United in a world of difference
The business world is globalising but how fast? The conventional view is that if the global office has not quite yet arrived, it is surely on its way.
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It is certainly the case that, in the future, small and large companies may find that they have financial consultants in London, IT specialists in California and computer programmers in Bangalore. The appetite for cross-border mergers with the prospective ￡8.4bn ($15bn) tie-up between Spain’s Santander and the UK’s Abbey only the most recent remains as significant as ever.
Yet the experience of uniting businesses in different regions is sensitising top executives to the challenges and pitfalls of making international organisations work.
Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor, has written of a “Davos culture”, referring to a global business and political elite that meets at the Swiss ski resort. But, if managers have been lured by the prospect of finding a global business culture, they were disappointed. And that is because the evidence is that, despite the fact that many of the world’s top managers study at the same business schools, read the same business journals, and communicate across time-zones using similar technological gizmos, cultural differences in management style and practice remain pervasive and widespread.
This is the conclusion of a new survey* conducted for SHL, a psychometric consultancy, by the Future Foundation, a London-based think-tank showing that managers from different countries possess marked dissimilarities in their attitudes to their company and their staff. In most cases, these confirm what are, in fact, stereotypical images.
In a poll of 700 managers from across the globe the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, the US, Hong Kong, India and Australia the survey found that American executives emerge as “go-getters” whose attitudes translate into a passion for taking risks and living with the consequences. One-quarter of US managers admitted having lost ￡10,000 or more as a result of unwise decisions, compared with just 2 per cent of Hong Kong managers and 7 per cent of British executives.
Swedish executives emerge as “people who care”, investing heavily in training and aiding their staff. On average Swedish managers judged half of their employees as “truly exceptional in the way they perform their jobs”. This compared with a little more than 20 per cent in Australia and the UK.
In the UK, executives were found to have a “stalwart” character, operating in a business environment that is risk-averse but, at the same time, favours “getting the job done”. Perhaps the most distinctive culture, however, is found in Hong Kong, where working patterns are strongly collectivist, managers spend large amounts of time micro-managing employee output and work roles are distinctly hierarchical. In this “worker bee” setting, a strong chief executive is highly valued while, further down the hierarchy, staff are viewed as more dispensable.
With such differences still apparent for all the centripetal force of globalisation companies have to heed, and be seen to heed, cultural difference. HSBC which began as a venture to conduct business between east and west has branded itself as “the world’s global bank”: a series of advertisements for the bank acknowledge that business, wherever it takes place, operates within defined cultural boundaries. And, as ever smaller companies find themselves doing business abroad, they too are having to attune to the reality of business life elsewhere.
For example, the China-Britain Business Council which organises business meetings between British small and medium enterprises and their Chinese equivalents has produced a list of 10 tips to jetlagged businessmen as they are transported to meet their Chinese counterparts. It advises that business travellers should not be surprised by the willingness of their interlocutors to feign agreement for the sake of saving face. They should also be prepared for the interminable lunches and dinners over which much of the wrangling will take place.
So if cultural differences are so pervasive, where do they stem from? Some observers cite factors based on the way countries work: in the free-for-all that is American capitalism, employee turnover is high and so there is a strong ethos of entrepreneurial risk and individual performance. By contrast, in Sweden, the labour market is highly regulated and managers have to make the most of their existing staff. As Kjell Nordstrm, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, remarks: “It’s been a very long time since you could hire and fire freely here. So we have had quite a lot of time to develop tools and techniques to motivate difficult people.”
Most cultural differences, however, go deeper than this. Business culture is not simply shaped by the economic system: more often, it is culture that forms the very foundation for economic life. This was the conclusion of Geert Hofstede management thinker and one-time employee at IBM, one of the first true multinationals who, back in the 1960s, first decided to investigate the impact of culture on management styles. His surveys, based on 100,000 responses from 40 countries, showed general similarities within cultural groups, even where their social and economic histories are profoundly divergent: for all their differences, Hong Kong and mainland China have more in common with each other than they do with Sweden or the US.
This suggests that cultural difference will persist for the foreseeable future. Yet, while this may make for a more interesting world in which to work, the lesson for business is somewhat ambivalent. As Mr Hofstede has remarked, “culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy” and cultural differences “a nuisance at best and often a disaster”.
But, if the experience of many companies undergoing cross-border mergers has often proved him right, there are notable exceptions. Take Renault’s decision to form an alliance with Nissan, buying a 37 per cent controlling stake five years ago. At the time, the decision was received with widespread scepticism not least concerning fears of potential conflict between French and Japanese management cultures. Yet it has proved to be a surprising success story. Back in 1999, Nissan was $22bn in debt. This it has posted a $7.29bn profit.
Restructuring any business is a sensitive task, and 10 times so when that business is Japanese a once-proud domestic champion that comes with a jobs-for-life tradition. So it is probably no coincidence that the man who made it work Carlos Ghosn, a Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian is a self-styled “citizen of the world” whose eclectic background is widely considered to have given him the cultural knowhow needed to succeed in a task where so many others would fail.
The Renault-Nissan story shows that cross-border mergers can work and that managers with more “cultural intelligence” the ability to handle the different values and expectations of different parts of the world are the best equipped in this era of globalisation.
文化差异与求同存异
商业世界正在实现全球化，但速度有多快？传统观点认为，就算全球办公室尚未出现，它也必然在形成之中。
将来的确会出现这样的情形：大大小小的公司可能会发现，它们的财务顾问在伦敦，IT专家在加利福尼亚州，电脑程序员在班加罗尔。企业对跨国并购的胃口还是一如既往的大，西班牙桑坦德(Santander)与英国阿贝(Abbey)之间价值84亿英镑（合150亿美元）的合并计划只是最新的一宗交易。
不过，出于将不同地区的业务合并起来的经验，企业高管们对运作国际性组织面临的挑战和隐患正变得敏感起来。
哈佛大学教授塞缪尔?亨廷顿(Samuel Huntington)写到过“达沃斯文化”(Davos culture)，指的是在达沃斯这个瑞士滑雪胜地会晤的一些全球商界和政界精英。但如果管理者受到了一种全球商业文化前景的引诱，那他们就感到失望了。原因在于，有证据显示，虽然很多全球高级经理人在同样的商学院读书，阅读同样的商业杂志，并使用类似的科技装置进行跨时区交流，但管理风格和实践中的文化差异仍然普遍存在。
这是一项最新调查*得出的结论。该调查由伦敦智囊机构未来基金会(Future Foundation)为心理测试咨询公司SHL进行。调查结果显示，来自不同国家的管理者对待公司和员工的态度明显不同。在多数情况下，这些差异实际上确认了所谓的定式形象。
这项调查访问了英国、瑞典、荷兰、美国、香港、印度和澳大利亚等全球各地700名管理者，结果发现，美国企业经理是“积极进取者”，他们的态度转化为一种激情，愿意冒险并承担后果。四分之一的美国管理者承认，曾经因为不明智的决策而损失过1万英镑或更多，而有此经历的香港管理者仅占2%，英国管理者仅占7%。
瑞典企业经理的特点是“关心他人”，他们在培训和帮助员工方面大举投资。平均而言，瑞典经理认为一半员工“工作表现非常突出”。而澳大利亚和英国的经理们认为，有突出表现的员工仅有20%多一点。
调查发现，英国经理人有着“坚毅的”性格，他们在不崇尚风险型商业环境中经营，但同时又喜欢“完成工作”。然而调查发现，香港的企业文化也许最为独特。香港企业的工作模式有着很强的集体性，经理们花费大量时间微观管理员工的产量，而且工作职位等级分明。在这种“工蜂”式的环境下，强势的首席执行官受到高度重视，级别越低的员工越是被认为可有可无。
尽管有着种种向全球化发展的趋势，但上述差异仍然非常显著，因此公司不得不留意文化差异，而且看来会对之留意。汇丰集团(HSBC)起初是一家开展东西方之间业务的公司，现在已自称为“全世界的全球银行”：该银行的一系列广告承认，无论在哪里开展业务，这些业务都是在特定文化领域中开展。而且，当一些更小的公司发现自己在国外经营时，它们也必须适应其它地方商业生活的现实。
例如，英中贸易协会(China-Britain Business Council)为那些飞去会见中国同行、而有时差感的英国商人提供了10个建议。该协会建议说，为了保住面子，中方会谈者可能会表面上表示同意，对此英国的商务旅行者不应感到奇怪。英国商人还要作好准备，应付没完没了的午餐和宴会，而大多数争论将在那些场合发生。英中贸易协会为英国和中国的中小型公司安排会晤。
这么说来，如果文化差异如此普遍，那它们从何而来呢？一些观察家援引了一些基于各国运作方式的因素：在人人都可参与的美国资本主义制度中，员工流动率高，因此创业风险和个人表现的社会风气盛行。相比之下，在瑞典，劳动力市场受到高度管制，企业管理者不得不对现有员工加以充分利用。正如斯德哥尔摩经济学院(Stockholm School of Economics)教授谢尔?努德斯特伦(Kjell Nordstrom)所说：“在这里，自由地雇佣和解雇人已经是很久以前的事情了。所以我们花了很多时间开发工具和技术，来调动难对付的人(的积极性)。”
然而，大多数文化差异在更深层面上。企业文化不是单单由经济体制造就的，而在更多情况下，恰恰是文化形成了经济生活的基础。这就是管理学思想家海尔特?霍夫斯泰德(Geert Hofstede)的结论。他曾是国际商用机器公司(IBM)的员工，是首批真正的跨国人士。在上世纪60年代，他第一个决定就文化对管理风格的影响进行调查研究。他的调查以40个国家的10万份回复为基础，结果表明，在各文化群体内部存在大体相似之处，哪怕群体内部的社会和经济历史有着显著差异：虽然香港与中国大陆有着诸多差异，但比起两地与瑞典或美国之间的共同之处，两地本身之间的共同之处更多。
这说明，在可预见的未来，文化差异将持续存在。然而，虽然这一点也许会令人们工作的世界更有趣，但对企业来说，带来的教训却多少有些含糊不清。正如霍夫斯泰德所说：“文化在更多情况下是冲突而非增效的源泉”，而文化差异“再好也是个麻烦，而且常常是个灾难”。
但是，就许多正经历跨边境合并的公司而言，即便它们的经验已常常证明霍夫斯泰德是正确的，可还是有不少例外。以雷诺汽车(Renault)公司为例，该公司五年前决定与日产汽车(Nissan)联姻，购买了后者37%的控股股权。当时，这一决定遭到广泛的质疑，其中很重要的疑虑是，人们担心法国与日本的管理文化之间可能会有冲突。然而，这次合并已证明是个令人惊讶的成功事迹。在1999年时，日产还背负着220亿美元债务，今年它已公布了72.9亿美元的利润。
重组任何企业都是一项敏感任务，而如果是一家日本人一度引以为豪的本国冠军企业，并有着员工终生制传统，那么这种敏感性就要扩大到10倍。所以，成功实施重组的人物是具有法国和黎巴嫩血统的巴西人、自诩为“世界公民”的卡洛斯?戈森(Carlos Ghosn)，这点决非偶然。人们普遍认为，他的综合背景赋予他成功完成这项任务所需的文化知识，而若由其他人来执行这个任务，就有可能会失败。
雷诺与日产结盟的故事说明，跨国合并是可行的。此外还说明，在这个全球化时代，具备较多“文化智慧”（能够应对世界各地不同的价值观和期望）的管理人员是准备最充分的。
《掌握新人类经济的优势》(Getting the Edge in the New People Economy)。未来基金会为SHL进行的一个项目。查看
www.shl.com可了解相关信息。
