is not used by either group, the same as if they had created a corporation together, which would also have failed.

The 21st century is one in which it appears that there will be more of a clash of civilizations as there continues to be a push for global participation in business. The United States and other Western countries have made a push to the East to make this happen but the results has in some cases been disastrous. A case in point was the Wal-Mart push into Germany. The Germans do not shop like those in the United States and though there was effort to implement language and some of the other styles of the people, this problem was culturally ingrained in this group of people and overlooked by Wal-Mart. In this instance they failed to become a German organization.

Healthcare is culturally significant to every culture. Many of the for profit hospitals in the Western World have determined that there is profit to be made by opening and maintaining hospitals in the Eastern World. They too want to be globalized and they too have had some very specific failures. Thos failures are related to how deeply the cultural issue is embedded in the culture at hand. In the United States, it is part of the healthcare culture to tell a patient when they have cancer and are facing the possibility of dying. It is felt that it is ethically important and that all patients have the right to know what is wrong with them. This has changed over recent years however, in that there has been a view in the past that whatever the physician said is what was right and it did not matter what was wrong with you.  The paternalistic view point of how a physician should act is clearly still accepted and important in many other countries.

The Turkish healthcare system is one of those cases. They also have what is called the doctrine of therapeutic privilege which allows healthcare professionals should not tell a patient what is wrong with them when they might believe that it is harmful to the patient to know. Most Turkish physicians never tell their patients they have cancer. As Americans began to be involved in healthcare this became a major argument between the two cultures. The Americans felt the patients had the right to know and the Turkish healthcare group did not. The American book on healthcare ethics says they should be told whether or not they want to know and the Turkish ethics book says absolutely not, they should not be told. This is a major issue of cultural incompatibility. US nurses feel that their ethics are right and because it is an ethics issue, they cant change how they approach these patients and the Turkish physicians do not want them approaching patients with this news. This then, becomes an issue that dictates that US nurse cannot care for Turkish patients. The argument would be that they can be taught Turkish ways or vice versa but they cant. Ethics is one of the things that is at the history and heart of a culture and in being so, cannot just be changed but must be conceded and in neither of these cases can there be concession so it becomes a situation of incompatibility and in this case, US hospitals have failed.

Economic pressures have developed a need within the global marketplace, an effort to merger or purchase no matter what the issues. This has led to unprecedented failures of mergers this decade. The US alone has had a failure rate amounting to 22.64 billion. The failure rate now lies between 40 and 80. Many Corporate owners and commentators are finally willing to give importance to the fact that these failures are not just financial or legal but are a problem with cultural synergy. Research shows that about 65 of failures have to do with cultural issues.

Another recent example of such failure is the DaimlerChrysler failure. This was a partnership that believed that intercultural hurdles could be overcome. They say now, however, that they underestimated the importance of the cultural issues involved in the merger of these companies which led to a cultural clash that has put the company in position to struggle as a global organization. Is the answer more training they are asking Or are there times when two cultures will just not work together no matter how much training. Due to this and the numbers of failures that are occurring, scholars are taking a second look at whether culture plays a bigger role than was thought before. These scholars are finding that cultural differences play a role in which conflict will upset business settings which are a result of both social and economic relations. The belief has been that as organizations grow together, their cultures will become more homogeneous but as we have seen in a couple of examples, this may not be possible. Culture is not a surface issue that goes away quietly when one is told to change. It is everything that a person or employee is, it is in question as to whether that can change without changing everything about oneself.

According to Mittelman, globalization is a historical transformation, not something that has happened recently. The transformation has always been about cultural diversity. Globalization is about making the world act like one country. It is supposed to strengthen those countries involved with the corporate merger and move. However, it is being seen that poorer countries in most instances are becoming poorer so there is a harmful effect economically as well as culturally. This kind of change becomes an economic nightmare for the poor which drives poorer countries to charge that they are being taken advantage of because of their culture. Even if the world acts as one country, the richer get to say how it will function.

There are also conflicts in the international convergence and divergence arena. Socio economic systems can create real havoc with one another. For example when a Mexican person is trained in management in the United States, he then is different from either culture and becomes someone on the edge of two cultures. He does not blend his cultures, he actually becomes a new culture himself which makes him not be able to fit into either. When this happens with a large number of people who are working for one global corporation, there are things that must be given up by the Mexican employee. Those things which are part of his history then cause get difficulty in dealing with either culture, especially as a manager.

In conclusion, globalization and commercialization has been a goal for some time. The efforts to do this have been basically financial in origin and originating from mergers or acquisitions. There has been much research done on how to merge cultures in these organizations so everyone will profit from these organizational changes. Economies throughout the world have been effected. However, there have been many failures among these companies and 65 of those failures have been related to culture. Many would say that these cultures can find a way to get along but even after this research, this writer disagrees. There are many cultures that cannot be merged and that is because culture is not personality or color of skin or even gender. Culture is a history of the people. When one says he is Chinese, he is not only saying what he looks like and where he comes from but he is indicating the history of his people and how he sees the world. Can we expect him to merge his history with that of another country and become something in the middle Not likely. At least not now.