Cultural Affects And Acceptance Of Power In Change Programs - samples

Question: Discuss about the Cultural Affects And Acceptance Of Power In Change Programs. Answer: Change in the organization can be adapted so that it can be done on a regular basis. This helps the organization to remain competitive but still this process does not seem to have taken much into action in most organizations. The studies reveal that one third of the organizations are at a successful place because of the organizational changes done by the leaders(Pieterse, Caniels and Homan 2012). Organizational change is all about reviewing the structure of management and processes in the business. The businesses which are small always have to adapt the changes for their survival in the market where bigger organizations exist. Just because of staying ahead in the market, organizations are always looking for things they can do efficiently in terms of cost and resources. Change should not be taken as a fear in the organizations. Instead it should be taken positively. The power perspectives always emphasizes on the ideologies and the culture which makes the people follow existing order, without any force and dispute. The power of being social requires the certain discourse to become accepted naturally by creating values and practices involved. This type of view communicates the manipulative power(Brown 2012). This essay explores the argument on the cultural affects and acceptance of power in change programs in the organization. They are explored by comparatively applying the power related elements of Hofstedes cultural dimensions to Singapore and Australia. There are several types of power which are used in change management. They are as follows: Legitimate Power: This power refers to authority for a formal position and it develops from the concept of rights of ownership. A huge number of leaders do believe that their power increases when they get promoted to the higher ranks without having personal power or position and their power can also become diluted. Expert Power: Power of the expert never relies on the positions that are formal as the power originates from the people who have technical information or skills and expertise as compared to others. These skilled professionals are promoted to the managerial positions as they perform outstandingly in the functions they are skilled in. The leaders can become what they aspire to be only when they know how to exercise power on their subordinates and peers(Patrick 2012). They will otherwise be good at what they do but will never gain the respect that they need. Coercive Power: This power is present everywhere in organizations. It is known to be a negative form of the power of all. This only aims to influence others by developing fear in them(Mundaute 2003). It never encourages the desired performance but also discourages undesirable actions. Reward Power: This power always gives out results from the workers as they want to earn the rewards. Anything that a worker values can be considered being as rewards. Such as praise, compensation or the most important is promotion. This can also be used as the punishment when the worker has given poor performance by holding up the reward they were about to get. Referent Power: This type of power is gained by relation in between power exercising person and an icon who yields power. People with referent power can also use the power for coercion. For humans, the greatest fear they possess is being social excluded. A social leader just by using a derogatory word can shun anyone out from the community. As it is known that power differs in meaning with different people, it may have both dimensions, be it positive or negative. Power is definitely useful for social change (Cacciattolo 2015). It is on the groups to qualify as to how use of power is understood. Let us see the positive and negative aspects of every power in detail. Referent Power Negative Aspects: If this leadership is made applicable then the leader should have friendly relations with the employees. In case if that is not the case then this type of power will not be helpful in any case. Positive Aspect: If the leader is well equipped with this type of power, he will be followed by lots of loyal followers because the followers will respect him. Coercive Power: Negative Aspects: Very few people can actually follow it. It cannot be tolerable with everybody as it might lead to labor turnover. Also, the subordinates will also feel suffocated in terms of sharing the ideas. Hence, there will be less communication and no source of motivation will exist. As a result, employee might feel unappreciated. Positive Aspect: A few people can easily be motivated to work harder in such conditions. In case if employees respond in the positive way, they will surely provide positive output. In this power, employees can be motivated for acquiring high outcomes. Legitimate Power: Negative Aspects: Leaders can misuse their power in this type of power. The results are not always effective and flexible in organizations. Employees are given power because of the role they play and not because they have skills or talent. Positive Aspect: It enables a higher organization hierarchy. It often increases leaders effectiveness so that they can become strong role models. This type of strong sense of trust might bring good productivity in the organization. Reward Power: Negative Aspects: If the rewards are kept rather than given, it might lose respect in the eyes of the employee. People might consider the perks as reward or not. It depends on person to person and his needs. Positive Aspects: It always promotes good behavior and increases the sales. Also promotes faithfulness for the business. Expert Power: Negative Aspects: This kind of power can make leaders too bossy and overconfident. In this case of power, if the knowledge of the person is shared then his power will be lost with passing time. Also, if the person does not share the knowledge then organizations effectiveness is at stake. Positive Aspects: The staff is obedient. They accept instructions from the leaders. It also offers a few elements for knowledge and skills (Justice 2014). Hofstede in the year 1991 defined culture are the feelings and actions of humans. He believed that the soul of human software is actually the culture. Computer imaginary is used by him to define culture role in the human life. The software role is determined to operate the computer by defining its work. He wanted to focus on the significance of culture by advicing that culture is like software of mind. It drives the humans. Without it the meaning of humans is nothing. Culture will always include visible and invisible behaviors that shape the humans. The model which Hofstede proposed was the national culture which is widely referred by a few researchers in management. Its framework is reliable when national culture samples are concerned (Hofstede 2011). The dimensions of Hofstedes culture consist of: Power distance Index: This reflects an extent of the groups of people who are weak in culture for accepting inequality in allocation of power as normal incident. Though, injustice is that clich thing which is found at every country in every situation but the acceptance level of reality is very different in cultures. However, it would be easy to find existing inequality in some situations which might give color to life. Individual-collective Dimension: This dimension reflects extent to when individuals put their own interests first as compared to the interests of the family or society. Hence, it reflects where people try and remain individuals rather then become a part of the group. Uncertain Avoidance Dimension: It reflects extent to when uncertain situation which are not predictable, creates fear in the people about the culture. Masculine and Feminine Dimensions: The dominant value is always the masculinity of the society which emphasizes affirmativeness and earns good money and material goods. Femininity is used for referring the extent when dominant values of society focus on the relation between humans. Long terms orientation Dimension: This one refers to extent of the cultures realistic perspective for long term and short term orientation. Cultures of long term usually have the value of resilience, prioritizing, prudence and perseverance kind of efforts for building the share in the market instead of pursuing short term profits (Rinuastuti, et al. 2014). Power Dimension: Hofstede stated that dimensional measures to the extent of members of organizations with less power are always distributed unequally. The supervisor is correct because he is superior can be considered as high power and employees working in a particular way because the supervisor is asking them to do so can be considered as low power(George, et al. 2012). When on the collective level, the society has the same concern about the power and also if they accept that a few people must have more power as compared to others, every community has a different level of acceptance which ranges from high to low degree acceptance. That means that power is not different but people are different in terms of levels. Critically it can be noted that power distance as value does not necessarily mean power but it is actually how people look at it. Example: Two people perform the same job and the same job. Within principle, the power gap between boss and the employee is same, though; the wo rkers will look at it the different way. Hence, the gap can be very much different. The first worker may have respect for his boss seeing the power that he possesses while the other can question the boss and challenge his power by asking for the explanation (Mooij and Hofstede 2010). The Hofstede power distance studies have shown that Singapore is characterized by the power distance which is very high. High power distance means Singapore people has a gap between them and the individuals who have higher status or great power. Result of this is that they are more reserved in sharing their opinions. On the other hand, Australia has low power distance. There, individuals feel that they are equal. Every one share their ideas and are comfortable with each other. Singapore consists of low UAI. In such cases, there is high acceptance tolerance for deviations. Hence, emotions generally suppress by social pressure and it rarely leads to aggression. Australia has moderate UAI. Such countries are usually threatened by the uncertainties of life. In countries like these there is greater show of emotions (Tung and Quaddus 2002). Singapore is a collective society which has low IDV score. They have great confidence in making decisions in a group. Australia on the other hand, needs to maintain peace within groups which may be a factor of lower levels of conflicts. Australia and Singapore are both the type of countries which are considered moderate in levels of masculinity. Though, the cultural difference between them might be contrasting by depicting Australia to be moderate in masculinity and Singapore in Femininity (Ghosh 2011). The use of power does not seem to be efficient in Singapore as people do not share their opinion. IN case of organizational change, Singapore should not use the power leadership as people will be able to give the new ideas and since, Asia is the growing market. It would be very helpful. While for Australia, use of power is efficient as people are more liberated there and do share good ideas and new innovations with the society. As a result, it is one of the developed countries in the world. In Australia, 30% is the long term orientation and this 30% is below the half level which is 44% if it is compared with rest of the world. It shows that long term orientation is at a lower level if Australia is talked about. It can also mean that Australia always inclines towards short term. Singapore is very normal in the long and short term orientation index, its products can also be the short term and long term purposes both. From the viewpoint of marketing, products which are marketed to the masculine culture should be the status products which will refer to the achievement and recognition(Leo, Bennett and Cierpicki 2005). Australia is low power distance country where as other Asian countries like Singapore and Hong Kong etc are considered to be high power distance of the spectrum. This essay discusses that leadership is connection between sustainability and development. It provides new views on the behavior and competency of the leaders. With globalization increasing, the influence of cultures is inevitable(Bergiel, Bergiel and Upson 2012). Hofstedes cultural dimensions clearly states about the individual and society cultural differences. In the recent studies, paying attention to the cultural values has become the importance for the business purpose and the behavior. Typical cultural values can lead to ignore difference in individuals in culture values. Finally, the conclusion of the research is based on the differences and the similarities in the value orientation and in decision making style which cannot be ignored as they might influence business and polity economic integration (Abdallah, Denis and Langley 2011). References Abdallah, Chahrazad , Jean Louis Denis, and Ann Langley. "Having your cake and eating it too Discourses of transcendence and their role in organizational change dynamics." Journal of Organizational Change Management 24, no. 3 (2011): 333-348. Bergiel, Erich B. , Blaise J. Bergiel , and John W. Upson. "Revisiting Hofstedes Dimensions: Examining the Cultural Convergence of the United States and Japan." American Journal of Management 12, no. 1 (2012). Brown, Barrett C. "Leading complex change with post-conventional consciousness." Journal of Organizational Change Management 25, no. 4 (2012): 560-575. Cacciattolo, Karen. "ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS: THE POSITIVE NEGATIVE SIDES." European Scientific Journal 11, no. 1 (2015). George, Reece, Keith Nesbitt, Michael Donovan, and John Maynard. "Evaluating Indigenous Design Features Using Cultural Dimensions." Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australasian User Interface Conferenc 126 (2012). Ghosh, Apoorva. "Power Distance in Organizational Contexts- A Review of Collectivist Cultures." The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations 47, no. 1 (2011). Goncalves, Marcus. "Leadership Styles: The Power to Influence Others." International Journal of Business and Social Science 4, no. 4 (2013). Hofstede, Geert. "Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context." Online Readings inPsychology and Culture 2, no. 1 (2011). Justice, Holly. Leadership Sources of Power. 2014. https://www.slideshare.net/HJustice/leadership-sources-of-power-31593945?next_slideshow=1 (accessed February 27, 2018). Leo, Cheryl, Rebekah Bennett, and Steven Cierpicki. "A comparison of Australian and Singaporean consumer decision-making styles." Journal of Customer Behavior 4, no. 1 (2005): 17-45. Mooij, Marieke de, and Geert Hofstede. "The Hofstede model." International Journal of Advertising 29, no. 1 (2010): 85-110. Mundaute, Lourdes. "Power Dynamics and Organizational Change: An Introduction." Applied Psychology: An International Review 52, no. 1 (2003): 1-13. Patrick, Harold Andrew. "Influence of Power Bases on Leadership Strategies Adopted by Managers in Information Technology Organizations." European Journal of Business and Management 4, no. 11 (2012). Pieterse, Jos H., Marjolein C.J Caniels, and Thijs Homan. "Journal of Organizational Change Management." Journal of Organizational Change Management 25, no. 6 (2012): 798-818. Raven, Bertram, and John R.P. French. "The Bases of Power and the Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence." Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 8, no. 1 (2008): 1-22. Rinuastuti, Handayani, Djumilah Hadiwidjojo, Fatchur Rohman, and Nur Khusniyah. "Measuring Hofstede?s Five Cultural Dimensions at Individual Level and Its Application to Researchers in Tourists? Behaviors." International Business Research 7, no. 12 (2014). Tung, Lai Lai , and M. A. Quaddus. "Cultural differences explaining the differences in results in GSS: implications for the next decade." Decision Support Systems 33 (2002): 177-199.