欧洲国家人力资源管理中关于如何解决跨文化问题Human Resource Management essay
07-20, 2015
介绍—Introduction
经理和下属或雇主和雇员之间的关系，这一直是个最重要和需要深层度研究的话题,涉及讨论一些不方便的问题,例如,在工作场所的性骚扰。管理,从最初开始是以男性的职业和地位为主。然而,民主运动的出现，在管理领域带来一个重大变化。打破边界和认知，促进一波又一波的新变革,为女性进入并占领各种各样的管理职位带来一个全新的机会。这次改革运动也促进了软管理和培养管理的形成，同时也带来了所需管理风格的变化,实务和程序的设计。这次变革运动的先驱者经历过艰难时期,面临着各种各样的挑战性问题,即便是这样，还是要去面对、解决问题,来自上级管理的不受欢迎态度和行为，仍然是由男性为主。然而,最重要的是,这一变革过程在管理专业上带来了不可逆转的变化,因此当地和全球的经济环境也受到影响。
The relationship manager - subordinate or employer - employees has always been one of the most significant subject to deal with, and to extended degree, containing inconvenient issues to discuss, for instance, sexual harassment in a workplace. Management, in its nascence, was predominantly male profession and position to occupy. However, the emancipation movement brought an important change to the management field. Boundaries and perceptions have been broken facilitating a wave of new change, providing that unique opportunity for a female figure to enter and occupy variety of management positions. The new movement also facilitated the emergence of the soft and nurturing management hand bringing along with it the desired change in management style, design of practices and procedures. The pioneers of this movement had to walk through difficult time, being confronted by challenging issues; had to deal, and still does, with unwelcome attitude and behavior from higher ranking management, which still is predominantly represented by male figures. Nevertheless, most importantly, the progress is steep invoking irreversible change to the management profession and consequently to the local and global economic environment.
对个人管理的定义—Defining Personal Management
In a nutshell, according to Collinse Concise Dictionary, a person who leads and utilizes effectively all available human and other resources disposed to a company, industry or an organization, is called a 'manager'. (Collinse Concise Dictionary). In one hand, manager's role is to consolidate the aims and objectives of the business with the surrounding economic environment, while on the other, especially the modern manager, according to Drucker, "is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge." Nevertheless, the elementary goal of a manager is to motivate employees to be fully committed to the organizational aims and goals.#p#分页标题#e#
经理和下属之间的关系—Relationship "Manager - Subordinate"
The relationship "manager - subordinate", as the title suggests, is very complex subject to tackle. Some authors define that managers, despite their rank and position, do have subordinates. However, on the other side, other authors voice strongly the notion that the very word 'subordinate' is a misnomer, in such case, which seems to suggest rather authoritative connotation. Nevertheless, it does not mean that such possibility should be excluded. Quite contrary to that, many such cases do exist within the business practice and consequently the management style is defined as being transactional.
In time, with the economic progress, the term 'manager' has come to realize and embrace an important aspect of its role; i.e., the potential of becoming a leader. Due to such new trends coming to light to this profession, OCB was found. (Ferres, Travaglione, & Connell, 2002; Pillai et al., 1999) In its base core, this new trend aims at establishing mutual trust among leaders and employees; creating a productive environment within which employees, or team members, are rather empowered to be creative, inspired to be innovative, to explore different possibilities and challenges, and of course to go the distance. (Rousseau & McLean Parks, 1993) Due to the new type of relationship or norm of reciprocity as it has been defined by some authors (Eisenberger, Cotterell, & Marvel, 1987; Greenberg & Frisch, 1972) team members naturally engage in OCBs, therefore, ensuring excellence and successful completion of the performed tasks.
企业文化—Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is closely related to and often is influential for establishing one management or leadership style of directing a company over the other. It is important to underpin, especially when searching to find solutions to complex management problems, to preserve cultural assumptions intact. In such instances, one should exercise caution when declaring one cultural assumption 'right' and the other 'wrong'. After all, mutual integrity is the key feature here; otherwise, it could easily turn into extremely counterproductive and conflictive environment, which could lead to results beyond repair.
It is well established that communication is an essential element in developing a trust among team members, i.e., managers and subordinates. As it has been suggested by Zand (1972) and others, teams are less effective at problem solving due to a lack of trust, unwillingness to share information and/or having a forum of open discussions. Mutual trust could only be facilitated by leaders' efforts to establish transparent and open platform for a fruitful social exchange of ideas and when subordinates are actually engaged to participate into decision-making processes.
#p#分页标题#e#
Communication or feedback from subordinates is not only indicative but imperative for a number of reasons: it assists team leaders in understanding what actually works or not within the team so necessary adjustments and steps can be undertaken; it indicates poor level of team performance; team leaders receive an important information about employee's level of competency to fulfill a particular work related task or indicative for adopting new performance related approaches. (Argote, Gruenfeld, & Naquin, 2001) Trust and communication, as shown by number of studies, play crucial role in sharing knowledge; it defines leadership style and determines the company's growth and future prosperity. (Abrams, Cross, Lesser, & Levin, 2003; Levin, Whitner, & Cross, 2006; Mayer et al., 1995)
In fact, it could be said that it all began in late 1950s, when McGregor came to the conclusion that managers could be classified as one of two types. In his book, "The Human Side of Enterprise", published in 1960, he has greatly elaborated upon the subject. However, McGregor's main focus was to examine theories on behavior of individuals at work. That fruitful observational work gave rise to the formulation of two models. McGregor conceptualized these models into Theory X and Theory Y. In summary, Theory X defines managers, who generally distrust their subordinates or employees, while Theory Y signifies managers whose trust is generally placed in their employees. In accordance with these two categorizations, the leadership style is also highly determined by influencing the application of one of these types of management trust classifications. However, the basic difference is that Theory X managers adopt authoritative channeling of communication while Theory Y managers prefer to delegate the decision-making process in the hands of the subordinates, though, according to Costigan et al., this process involves taking considerable amount of risk. (Costigan, Ilter, & Berman, 1998)
McGregor sees these two theories as two quite separate attitudes. By the way, it should be remembered that Theory Y is difficult to put into practice on the shop floor in large mass production operations, but it can prove being useful in the process of managing managers and professionals. In addition to that, it is also important to note that even McGregor, in time, realized that some of these theories, to a great extent, are difficult to apply in practice. Nonetheless, McGregor extended his advice towards future managers to place in operation one basic assumption; i.e. in particular that staff will be willing to contribute more to the organizational aims, goals and achievements, if being treated as responsible, trustworthy, and above all, valued employees.
It is important to discuss and thus understand the underlying fundamental assumptions and differences in these theories. The basic assumptions of Theory X states that average human being, i.e., the employees or the subordinates, has an inherent dislike of work and avoid it if possible; prefers to be directed, dislike taking responsibility in their hands, are unambiguous, and desire security above everything else. Managers with such views and understandings, consequently, develop attitude that people must be controlled and threatened in order to achieve productive outcomes from their subordinates or make them work harder. These fundamental assumptions are embroidered into most organizational principles today, thus giving rise to both 'tough' management with punishments and tight controls, and 'soft' management, which aims at harmony at the workplace. However, it seems that these theories, though diametrically opposed to each other, are both ineffective and inefficient in regards to work performance. It should be noted that people do need more than financial rewards at work, search for and express some deeper and higher order of motivation, which could very well be, the opportunity to fulfill himself/herself. Based on such findings, it could be expressed that Theory X managers fail to provide such opportunities, so therefore as a consequence, the employees do behave in the expected fashion described above.#p#分页标题#e#
On the other site of the spectrum, main assumptions of Theory Y are: the expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest; control and punishment are ineffective ways of encouraging people to perform certain work related tasks; rather than that, employee will very much follow his/her own motivational drive if there is stronger commitment, from their site, to the aims and goals of the organization. In that regard, it has been expressed that if the job is satisfying, then the end result will be that desirable commitment to the organization. Important assumption is that the average human being learns, under the proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility. When such work environment is set, imagination, creativity, and ingenuity increases thus could be utilized to solve work problems by a greater number of employees. It is fascinating to find that, in modern industrial life and the conditions under which it operates, the intellectual potentialities of the average employee are partially utilized leaving behind more room for greater improvement.
Fundamental managerial tasks essential for supervising subordinates are defining, facilitating and encouraging employees' performance and contribution to the task in hand. (Cascio, 2000; Cascio & Shurygailo, 2002; Knights, Noble, Vurdubakis, & Willmott, 2001) Studies demonstrate that in cases where task performance is poorly defined, monitored and/or measured, the trust is significantly low. Thus, as shown by McAllister (1995) conducted study, performance is closely aligned in the manager-subordinate dyad.
On the other site of the spectrum, trust in the manager-subordinate relationship is highly determined by the fair distribution of promotions, job assessments and performance appraisals. Leaders that promote interactional justice while enforcing policies and procedures, such as demotion or termination, do so in a manner that provides respect and dignity as opposed to embarrassment in front of his/her teammates. The interactional justice creates the perception that the leader possesses integrity, benevolence and trustworthiness. So therefore, it is important to understand that fairness enhances the sense of trust among supervisors and employees. As a consequence, employees are more likely to reciprocate with an increase in performance and a better attitude.
The emancipation of the work force during late 20th century brought significant changes to the managerial positions and with that presented new challenges to the profession. The opportunity for many women to climb up the management ladder finally became a reality, but along with its positives it also brought some negative sites such as work related sexual harassment. So, sexual harassment on a workplace has a direct connection and it is a typical example of poorly conducted manager-subordinate relationship, as it should be mentioned that at the same time the supervisor is also an active subordinate to a higher ranking manager. As a direct result of such mismanagement, mistreatment and discriminatory mechanisms, in many countries the authorities felt necessary to establish various Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, as called in United States of America. Due to such efforts, the Society for Human Resource Management has reported that 62% of companies now offer sexual harassment prevention training programs, while 97% have a written sexual harassment policy. The number of grievances filed with the EEOC has gradually decreased over the last decade. For instance, in 1997, there have been close to 16,000 charges filed while in 2007, the number dropped to 12,510.#p#分页标题#e#
Beyond the pure statistical data, the causes of sexual harassment at work can be very complex to approach. It is believed that it steeps in socialization, politics and psychology, since work relationships in some cases are intimate and intense, while in others, are based on vested interests thus highly competitive. Work politics is a high contributor to work related harassments though based on poor management, workplace bullying, frustration, and job financial insecurity do create hostile environments that leak over into the working relationships. Other possible factor can be personal problems such as divorce or death of a spouse or child, are some of the contributors that pave the way to sexual harassment.
It is very well shown by recent studies conducted by sociologists at the University of Minnesota, that generally women in supervisory positions are the most likely targets of sexual harassment. It should be noted, according to the same source, women supervisors were 137% more likely to be harassed than females in non-supervisory positions. So therefore, as the researcher Heather McLaughlin writes, the study provides the strongest evidence to date in support of the theory that sexual harassment has little to do with sexual desire and much more to do with control and domination. It is significant to stress out that being a subject to sexual harassment is a painful, extremely difficult and frequently traumatic experience to go through. Research shows that victims often choose to leave jobs in order to avoid harassment. As a consequence, there is no doubt that many experience serious psychological and health-related problems as a direct cause of such harassment.
总结—Conclusion
The topic has touched upon variety of important issues that many modern organizations have to face and have been confronted by for some time now. Nevertheless, the relationship between employer and employees or manager - subordinates, stands out as the most important driving force in the heart of every organization. The effectiveness and competitiveness of the work force, as well as the workplace environment, is highly influenced by the adopted and enforced management style (whether following the basic principles of Theory X & Y, or their modern counterparts - Theory Z & W), and of course, along with all its features. Balanced and correct choice of management style, design and practices, ensures future prosperity and enhances organizational effectiveness to operate within the global economic circumstances.
经理和下属或雇主和雇员之间的关系，这一直是个最重要和需要深层度研究的话题,涉及讨论一些不方便的问题,例如,在工作场所的性骚扰。管理,从最初开始是以男性的职业和地位为主。然而,民主运动的出现，在管理领域带来一个重大变化。打破边界和认知，促进一波又一波的新变革,为女性进入并占领各种各样的管理职位带来一个全新的机会。这次改革运动也促进了软管理和培养管理的形成，同时也带来了所需管理风格的变化,实务和程序的设计。这次变革运动的先驱者经历过艰难时期,面临着各种各样的挑战性问题,即便是这样，还是要去面对、解决问题,来自上级管理的不受欢迎态度和行为，仍然是由男性为主。然而,最重要的是,这一变革过程在管理专业上带来了不可逆转的变化,因此当地和全球的经济环境也受到影响。
The relationship manager - subordinate or employer - employees has always been one of the most significant subject to deal with, and to extended degree, containing inconvenient issues to discuss, for instance, sexual harassment in a workplace. Management, in its nascence, was predominantly male profession and position to occupy. However, the emancipation movement brought an important change to the management field. Boundaries and perceptions have been broken facilitating a wave of new change, providing that unique opportunity for a female figure to enter and occupy variety of management positions. The new movement also facilitated the emergence of the soft and nurturing management hand bringing along with it the desired change in management style, design of practices and procedures. The pioneers of this movement had to walk through difficult time, being confronted by challenging issues; had to deal, and still does, with unwelcome attitude and behavior from higher ranking management, which still is predominantly represented by male figures. Nevertheless, most importantly, the progress is steep invoking irreversible change to the management profession and consequently to the local and global economic environment.
对个人管理的定义—Defining Personal Management
In a nutshell, according to Collinse Concise Dictionary, a person who leads and utilizes effectively all available human and other resources disposed to a company, industry or an organization, is called a 'manager'. (Collinse Concise Dictionary). In one hand, manager's role is to consolidate the aims and objectives of the business with the surrounding economic environment, while on the other, especially the modern manager, according to Drucker, "is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge." Nevertheless, the elementary goal of a manager is to motivate employees to be fully committed to the organizational aims and goals.#p#分页标题#e#
经理和下属之间的关系—Relationship "Manager - Subordinate"
The relationship "manager - subordinate", as the title suggests, is very complex subject to tackle. Some authors define that managers, despite their rank and position, do have subordinates. However, on the other side, other authors voice strongly the notion that the very word 'subordinate' is a misnomer, in such case, which seems to suggest rather authoritative connotation. Nevertheless, it does not mean that such possibility should be excluded. Quite contrary to that, many such cases do exist within the business practice and consequently the management style is defined as being transactional.
In time, with the economic progress, the term 'manager' has come to realize and embrace an important aspect of its role; i.e., the potential of becoming a leader. Due to such new trends coming to light to this profession, OCB was found. (Ferres, Travaglione, & Connell, 2002; Pillai et al., 1999) In its base core, this new trend aims at establishing mutual trust among leaders and employees; creating a productive environment within which employees, or team members, are rather empowered to be creative, inspired to be innovative, to explore different possibilities and challenges, and of course to go the distance. (Rousseau & McLean Parks, 1993) Due to the new type of relationship or norm of reciprocity as it has been defined by some authors (Eisenberger, Cotterell, & Marvel, 1987; Greenberg & Frisch, 1972) team members naturally engage in OCBs, therefore, ensuring excellence and successful completion of the performed tasks.
企业文化—Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is closely related to and often is influential for establishing one management or leadership style of directing a company over the other. It is important to underpin, especially when searching to find solutions to complex management problems, to preserve cultural assumptions intact. In such instances, one should exercise caution when declaring one cultural assumption 'right' and the other 'wrong'. After all, mutual integrity is the key feature here; otherwise, it could easily turn into extremely counterproductive and conflictive environment, which could lead to results beyond repair.
It is well established that communication is an essential element in developing a trust among team members, i.e., managers and subordinates. As it has been suggested by Zand (1972) and others, teams are less effective at problem solving due to a lack of trust, unwillingness to share information and/or having a forum of open discussions. Mutual trust could only be facilitated by leaders' efforts to establish transparent and open platform for a fruitful social exchange of ideas and when subordinates are actually engaged to participate into decision-making processes.
#p#分页标题#e#
Communication or feedback from subordinates is not only indicative but imperative for a number of reasons: it assists team leaders in understanding what actually works or not within the team so necessary adjustments and steps can be undertaken; it indicates poor level of team performance; team leaders receive an important information about employee's level of competency to fulfill a particular work related task or indicative for adopting new performance related approaches. (Argote, Gruenfeld, & Naquin, 2001) Trust and communication, as shown by number of studies, play crucial role in sharing knowledge; it defines leadership style and determines the company's growth and future prosperity. (Abrams, Cross, Lesser, & Levin, 2003; Levin, Whitner, & Cross, 2006; Mayer et al., 1995)
In fact, it could be said that it all began in late 1950s, when McGregor came to the conclusion that managers could be classified as one of two types. In his book, "The Human Side of Enterprise", published in 1960, he has greatly elaborated upon the subject. However, McGregor's main focus was to examine theories on behavior of individuals at work. That fruitful observational work gave rise to the formulation of two models. McGregor conceptualized these models into Theory X and Theory Y. In summary, Theory X defines managers, who generally distrust their subordinates or employees, while Theory Y signifies managers whose trust is generally placed in their employees. In accordance with these two categorizations, the leadership style is also highly determined by influencing the application of one of these types of management trust classifications. However, the basic difference is that Theory X managers adopt authoritative channeling of communication while Theory Y managers prefer to delegate the decision-making process in the hands of the subordinates, though, according to Costigan et al., this process involves taking considerable amount of risk. (Costigan, Ilter, & Berman, 1998)
McGregor sees these two theories as two quite separate attitudes. By the way, it should be remembered that Theory Y is difficult to put into practice on the shop floor in large mass production operations, but it can prove being useful in the process of managing managers and professionals. In addition to that, it is also important to note that even McGregor, in time, realized that some of these theories, to a great extent, are difficult to apply in practice. Nonetheless, McGregor extended his advice towards future managers to place in operation one basic assumption; i.e. in particular that staff will be willing to contribute more to the organizational aims, goals and achievements, if being treated as responsible, trustworthy, and above all, valued employees.
It is important to discuss and thus understand the underlying fundamental assumptions and differences in these theories. The basic assumptions of Theory X states that average human being, i.e., the employees or the subordinates, has an inherent dislike of work and avoid it if possible; prefers to be directed, dislike taking responsibility in their hands, are unambiguous, and desire security above everything else. Managers with such views and understandings, consequently, develop attitude that people must be controlled and threatened in order to achieve productive outcomes from their subordinates or make them work harder. These fundamental assumptions are embroidered into most organizational principles today, thus giving rise to both 'tough' management with punishments and tight controls, and 'soft' management, which aims at harmony at the workplace. However, it seems that these theories, though diametrically opposed to each other, are both ineffective and inefficient in regards to work performance. It should be noted that people do need more than financial rewards at work, search for and express some deeper and higher order of motivation, which could very well be, the opportunity to fulfill himself/herself. Based on such findings, it could be expressed that Theory X managers fail to provide such opportunities, so therefore as a consequence, the employees do behave in the expected fashion described above.#p#分页标题#e#
On the other site of the spectrum, main assumptions of Theory Y are: the expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest; control and punishment are ineffective ways of encouraging people to perform certain work related tasks; rather than that, employee will very much follow his/her own motivational drive if there is stronger commitment, from their site, to the aims and goals of the organization. In that regard, it has been expressed that if the job is satisfying, then the end result will be that desirable commitment to the organization. Important assumption is that the average human being learns, under the proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility. When such work environment is set, imagination, creativity, and ingenuity increases thus could be utilized to solve work problems by a greater number of employees. It is fascinating to find that, in modern industrial life and the conditions under which it operates, the intellectual potentialities of the average employee are partially utilized leaving behind more room for greater improvement.
Fundamental managerial tasks essential for supervising subordinates are defining, facilitating and encouraging employees' performance and contribution to the task in hand. (Cascio, 2000; Cascio & Shurygailo, 2002; Knights, Noble, Vurdubakis, & Willmott, 2001) Studies demonstrate that in cases where task performance is poorly defined, monitored and/or measured, the trust is significantly low. Thus, as shown by McAllister (1995) conducted study, performance is closely aligned in the manager-subordinate dyad.
On the other site of the spectrum, trust in the manager-subordinate relationship is highly determined by the fair distribution of promotions, job assessments and performance appraisals. Leaders that promote interactional justice while enforcing policies and procedures, such as demotion or termination, do so in a manner that provides respect and dignity as opposed to embarrassment in front of his/her teammates. The interactional justice creates the perception that the leader possesses integrity, benevolence and trustworthiness. So therefore, it is important to understand that fairness enhances the sense of trust among supervisors and employees. As a consequence, employees are more likely to reciprocate with an increase in performance and a better attitude.
The emancipation of the work force during late 20th century brought significant changes to the managerial positions and with that presented new challenges to the profession. The opportunity for many women to climb up the management ladder finally became a reality, but along with its positives it also brought some negative sites such as work related sexual harassment. So, sexual harassment on a workplace has a direct connection and it is a typical example of poorly conducted manager-subordinate relationship, as it should be mentioned that at the same time the supervisor is also an active subordinate to a higher ranking manager. As a direct result of such mismanagement, mistreatment and discriminatory mechanisms, in many countries the authorities felt necessary to establish various Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, as called in United States of America. Due to such efforts, the Society for Human Resource Management has reported that 62% of companies now offer sexual harassment prevention training programs, while 97% have a written sexual harassment policy. The number of grievances filed with the EEOC has gradually decreased over the last decade. For instance, in 1997, there have been close to 16,000 charges filed while in 2007, the number dropped to 12,510.#p#分页标题#e#
Beyond the pure statistical data, the causes of sexual harassment at work can be very complex to approach. It is believed that it steeps in socialization, politics and psychology, since work relationships in some cases are intimate and intense, while in others, are based on vested interests thus highly competitive. Work politics is a high contributor to work related harassments though based on poor management, workplace bullying, frustration, and job financial insecurity do create hostile environments that leak over into the working relationships. Other possible factor can be personal problems such as divorce or death of a spouse or child, are some of the contributors that pave the way to sexual harassment.
It is very well shown by recent studies conducted by sociologists at the University of Minnesota, that generally women in supervisory positions are the most likely targets of sexual harassment. It should be noted, according to the same source, women supervisors were 137% more likely to be harassed than females in non-supervisory positions. So therefore, as the researcher Heather McLaughlin writes, the study provides the strongest evidence to date in support of the theory that sexual harassment has little to do with sexual desire and much more to do with control and domination. It is significant to stress out that being a subject to sexual harassment is a painful, extremely difficult and frequently traumatic experience to go through. Research shows that victims often choose to leave jobs in order to avoid harassment. As a consequence, there is no doubt that many experience serious psychological and health-related problems as a direct cause of such harassment.
总结—Conclusion
The topic has touched upon variety of important issues that many modern organizations have to face and have been confronted by for some time now. Nevertheless, the relationship between employer and employees or manager - subordinates, stands out as the most important driving force in the heart of every organization. The effectiveness and competitiveness of the work force, as well as the workplace environment, is highly influenced by the adopted and enforced management style (whether following the basic principles of Theory X & Y, or their modern counterparts - Theory Z & W), and of course, along with all its features. Balanced and correct choice of management style, design and practices, ensures future prosperity and enhances organizational effectiveness to operate within the global economic circumstances.
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