Cultural Management for Multinational Enterprises

Due to the dynamics in international business, it has become increasingly complex for the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) to find a balance between worldwide standardisation of operational processes and the usage of local advantages. The foreign subsidiary's managers and employees are stuck in the middle of environmental requirements, defined by the parent company on the one hand and the local social environment on the other hand. To ensure organizational efficiency in foreign subsidiaries, the rising conflict between corporate and country cultural characteristics can be solved through active cultural management. This chapter describes fundamentals of culture on corporate and country level and deduces a framework for cultural management. Furthermore, strategies are presented to close the gap between a subsidiary's external requirements and the internal implementation.

Raising the Bar

This chapter provides a case study describing the process of using theory in practice in implementing higher level evaluation of training initiatives within one unit of a global financial services organization. The organization has used Kirkpatrick's level one and two evaluations for many years to evaluate training. This case describes the first time a level three evaluation was used, covering why it was necessary, the process for developing, as well as the outcomes of the evaluation. This chapter also describes the influence of organizational culture in the decisions made in the implementation of the evaluation strategy.

Embracing Organizational Trauma

Organizational trauma is traditionally associated with negative effects on organizational behavior and performance. In this chapter the authors seek to answer the question how organizational trauma, and in particular near-death experiences, can positively influence organizational culture in the long term. In doing so, the authors briefly review the recent literature on organizational trauma and near death experiences, and discuss how these negative traumatic experiences can turn into prosocial organizational behaviour. The authors then present three case studies to illustrate how an organization can manage to incorporate near death experiences into its organizational culture in a positive way.

The Effect of Structural Capital for Human Capital Development and Management in Social Enterprises

Social enterprises are a hybrid form of organizations that enact nonprofit and for-profit activities simultaneously. Like their nonprofit and for-profit counterparts, social enterprises are facing the same challenges, if not more, in a turbulent economy. This chapter aims to examine how structural capital assists social enterprises in the development and management of human capital in today's competitive environment. Based on 22 qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews across 10 social enterprises and nonprofit organizations that perform social entrepreneurship in Australia, the findings suggest that structural capital helps social enterprises in facilitating human capital development and management for innovation. Thus, the study contributes to the literature by arguing that structural capital plays an essential role in social enterprises. Strategies should be developed for a more balanced development of intellectual capital if an intellectual capital-based view of the firm is to be fully integrated.

Culture Influence on IT Governance

Managers face enormous challenges today to plan the decision rights and responsibilities in order to reach desired IT behaviors which are aligned with business objectives of organizations. This is known as IT governance and is ranked as one of the firms' top concerns. Not surprisingly, it is crucial for organizations to find the affecting factors on IT governance and solve the problems associated with it. Culture in national, organizational or group level is an affecting factor in organizations that can play a role in IT governance and this role is rarely explored in academic research. This paper provides a literature review investigating the influence of culture on IT governance. The research purpose is to identify how culture and IT governance in the companies can be linked together and promote this area for future research. The literature review is done systematically and the findings are classified by using an IT governance framework with three main components of structures, processes and relational mechanisms. The results indicate there is an influence from national and organizational culture on IT governance. However, the number of studies is very few and there is still a lack of knowledge on how culture can influence IT governance. This research calls upon a further research on culture impact on achieving an effective IT governance implementation in organizations.

Organizational Culture and Effect on Organizational Performance

Organizational culture is an important part to be considered by dynamic organizations in order to develop some competitive advantage to ensure enhanced organizational performance. This study aims to close the gap between understanding the role of organizational culture and the effect on organizational performance among the employees in insurance companies. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between the dimensions of organizational culture and organizational performance among insurance companies operating in the Jordanian market. A sample of 240 respondents that were selected randomly from insurance companies participated in this study. Data were collected by survey questionnaire. Both descriptive and influential statistic namely frequency, mean, and multiple regression were used to analyze the data. The result shows that there is limited significant relationship between organizational expectations, encourage development, behavioral styles, and stability and communication and organizational performance. The results also showed that a significant relationship exists between policies and procedures and organizational performance. This study explored the results of the effect of organizational culture dimensions on organizational performance and to assess which organizational culture dimensions have a larger marginal impact on organizational performance. This study improved the managers' understanding on a way to improve organizational culture dimensions that have a vital impact on overall performance.

Relationship between Senior and Junior Researcher

The professional development of a young researcher is mainly influenced by the organizational culture and the relationship with academic colleagues, especially mentors. This chapter presents the results of a qualitative study conducted on a sample of 16 researchers employed in three Slovenian public universities. The study examines the senior-junior researcher relationship, as the relationship between mentor and mentee, the nature of their cooperation, and how new knowledge is generated and transmitted. In-depth semi-structured interviews and content analysis for structuring qualitative data was used. The results indicate that the professional development of junior researchers is based mostly on their independent work where the mentor guidance is only occasional. Despite the development of information and communication technology, and in particular the Social Web tools, the mentorship in the framework of higher education institutions is still based on a face-to-face relationship.

Could Cultural Sustainability Improve Organisational Sustainability in Cloud Environments?

This chapter provides an explorative analysis of cultural factors critical to the sustainable organisational developments within cloud environments. The chapter examines how businesses could improve their sustainability by creating sustainable cultures. The chapter debates sustainability issues such as the relationship between organizational culture and sustainable organisational developments. The chapter provides a list of key areas for creating a sustainable culture, for instance, the Change readiness assessment, Leadership and management support, Stakeholder involvement, and Education, as well as Communication. The chapter also discusses organizational culture and the close relationships between culture and sustainability. The chapter examines the relationships when creating sustainability culture and the key factors that will influence the change process.

The Role of Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age

This chapter introduces the role of cultural dynamics in the digital age, thus explaining the theoretical and practical concepts of organizational culture, cultural values and belief systems, material culture and artifacts, language and communication systems, cultural interpenetration, deterritorialization, cultural pluralism, and hybridization; the categorization of cultural dimensions; and the application of cultural dynamics in the modern business world. Cultural influences are changing dramatically as cultures are no longer dependent on local resources to formulate their characteristic tastes, preferences, and behavior and are increasingly linked across vast geographic distances by modern communication media. Membership in a culture adapts to new cultural contexts while transporting elements of one culture to another. As membership in a culture becomes increasingly transitional, unique elements are less clearly demarcated or distinctive. Understanding the role of cultural dynamics in the digital age will significantly enhance organizational performance and achieve business goals in global business environments.

Organizational Culture in Higher Education

Universities who are higher education organizations, have an academic and autonomous construction by performing education, basic and scientific researches, community's duty functions that they take on, they improve a particular organizational culture. The organizational culture that a university has makes it different from other universities by its values,basic assumptions and norms, leaders and heroes, symbols and language,stories and legends, ceremonies and customs. In this study, the terms organization and culture were clarified first and the culture of organization and organization culture in the higher education was studied afterwards.