I think because of the different realization of power distance, people behave completely different in business. So conflict and misunderstanding must be emerged when two or more intercultures meet up. Under this situation, the international managers must pay attention to the clashes and be aware of. How to work the subordinates together efficiently and more cooperatively is important too.
And then there is also a large discrepancy on the uncertainty avoidance. (Hoecklin, 1995:31) defined 'Uncertainty avoidance is the lack of tolerance for ambiguity and the need for formal rules.' That means people trying to setup rules to face to the uncertainty. The re is high uncertainty avoidance in most oriental countries such as Japan, China. In these countries, people prefer a stable job. They feel safe and prideful when they keep working hard at the one place. Under this circumstance, an excellent manager should keep his employee away from unpredictable risk. And the employee would like to be worked within groups rather than independently cause of the less risk-taking. But in most western countries, there is low uncertainty avoidance showed, whereas high job mobility occurs in those countries such as USA, Denmark, Singapore. The western people think that when they change their jobs, they can get more experience cause they like challenge. I believe that the divergence of the uncertainty avoidance is from different basic social ideology. A competent manager should pay attention on the rules setting between different uncertainty avoidance. The misreading of that may affect the initiative and the aspiration of the subordinates.
The third dimension Hofstede indicated is the individualism. It is a concern for yourself as an individual as opposed to concern for the group. The priority of self-concern or group-concern varies from different cultures. For example, most western employees like to work with their own plan for defending their interest. That is a high individualism. Because of the different attitude to work, 'the incubator culture' (Trompernaars, 1997:175) arises when cross-cultural individuals work together as a group. Trompenaars (1993: 158) told us "the incubator is both personal and egalitarian." People do not cooperate at all. They just simply work in their own ways, follow their own rules, and achieve their own objective. They do not like to be interfered by others. It is good for a company to gather as much ideas as they can when starting a new program. But how to manage these individuals to reach the group goal should be the awareness for managers. I think who is good at this should be good at grouping, troubleshooting, and coordinating skills.
Finally Hofsted pointed out the masculinity. That is about the sexual inequality. According to Hofstede's definitions, masculine societies define gender roles more rigidly than feminine societies. In business, managers should take a big concern of the treatment to different sex under different cultural influence. In today's world, because of the masculine value and point of view, males take most senior managing positions. But a experienced manager suppose knew that it is harmonious that men work with women since women sometimes are more sensitive. Therefore, how to balance the masculinity/femininity from different culture and background in order to maximize the team power is worth considering by managers.
话语分析二十年
试论应用语言模型框架中句子的四个平面理论