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Master Thesis

National culture versus organizational culture in multi-national corporations: A case study in a multi-national corporation about the influence of national cultures on

the organizational culture

Msc. in Business Administration – Leadership & Management track Amsterdam Business School – University of Amsterdam

Student: Marieke de Groot (10683097) Supervisor: Dr. Marja Flory

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3 Statement of originality

This document is written by Marieke de Groot who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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4 Table of contents

Abstract 6

Terms, Abbreviations and Definitions 7

Figures 7 1. Introduction 8 2. Literature review 12 2.1 National culture 12 2.2 Organizational culture 16

2.3 Relationship between national culture and organizational culture 21

2.4 Literature gap and research question 24

3. Methodological approach 27 3.1 Methodology 27 3.2 Company case 28 3.3 Data collection 29 3.3.1 Literature research 29 3.3.2 Interviews 30 3.3.3 Participative observation 32 3.4 Data analysis 32 4. Results 34

4.1 Global organizational culture 34

4.2 Cultural diversity 41

4.2.1 National cultures 41

4.2.2 Benefiting from cultural diversity 42

4.3 Influence of Dutch culture 45

4.4 Domination of culture 47

5. Discussion 51

5.1 Concluding remarks 51

5.2 Practical implications 54

5.3 Theoretical implications 55

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5

6. Conclusion 57

References 58

Appendices 61

Appendix 1: Interview protocol – HRBP 61

Appendix 2: Interview protocol – Corp 63

Appendix 3: Interview protocol - National cultures 65

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6 Abstract

When a multi-national corporation starts a business in a new country, they have to consider several aspects regarding culture differences and how this affects the organizational culture. Hofstede (geerthofstede.com) argued that in a multi-national corporation, national culture and organizational culture needs to be managed, both at the same time. The aim of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of national cultures on the organizational culture. Not only the influence of the host country culture, but also the influence of other national cultures present in a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation was studied. The latter is a relationship not studied before. A case study was conducted at a Dutch subsidiary of a multi-national corporation. The outcome of the study is that there is a marginal influence of the host country culture on the organizational culture, namely the two aspects work-life balance and social separation of work and private life. No direct influence of other national cultures on the organizational culture are found, but the diversity itself, present in the office, has an influence. Mostly and negatively on the communication. The leading culture at the subsidiary is the global organizational culture of the company.

Note to reader: Due to confidentiality of information provided in this document, the company name is covered. Instead of the company name the following is shown: ***

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7 Terms, Abbreviations and Definitions

Term Definition

Corporate culture An organizational culture which has evolved and is present at the corporate environment, most often the headquarters of a company. Global culture An organizational culture which is present at all subsidiaries of a

company globally

Office culture Organizational culture in the office in Amsterdam

Abbreviation Definition

MNC Multi-National Corporation

Corp *** Corporate, the global headquarter of the company

HR BP Human Resources Business Partner

Figures

Figure 1: The Competing Values Framework (Cameron & Quinn, 2006) Figure 2: Theoretical model of cultural traits (Denison & Mishra, 1995)

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8 1. Introduction

While multi-national corporations are expanding their businesses throughout the world, they have to consider several important consequences. For example, for a company starting a new business in an unknown country, not only the regulatory differences, but also the cultural differences have to be taken into consideration. Often when a multi-national corporation (MNC) starts a business in a new country, this simultaneously means that the workforce will consist of people with different nationalities. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2010) found that over the last decade there has been a worldwide increase of 25% of international assignments. The prediction is that there will be a further increase of 50% by 2020. For a MNC it is thus of importance to understand how they should deal with cultural differences and with the diversity of cultures within a new subsidiary. Hofstede on his website (geerthofstede.com) adds a concern by mentioning that when managing an international business not only national culture, but also organizational culture needs to me managed, both at the same time. He states that an organizational culture is manageable, whereas national cultures are given facts for management. Hofstede’s findings imply that when a MNC establishes a new subsidiary in a new country, the company should not only think of managing cultural differences, but also how to manage the existing organizational culture. For example, to what extend is there a need to adjust the organizational culture and to what extend is it possible to maintain the organizational culture.

Schein (1984,1990) explains two options of how an organizational culture within a MNC can evolve. He states that a total corporation, with subgroups on the basis of geography, division, function or rank, will have multiple cultures. According to him it is perfectly

possible that those cultures are conflicting one another which would mean that there does not exist one single corporate culture. However, what also could arise is one corporate culture overarching many different subcultures in subunits. The question of retaining this diversity in

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9 order to stay flexible or trying to change it into a more homogenous culture, is one of the toughest decisions management can be confronted with (Schein, 1984, 1990).

In the literature the focus on culture on the work floor started with Hofstede’s (1980) book ‘Culture’s Consequences: International differences in work-related values’, in which he addresses his theories about culture differences on the work floor. Also the importance of an organizational culture is widely stressed in the literature (Barney, 1986; Schein, 1984). Cameron and Quinn (2006) even found that what the top five performers in last two decades (Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, Circuit City, and Plenum Publishing) described as their biggest success factor was their organizational culture. This is exactly what Barney (1986) argued, namely that organizational culture can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage. According to him an organizational culture should be valuable, rare and inimitable in order to be a sustainable competitive advantage.

Combining the two phenomena ‘national culture’ and ‘organizational culture’ was first done by Hofstede (1983). He started with mentioning the influence of national cultures on management. He anticipated on the fact that national culture differences will continue to exist and that managing this, might become one of the biggest problems for management,

especially for multi-national, multi-cultural companies. According to him it is not plausible to assume that management will be homogeneous globally. Trompenaars (1996) agreed on this by saying: ‘Effective management strives toward riding the waves of intercultural differences rather than ignoring them or leading to one specific culture’. After Hofstede’s statements a few studies has been done on the relationship between national culture and organizational culture (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv & Sanders, 1990; Nelson & Gopalan, 2003; Gerhart, 2008). Hofstede et al. (1990) found that organizational cultures are not influenced by national

cultures, but the studies done by Nelson & Gopalan (2003) and Gerhart (2008) show that the host country culture does have a small influence on the organizational culture. However, five

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10 studies on one topic in more than 20 years seems marginal compared to other studies on culture and business, and in addition, not any study investigated solely the relationship of the influence of national cultures on an organizational culture. As Schein (1984, 1990) and Hofstede (1983) mentioned, managing organizational culture and culture differences on the work floor are tough subjects for management, especially for MNC’s. Also the company where the case study of this research is conducted was seeking for answers around these topics. It is thus time to expand research on these topics.

The aim of this research is to gain a deeper understanding on how national cultures can influence an organizational culture in a MNC. A company can have a clear organizational culture, but what happens with that culture when you extend your business across boarders? The host country culture can influence the organizational culture. A new dimension,

compared to the existing literature, is added to this study, namely the influence of national cultures other than the host country culture, on the organizational culture. As described, there has been an increase in people moving abroad due to their careers. Often in MNC’s it is thus not solely employees from the host country, but also a diversity of employees relocated from foreign subsidiaries of the company, working together in one office. This leads to a diversity of cultures in an office, which means that the organizational culture can be influenced by more than one national culture. This research will focus on what naturally happens with an organizational culture in a new subsidiary of a MNC, where people from all over the world are working together. Which culture will dominate? Or will there emerge a new culture? In addition, the research will seek for answers about how a MNC can manage the different national cultures and the organizational culture in such a way that it becomes an added value for the organization or even a competitive advantage as Barney (1986) describes.

This thesis is structured as follows, in the next chapter the literature review is outlined followed by the research gap and the research question. In chapter three the methodology

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11 behind this study is explained, and a description of how the study was conducted can be found. In chapter four an analysis of the data gathered from desk research and interviews is outlined. Chapter five contains the discussion in which the research question is answered and scientific and practical implications, and recommendations for future research can be found. The last chapter consist of a summary.

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12 2. Literature review

This chapter starts with a definition and clarification of the most relevant concepts in the study, namely national culture and organizational culture. An overview is provided of existing literature on both concepts. Simultaneously the sub questions ‘What is national culture?’ and ‘What is organizational culture?’ are covered. Furthermore, existing literature on the

relationship between national culture and organizational culture is outlined. What arises from this section is the gap in the literature, which is thorough and fresh research into the influence of the host country culture on an organizational culture, and the influence of national cultures other than the host country culture, on the organizational culture of a multi-national company.

2.1 National culture

Culture had been defined in various ways by different researchers. Some examples are; ‘the human-made part of the environment (Herkovits, 1955, as cited in Gelfand, Erez & Aycan, 2007), ‘patterned ways of thinking’ (Kluckhohn, 1954, as cited in Gelfand, Erez & Aycan, 2007), ‘unstated standard operating procedures or ways of doing things’ (Triandis, 1994, as cited in Gelfand, Erez & Aycan, 2007). Hofstede (1980) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group of people from another’. By this he implies that people get mentally programmed by certain experiences which occur in a certain group. According to Hofstede culture can be measured by collective phenomena. The

literature states that due to his view on national cultures, more attention arose to applying this view to organizations.

Hofstede identifies in his book ‘Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values’ (1980) four main dimensions through which cultures can be ordered. His

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13 conceptualization is widely used in the literature. Hofstede identified his four dimensions, 1) power distance, 2) uncertainty avoidance, 3) individualism, and 4) masculinity, by theoretical reasoning and statistical analysis. With the first dimension 1) ‘power distance he points towards the degree of human inequality, measured by the extent of acceptance of the

inequality. In a low power distance culture, people accept distribution of power. This implies that in a low power distance culture everyone view themselves as equal. For the dimension 2) ‘uncertainty avoidance’, Hofstede developed three indicators, namely ‘rule orientation’, ‘employment stability’ and ‘stress’. Applying rules means a need for control, and control is a form of uncertainty avoidance. Openness to new initiatives and taking risks means low uncertainty avoidance. The third dimension 3) ‘Individualism’ refers to the extent to how close people live together. High individualism means low interpersonal being and low division of responsibilities. In some cultures individualism is seen as a blessing and as a sign of well-being. The contradictory aspect is collectivism by which is meant high group cohesion, mutual respect and loyalty. The last dimension 4) ‘masculinity’ refers to the duality of the sexes. High masculinity means that the biological differences have a big impact in their roles in society. Men are traditionally more assertive and women more nurturing. The opposite is femininity in which the roles of the sexes are more equal, which implies that assertive women and nurturing men are accepted.

In 1991 a fifth dimension was added by Hofstede, namely ‘long term orientation’ (LTO), which refers to saving, persistence and adapting to changing circumstances. And in 2010 Hofstede added a sixth dimension, namely ‘indulgence versus restraint’ (IND), which refers to the extent to which there is free gratification of basic and natural needs, such as enjoying life.

In Hofstede’s study, 40 countries participated. For all four culture dimensions a certain rate was given to the countries. What followed from this was a clustering of the countries.

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14 Hofstede could on the basis of the ratings on the dimensions identify eight culture clusters, namely: 1) more developed Latin, 2) less developed Latin, 3) more developed Asian, 4) less developed Asian, 5) Near-Eastern, 6) Germanic, 7) Anglo, and 8) Nordic.

Many years after Hofstede published the book, questions started to arise about the validity of measuring cultures through the dimensions. Opponents are emphasizing the limitations of measuring cultures in Hofstede’s theory. Hofstede limits culture to six dimensions, but how do we know how many dimensions exist? Hofstede recognizes this critique and also says that culture is intangible and therefore it makes no sense to talk about an amount of dimensions. But he argues that using them is a matter of practical significance (geerthofstede.nl). Another limitation of Hofstede’s theory was the power of predictability of the dimensions. Taras, Kirkman & Steel (2010) in their review placed that issue, but found that, cultural values are as much a predictor for individual employee outcomes, as personality traits, demographics and mental ability. Although particular employee outcomes had a bigger effect size than others. For example for organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, organizational identification, team-related attitudes and perceptions, receptivity for certain leadership styles, and feedback seeking, larger effect sizes were found than for job performance, absenteeism and turnover. Taras et al. (2010) also found that cultural values have stronger effects when the participant is older rather than younger, and male rather than female, and that the more years of education the respondent has, the stronger the effect.

Trompenaars (1996, 2000) also distinguishes several dimensions in order to describe differences in culture, although his focus is more on cultures in a business environment. The five dimensions are 1) universalism versus particularism, 2) individualism versus collectivism, 3) neutral versus emotional, 4) specific versus diffuse, and 5) achievement versus ascription. By 1) ‘universalism versus particularism’, he means if there is either only one right way to decide, or if friendship may come before the right thing to do. The dimension 2)

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15 ‘individualism versus collectivism’, implies if people regard themselves as being an

individual or being part of a group having common goals. The dimension 3) ‘neutral versus emotional’, signifies if reason or emotion dominates. The fourth dimension 4) ‘specific versus diffuse’, means if there is a relationship on the basis of a contract only or if the persons

themselves are also involved in the business relationship. The last dimension 5) ‘achievement versus ascription’, signifies if status is based on achievement or by given facts such as age and gender. In addition to the five dimensions Trompenaars (1996, 2000) argues that there are two other important factors to identify differences in culture, namely: Attitude towards time, by which he means if focus is on the past, the present or the future, and attitude towards

environment, by which he means whether people orient their actions toward others, or focus on themselves.

Additionally Trompenaars (1996, 2000) explains culture through layers, by which he implies that one can understand culture by unpeeling it layer by layer. The outer layer consist of artefacts and products. By this he means the observable reality such as language, clothes, and housing. The middle layer consist of values and norms, and the inner layer consist of basic assumptions. Trompenaars (1996,2000) defines this layer as unconscious solutions for problems, so basic that we do not even think about it, and that it is taken for granted.

House, Javidan, and Hanges (2002) initiated the GLOBE project, which aims to explore cultural values and practices, and their impact on organizational aspects. Equally to Hofstede (1980) and Trompenaars (1996, 2000), the GLOBE project identified culture dimensions in order to seek for answers. Most aspects are similar to Hofstede’s dimensions, such as 1) uncertainty avoidance, 2) power distance, 3) societal collectivism, 4) in-group collectivism, both referring to Hofstede’s ‘individualism’. The dimensions 5) gender egalitarianism, and 6) assertiveness, are both referring to Hofstede’s ‘masculinity’. The

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16 (2002) added two new dimensions 8) performance orientation, which means the need for achievement, and 9) humane orientation, which means importance of fairness and kindness.

Analysing the different researcher’s outcomes, one could say that over time the knowledge on identifying cultures has not changed enormously. However, Shoham and Alon (2010) argue that cultures do change and therefore Hofstede’s data could be outdated,

although they still see enough researchers supporting Hofstede’s study. Furthermore, Shoham and Alon (2010) argue that Hofstede should be the basis for further exploration of how cultures are changing.

Shoham and Alon (2010) compared Hofstede’s clusters with GLOBE’s clusters and found that Hofstede’s clusters seem to match religion, geography and language, more than GLOBE’s clusters do. For example, a change occurred in the clustering of the UK and Canada. Where they are in Hofstede’s work part of the Anglo cluster together with Ireland, the US, New-Zealand and Australia, in GLOBE’s project, they made a move to a new cluster involving France. As the GLOBE data is gathered many years later than Hofstede’s data, it seems that the change in cultural differences is on a basis of other than religion, geography and language aspects. However, there are still more similarities than differences between the clustering of Hofstede and GLOBE.

For this research I will use as a definition of culture the one created by Hofstede (1980), ‘the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group of people from another’. Also Trompenaar’s (1996, 2000) theory about the three layers of culture, will be used explaining the phenomenon culture during the research.

2.2 Organizational culture

As well as for the term ‘culture’, for the term ‘organizational culture’ a lot of definitions exist. Schein (1984) defines organizational culture as ‘the pattern of basic assumptions that a given

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17 group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems’.

Barney’s (1986) definition of organizational culture is comparable to Schein’s (1984), namely ‘a complex set of values, beliefs, assumptions and symbols that define the way in which a firm conducts its business’. According to him organizational culture can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore the organizational culture should meet three conditions. First it must be valuable, saying that it must enable the organization to increase sales and thus add financial value. Second the culture must be rare, saying that it must have uncommon characteristics and attributes. And third, the culture must be imperfectly imitable, saying that it should not be easy for other organizations to imitate the culture. This view on is known as the Resource-Based-View (RBV). Barney (1986) states that it is difficult for an organization to create or change the culture into a valuable, rare and imperfectly imitable one, because such cultures are likely to be imitable and thus at best only a temporary source of competitive advantage.

As Barney (1986) mentions, an organizational culture is hard to describe. According to him it is the common sense of the managers that is taken for granted. However, Cameron and Quinn (2006) describe four different types of organizational culture in their ‘Competing Values Framework’. This framework was originally build to analyse organizational effectiveness (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983) and is reconsidered by Cameron and Quinn in order to use it for identifying organizational cultures. They provide an instrument to identify the organizational culture type which is called Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). As Jung, Scott and Davies (2009) describe, there are many other instruments for measuring organizational culture, they found 48 different ones. However, the OCAI and the

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18 related Competing Values Framework will be outlined here, as they often appear in the

literature. The framework (Figure 1) defines an organizational culture through two dimensions, which are the two axes of a matrix. The first axe consist of the extremes

flexibility and discretion versus stability and control. The second axe consist of the extremes internal focus/integration versus external focus/differentiation.

Figure 1: The Competing Values Framework (Cameron & Quinn, 2006)

Through the axes four quadrants appear which define four culture types, namely 1) clan culture, 2) adhocracy culture, 3) hierarchy culture, and 4) market culture. The 1) ‘clan culture’ refers to a family type organization. The focus is on teamwork, employee development and loyalty. The success lies in sharing the same values, beliefs and goals. In an 2) ‘adhocracy culture’ the focus is on innovation. Management is there to foster entrepreneurship and creativity, in order to develop new products and being prepared for the future. In an 3) ‘hierarchy culture’ key elements are formality and structure. Rules and policies is what keeps the organization together and long term goals are stability, predictability and efficiency. A 4) ‘market culture’ is a highly competitive culture. Productivity, results and profits are key

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19 elements. The organization has an aggressive strategy with a focus on market share and

penetration.

With the different types of culture Cameron and Quinn (2006) do not mean to say that cultures are static. Such as Schein (1984), they stress that an organizational culture is dynamic and in a process of change. They connect the organizational types with an organizational life cycle and mean by this that whenever an organization enters a new phase in the life cycle, they need to change the culture to most well support the phase. In the early stage of an organization life cycle the adhocracy culture tends to dominate, after this the change is often made towards a clan culture, than the hierarchy culture will appear as the organization feels it needs to have more control, and finally the organization feels it has lost friendliness and it starts to focus more on external relationships and on achieving results, which refers to the market culture.

Schein (2009) addressed in his book named ‘The corporate culture survival guide’, elements of organizational culture. He found that organizational culture does not solely consist of internal processes, but that the environment of an organization also plays a role. According to him the organizational culture consist of the dimensions; 1) external survival issues, 2) internal integration, and 3) deeper underlying assumptions. He named several elements for all three dimensions. For 1) external survival issues, elements are: mission, strategy, goals, structure, systems, processes, error-detection, and correction systems. For the dimension 2) internal integration, elements are: common language, concepts, group

boundaries, identity, nature of authority and relationships, allocation of rewards and status. For the dimension 3) deeper underlying assumptions elements are: human relationships to nature, the nature of reality and truth, the nature of human nature, the nature of human relationships, the nature of time and place, the unknowable and uncontrollable. In Schein’s

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20 book (2009), he provides for all elements several questions one could ask employees of an organization in order to identify the organizational culture.

As Cameron and Quinn (2006) found, it is of importance to have a match between the culture type and the leadership styles, human resources management and quality management, as a match leads to higher levels of performance. Also the study of Chan, Shaffer and Snape (2004) found a positive effect of organizational culture being a predictor of firm performance. Another research done by Denison and Mishra (1995) investigated four different cultural traits, namely ‘involvement’, ‘consistency’, ‘adaptability’, and ‘mission’ (figure 2), and their impact on organizational outcomes, and also came to the conclusion that cultural traits can be useful predictors for performance and effectiveness. One could link these traits to the four organizational culture types developed by Cameron and Quinn (2006) as both models are based on Schein’s observation about organizational cultures: ‘… an organization has to cope with internal integration and external adaption’. Furthermore both models use the counterparts ‘change/flexibility’ and ‘stability’. Denison and Mishra (1995) found that cultural traits ‘consistency’ and ‘mission’ were useful predictors for profitability of an organization. Also they found that cultural traits ‘involvement’ and ‘adaptability’ are predictors of growth.

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21 Next to the type of organizational culture, another dimension is the strength of a

culture. According to Schein (1984) this can be measured by homogeneity and stability of the group, and length and intensity of the experiences of the group. According to Evans (1992) an organization can apply the ‘glue technology’ in order to enhance internal integration. The ‘glue technology’ consist of practices for integration possibilities, and with the ‘glue’ it connects actors in an organization with each other. This way Evans (1992) compares the concept of ‘glue technology’ to the concept of organizational culture, as both are there to unify people in an organization. However, Evans (1992) states that this ‘glue’ or culture should not be too strong, because it should stay relatively flexible in order to adapt to a changing environment. This is even more relevant for international organizations where there is a diversity of environments. As mentioned earlier, the importance of a culture being

dynamic was also underlined by Cameron and Quinn (2006), and Schein (1984). The latter has a nuanced opinion about strong cultures. Although several researchers state that a strong culture is desirable, Schein argues that there are more important aspects such as the content of the culture and how that fits with the environment.

In this research I will use Schein’s (1984) definition of organizational culture, because he involves ‘external adaptation’ and ‘internal integration’ in his definition which relates to key aspects of the ‘Competing Values Framework’ of Cameron and Quinn (2006) which will also be used in this research for identifying organizational culture types.

2.3 Relationship between national culture and organizational culture

A wide range of studies exist combining the concepts ‘national culture’ or ‘country’ with ‘organizations’. Some researchers study the degree to which national cultures influence management practices, and some researchers study different kinds of contexts impacting organizational culture.

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22 However, insufficient research has been done about the specific relation of national culture constraining organizational culture (Gerhart, 2008). It started with Hofstede (1983) who brought this subject to the attention. He wrote about differences in culture and how this affects organizations. He stated that management cannot just simply apply certain foreign practices to a local culture. He actually saw economy and society suffering from management intentions to transfer practices into another culture without any cultural sensitivity. However, he also saw management successfully adapting their practices to local cultures which led to renewed practices, and even transforming local cultural traits. He concludes arguing that to be successful, an organization should have a fit with the local culture. In addition, Hofstede et al. (1990) studied the variance of national cultures and organizational cultures within different subsidiaries of one organization. They found that there is more variance in employee values by demographic aspects than there is variance in organization practices among different national subsidiaries. This would imply that employees are likely to adapt to the

organizational practices regardless their personal values, and that in this particular case study, national values seem not to influence organizational practices. Hofstede et al. (1990) argued that organizational culture differences are thus influenced by other aspects than national cultures.

However, Nelson and Gopalan (2003) found other outcomes in their study. Nelson and Gopalan (2003) were the first to focus solely on the relationship between national cultures and organizational cultures. They use the term ‘constraint’ for explaining the influence of national cultures on organizational cultures, and define this term as an ‘observed restriction in

variance’. Although Nelson and Gopalan (2003) use the term national culture, they actually measure the country effect on organizational culture. This among others, but not exclusively, covers national culture, so outcomes can partly explain the relationship between national culture and organizational culture. Nelson and Gopalan (2003) found that 20.5 percent of the

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23 participating organizations had an organizational culture which was corresponding with the country values. Meaning that country does influence organizational culture, but it is certainly not determinative. Gerhart and Fang (2005) hypothesized national culture to be a constraint for organizational culture, but did not conduct own research on this. Later, Gerhart (2008) did conduct research and re-analysed the GLOBE project (House et al., 2002) which studied the effect of country and national culture on organizational culture. Although Gerhart noticed that this study mixed up the concepts of ‘country effect size’ and ‘national culture effect size’, he found in his re-analysis on their results that 23 percent of the variance in organizational culture in a country is explained by country effect, and only 6 percent was explained by national culture.

Johns (2006) investigated the influence of context in general on organizational culture. He found some evidence in other studies such as Nelson and Gopalan (2003) that national culture constrains organizational culture. Striking is that Gerhart (2008) uses Johns’ article (2006) together with Hofstede’s findings (1983) as a basis for his hypothesis about national culture constraining organizational culture, while Johns’ statement on this is only an outcome of another study, that of Nelson and Gopalan (2003). Gerhart (2008) even gives critical notes on Nelson and Gopalan’s study, as according to him the specific relationship between national culture and organizational culture is not investigated. According to Gerhart (2008), Nelson and Gopalan (2003) used country effects instead of national culture effects, on organizational culture. This would imply that the basis of Gerhart’s (2008) hypothesis is according to himself not build on reliable evidence.

Gerhart (2008) furthermore explained that an important division in effect on

organizational culture exist between within-country variance and between-country variance, regarding cultures. He predicted that it would be logical if the influence of a between-country variance on an organization would be bigger than a within-country variance. However, on the

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24 basis of the studies of Nelson and Gopalan (2003) and the GLOBE project (House et al., 2002), it seems that between-country variance does not have the significant impact on organizational culture as predicted.

The outcomes about external aspects, such as national culture, constraining

organizational culture do not fit with the earlier described RBV (Barney, 1986), stating that a culture should be unique in order to become a sustainable competitive advantage. If the environment is significantly influencing the organizational culture, it would be a difficult, be it an impossible task as an organization to be unique. However Gerhart (2008) states that discretion and differentiation should not be undervalued, and thus whenever an organization wishes to have a unique culture, it is still perfectly possible. Thus, it is of importance for an organization to investigate if there are potential factors constraining the organizational culture.

2.4 Literature gap and research question

It seems that the literature does not have a clear statement yet on the influence of national cultures on organizations and in particular on the organizational culture. Although, as

described, culture is a dynamic phenomenon which assumes that one clear statement may not exist. However, more research can be conducted in order to get a better understanding of the influence of national culture on organizational culture. Gerhart with his article of 2008 was the last one who conducted research on this specific relationship. He performed a conceptual analysis and mentioned that future research should be conducted in order to get a better understanding on under what conditions national culture constrains organizational culture and when it does not do so.

This study aims to contribute to getting a better understanding on this matter. The research question therefore is: ‘What is the influence of different national cultures on an organizational culture in a multi-national company?’. As described earlier, in this study the

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25 definitions of the two important terms are chosen from the literature. For the term ‘national culture’, the definition of Hofstede (1983) is used: ‘the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group of people from another’. And for the term ‘organizational culture’, the definition of Schein (1984): ‘the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external

adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems’. A new dimension compared to the existing literature is the focus on a MNC in which not only the influence of the home country culture is investigated, but also the influence of other national cultures, present in a subsidiary.

In order to answer the research question, a case study has been conducted in a MNC. The decision to conduct a case study is substantiated in chapter three ‘Methodological approach’. In order to answer the research question, the following sub questions need to be answered:

 What is (national) culture and how can it be measured?  What is organizational culture and how can it be measured?

 How can the global organizational culture in the case study be described?

 How can the different national cultures present in the subsidiary in the Netherlands be described?

 To what extent is the global organizational culture adopted in the subsidiary in the Netherlands?

 To what extent is the global organizational culture adopted in other subsidiaries of the MNC?

 To what extent and how is the Dutch culture influencing the organizational culture in the subsidiary in the Netherlands?

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26  To what extent and how are other national cultures influencing the organizational culture

in the subsidiary in the Netherlands?

 How can cultural diversity be beneficial for the MNC and its organizational culture? The first and second question are addressed through the literature research, the other questions are answered through the case study in which interviews are held. These sub-questions are treated in chapter four ‘Results’.

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27 3. Methodological approach

This chapter outlines how the research is designed and conducted. The research design is a single case-study, the data collection techniques are interviews and participative observation, the data was analysed using the software program Nvivo 10. In the following sections an extensive description of the design, data collection, and data analysis is provided.

3.1 Methodology

This study calls for a qualitative approach. The aim of the study is to get a better

understanding of how national cultures influence an organizational culture. Hofstede (1983) and Schein (1984), in their definitions of culture use phenomena such as ‘the collective programming of the mind’, and ‘basic assumptions’, and if the aim of the study is to understand influences which evolve from, among others, ‘basic assumptions’, an in-depth approach is needed. Helfat (2007) explains it as follows: ‘Qualitative research has an important role to play in uncovering interesting or unexpected phenomena that statistical analysis may miss, because such research provides fine-grained detail and insights that can only come from case analysis’ (p.189). The research method is a single case study, which refers to a multi-national company which is described in the next section. The reason is similar to what Yin (2013) describes as a reason for conducting a case study: ‘the need for a case study research arises out of the desire to understand complex social phenomena’ (p.4). According to Eisenhardt (1989), when a fresh perspective on an existing research topic is desirable, a case study is appropriate. As described earlier, the last research on this topic was done by Gerhart in 2008, it seems thus desirable to refresh the perspective on this topic. It is assumed that this is what Eisenhardt means with a fresh perspective, although he does not explain the term.

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28 The study is of exploratory nature as often is the case in qualitative research (Bansal & Corley, 2012). The aim of the study can be best explained as refining and expanding existing theory. Expanding existing theory refers to the new dimension that is added to this study, the focus on the influence of several national cultures, instead of solely focusing on the influence of the host country culture on organizational culture, which is studied in existing literature. As such, the study has an inductive nature, although it is not yet said that new theory will emerge. As Bansal & Corley (2012) describe, qualitative research demands for an inductive approach and a corresponding iterative process. ‘At the beginning of the process qualitative researchers often do not know where they will land’ (Bansal & Corley, 2012).

For identifying the national cultures, the etic approach was used. This means a

deductive method as the starting point is existing theory, in this study the existing dimensions of Hofstede (1980) and GLOBE’s project (House et al., 2004) are used. This comparative aspect is a feature of the etic approach, as opposed to the emic approach in which cultures are researched using ethnographic methods (Morris, Leung, Ames & Lickel, 1999).

3.2 Company case

Requirements for a suitable case were a multinational company with a subsidiary in the Netherlands where employees with different national cultures are situated. The case study company is a global power company, called ***. The company has her origins in the US but operates in 21 countries on five continents (***.com) and therefore has a lot of global mobility of employees amongst its subsidiaries. *** consists of six Strategic Business Units (SBU’s) and Corporate. *** Europe is one of the SBU’s, and the office in Amsterdam, established in 2013, is the headquarters of the European SBU. Around 50 people are situated in this office. Several of them are relocated from the former headquarter in Richmond, UK.

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29 Others are relocated from different *** subsidiaries, and some are local new hires. In total 16 different nationalities are present in the office.

The Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) of the SBU is interested in how an organizational culture arises in a new subsidiary, in order to see if and how this can be more consciously managed within the company. Also she likes to know if added value can be gained out of the organizational culture and in particular out of the cultural diversity. Therefore she agreed on investigating this topic in the subsidiary in the Netherlands.

3.3 Data collection

In the way Trompenaars (1996, 2000) explained culture through different layers, Schein (1984) also did for organizational culture. He states that to go beyond the easily observable ‘artefacts’, described by him as the first level of culture, such as the building, clothes, and public documents, it is important to interview employees. This way you can go into the second level of culture, the ‘values’. However it is often the manifest values that appear. To really decipher a culture, meaning get into the third level of culture, named the ‘underlying assumptions’, not only interviews, but also observation and a joint-inquiry approach should be used, implying that the researcher should work with the group (Schein, 1984). These are exactly the sources that will be used in this study next to a literature study. As such, a multiple data collection is conducted.

3.3.1 Literature research

First a literature research is conducted on the phenomena ‘national cultures’, ‘organizational cultures’, and the relationship between them. Furthermore a documentary research at the company is conducted regarding the organizational culture.

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30 3.3.2 Interviews

The single case study consist of different levels of analysis (Yin, 1984, as cited in Eisenhardt, 1989), namely a strategic level and an operational level. On strategic level, with the HRBP of the SBU, and on operational level the interviews were divided into one with two employees who have worked for *** Corp, and another with seven employees from different national cultures, working at the office in Amsterdam. Thus in total three different kinds of semi-structured interviews were conducted, counting ten interviews. All interviews were

undertaken in the period between 13 and 20 January 2015, at the office in Amsterdam and lasted between one and one and a half hour. Prior to the interviews the key concepts such as national culture and organizational culture were explained and interviewees were asked for permission to record the interview.

The aim of the interview with the HR BP was to get more knowledge on how the organizational culture is currently managed globally and how this applies to the subsidiary in the Netherlands. Also topics such as future goals regarding managing organizational culture both globally and in the relevant subsidiary, and for managing cultural diversity, were emphasized. The interview protocol can be found in Appendix 1. Another interview protocol (Appendix 2) was made to conduct two interviews with employees who have worked for *** Corp, situated in the US. The aim of these interviews was to identify the corporate culture of ***, and to investigate if there is a presence of that corporate culture in the organizational culture in the Amsterdam office. After this, seven interviews took place with employees of different cultural backgrounds situated in the concerning subsidiary in Amsterdam. In these interviews the aim was to identify the employee’s national culture, and their view on the global organizational culture, the office culture, and the comparison of both. Also, their fit with the office culture was identified using questions such as, what is common to them and what is new, and what aspects are easy to adapt to and what aspect are difficult. Furthermore,

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31 their view on the Dutch culture was asked, following the question if they experienced any of this culture in the office. Finally, their view on the cultural diversity in the office was

addressed. The interview protocol can be found in Appendix 3.

As Taras, Kirkman and Steel (2010) found, the predictive power of cultural values is higher when primary data is used, rather than secondary data. Therefore, one part of the interviews aimed to identify and decipher the different national cultures present at the

subsidiary. The base for these questions are the questionnaires developed by Hofstede (1983) and GLOBE’s project (House et al., 2004). For identification of the organizational culture, the OCAI questionnaire (Cameron & Quinn, 2006) was used as a basis. This questionnaire

measures the orientation of an organizational culture, towards one of the four main culture types described by Cameron & Quinn (2006) in their ‘Competing Values Framework’.

Determining the employees suited for these interviews thus took place on the basis of nationalities. Around 50 employees are situated in the Amsterdam office, containing 16 different nationalities. A broad distinction of different cultural groups among employees can be made using theory of Hofstede (1980) and the GLOBE project (House et al., 2004). As described they both identify certain cultural clusters on the basis of culture dimensions. In this study the clusters were used to determine which employees could be interviewed. Six of all clusters could cover all nationalities at the office. One of the six was a Dutch employee, furthermore interviewees were from Brazil, Bulgaria, US, El Salvador, UK and Pakistan. As described, the focus in the literature is solely on the influence of the host country culture on the organization. In order to investigate this influence it is of importance to understand the host country culture, the Dutch culture in this case. Therefore an additional Dutch employee was selected to conduct an interview with. Also because all other employees are not yet well known with the Dutch culture, according to themselves (participative observation).

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32 As described by Eisenhardt (1989), for ensuring the validity of the research, reporting of information is important. Therefore all transcripts of the interviews are attached in

Appendix 4.

3.3.3 Participative observation

Another research method which was used in this study is participative observation. The researcher is already an employee of the company since one year, and this has led to a participative observation over a long period of time. Furthermore, what makes the situation beneficial is that the observation has not been constrained by people acting differently

because of the presence of a researcher. The participative observation did not lead to physical data, but contributed to creating the sub-questions for the research and in a later stage to analysing the data that came forward from the interviews.

3.4 Data analysis

All interviews are transcribed (Appendix 4) by the researcher. Analysing the data was done using a qualitative research software program, named Nvivo 10. In this program the data was categorized. Categories and sub-categories were created on the basis of the interview

protocols and on new subjects which emerged during the process of in-depth interviewing. Categorization of the data made it possible to seek for a relationship between the respondent’s backgrounds and their answers. Also, the categorization on the basis of subjects made it possible to analyse what was said about a subject by different levels of analysis. For example, the view of the HR BP on organizational culture and how the employees experience this.

As described earlier, certain questions were addressed in order to identify national cultures. The data that came forward from these questions, was not used to describe all different national cultures, as the aim was not to replicate the study conducted by Hofstede

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33 (1983), but then within ***. The data was used to analyse if any aspects would came forward regarding the fit between the national cultures and the organizational culture. Especially the data that evolved from the interviews with Dutch employees and American employees was useful in order to identify either fits or gaps between these national cultures, and the organizational culture in, respectively, the Amsterdam office and the Corporate office.

Analysing the data which evolved from the questions on the basis of the OCAI

questionnaire, was done by categorizing data into one of the four organizational culture types created by Cameron and Quinn (2006). This was done by addressing several terms during the interview which all separately refer to one of the four types. This made it possible to analyse how respondents see and experience the organizational culture.

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34 4. Results

In this chapter the outcomes of desk research, interviews and observations are outlined. The outcomes are answering the sub-questions in order to ultimately answer the research question which will be addressed in the next chapter. What came forward in analysing the data was: 1) the global organizational culture is not yet embedded in the employees apart from the safety aspect, but the culture is consistent among all subsidiaries, though amongst the respondents there is a wide variety in how they experience the organizational culture, 2) the influence of national cultures is not experienced as much as the influence of personalities is experienced in the office, 3) there is a marginal influence of the host country culture on the office culture, 4) the two aspects that are remarkable regarding the influence of the host country culture is the work-life balance and the social separation of work and private life, 5) there is no direct influence of national cultures on the organizational culture, but the fact there is a diversity of cultures in the office, has an influence, and 6) respondents find that colleagues should get to know each other better in order to get more benefits from the cultural diversity in the office, which should be reflected in teamwork and communication.

4.1 Global organizational culture

In this section the sub-question: ‘How can the global organizational culture in the case study be described?’ is answered. First a short description of the company is provided. *** is a young company (HR BP), it was founded in 1981 in the US (***.com). In 2012 *** decided to pursue a new strategy. Before 2012 the business was, according to six respondents, very much focused on taking over other companies and thus on expansion and growth. As the CEO of *** Europe once said: ‘there was a buying culture’ (participative observation). In 2012 *** started to change its focus into bringing the bottom line instead of continuously buying

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35 businesses. ‘The year 2012 was the breaking point for *** in terms of where do we want to be, where do we want to go, how do we want to be perceived both internally and externally?’ (HR BP). According to the HR BP, what happened was a quick growth also because of the quickly changing environment which *** had to adapt to and wanted to compete in, ‘…but at some point in time you end up growing the business but lacking the supporting building’ (HR BP). One respondent only recently discovered the existence of company values and this relates to a statement of the HR BP: ‘*** is at the beginning of embarking on the journey of organizational culture, there is a lot to do’. But today they have been widely spreading those values and other aspects of the company culture. To start, it is emphasized on the companies’ website in separate sections such as the mission, vision and values. The paragraph about the company culture starts as follows: ‘For *** people, how we accomplish our successes and deliver our product is as important as the services we provide’ (***.com). This implies that the company gives high priority to its values and thus to their organizational culture. They continue with: ‘Ethics, integrity and compliance are the foundation and principles that guide our company and our people’ and ‘High standards and expectations are an integral part of our business and culture…’ (***.com).

In addition, they put high priority on their values exemplified in their ‘code of conduct’. The values are: 1) put safety first, 2) act with integrity, 3) honor commitment, 4) strive for excellence, and 5) have fun through work (***.com). On the website *** mentions that they believe their values are a unique part of their business in which they differ from the competition. The values are being spread out internally amongst all employees by the

obligation of completing an online training on the ‘code of conduct’ (participative

observation). The extent to which the values are embedded in the employees is a question raised during the interviews. According to the HR BP, ‘*** is not the kind of company that is going to tolerate the behaviour that is in contrast with the values’. This does not directly imply

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36 that the culture is embedded in people, and neither this was recognized during the interviews. The only exception was the value ‘put safety first’. The biggest part of the respondents recognized that this is really embedded in their behaviour. One respondent said: ‘Safety is number one priority everywhere, it’s not just a buzz word, both in the plants and in the offices it’s constantly talked about’. Another respondent said: ‘Definitely safety is a bigger concern to me in life due to ***’.

The value ‘act with integrity’ is another important concept in the global organizational culture. Examples are the yearly returning ethics and compliance trainings, and online

trainings in which the values and ethical issues are being treated (participative observation). Though none of the respondents mentioned any of this aspect during the interviews.

‘Honor commitment’ is another value which is not mentioned during interviews. The term could be related to loyalty, of which three of the five respondents mentioning loyalty, said that the relationship works both ways. Although one respondent said: ‘On the other hand when things don’t go as they might have expected or when things don’t work out, I think then *** would say that they don’t want to continue the relationship any longer’. Another

respondent who has worked for Corp said that she has seen people getting fired because of performance reasons, she said: ‘not that they weren’t trying, it’s just that mistakes were made’. This is recognized by two other respondents who mentioned that *** does not have an

extensive development program, ‘if the job doesn’t suit you, they will hire new knowledge’. Three respondents assume this is the American influence, as in the US it’s much easier to fire employees.

The value ‘strive for excellence’ is named by half of the respondents. One respondent thinks it’s ‘a buzz word’, he thinks every professional within an organization strives for excellence. Another respondent was critical and said that striving for excellence goes together with developing, because you cannot achieve excellence without developing, and he thinks

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37 that *** lacks development. However, some respondents mention that they do think *** promotes human development. Both the values ‘honor commitment’ and ‘strive for

excellence’ are explained by most respondents through the hours the employees put in their job. For example a respondent said that the environment is deadline driven causing employees to often work late, but because of the strong commitment to achieve results people make the sacrifice. Another respondent mentioned: ‘I find everyone in my department to be very loyal, I mean we’re working in weekends and nights’. On the work floor this is also visible as you can see certain departments making lots of working hours (participative observation).

Having fun through work seems to be a value ‘only put on a poster on the wall’, as only one respondent mentioned this value: ‘No, I wouldn’t call it fun’, is what she said.

In chapter two ‘Literature review’, the ‘Competing Values Framework’ (Cameron & Quinn, 2006) is discussed. The aspects of each of the four organizational culture types are addressed through the interview questions. Respondents could choose a set of words which would best describe the global organizational culture. All words were related to one of the four types. There was a wide variety of answers, every single type was at least once chosen as the best fit with the global organizational culture of ***. Most of the respondents thought the best description was a mix of words picked out of the four different sets of words. Striking is that the different views are consistent with the different cultural backgrounds. The two Dutch respondents think that the company mostly has a ‘market culture’, whereas the three

American respondents all mention the ‘adhocracy culture’ as the best fit or at least they pick most words from that line. It could be that cultural background has an influence on the perspective of the employees on the culture, but it could also be a coincidence, because the Latin-American respondents do not pick the same line.

One highly consistent company characteristic, which was mentioned in eight out of ten interviews was ‘freedom’. Employees explain that they are given a lot of freedom to speak up,

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38 to make decisions, to try new things, to come up with new ideas, to switch department and location, and to create one’s own opportunities. The respondents all sound positive about this, one respondent said: ‘That’s what I like about ***, that we are given a lot of freedom. We do get to make decisions’. One employee explained that the founders of the company caused the organization to be flat in the beginning. Another overarching theme which is mentioned by the respondents multiple times is ‘entrepreneurship’. In the interviews, this goes in one line with the terms ‘dynamic’ and ‘innovation’ which relates to the organizational culture type ‘adhocracy’ of Cameron and Quinn (2006). One respondent said: ‘I think it’s a very dynamic place to work, we are focused on innovation, and there is an entrepreneurial spirit’. Another respondent said: ‘Stability, well as long as you are always fine with change and things are always moving than I consider it somewhat stable. A lot of people left because it doesn’t seem like a stable environment, but to me, I just know that nothing stays the same at ***, it’s

always moving’. However, one respondent thinks that *** is moving very slow to change internally. Aspects of the organizational culture type ‘market’ (Cameron & Quinn, 2006) are also mentioned several times. Half of the respondents said that *** is very much focused on achievement. One mentioned: ‘Within *** there seems to be a very strong focus on overall corporate result orientation on the quarterly earnings per share, as well as driving costs down’. These aspects are always mentioned during strategy information sessions for employees as well (participative observation). One respondent explains that the corporate strategy is to only enter markets where they can gain a competitive advantage, this is done in an aggressive way. Two respondents explain the aggressiveness through ‘an immediate reaction to

circumstances’, and ‘The way they divested businesses because it didn’t fit the competitive culture, they’ve done it aggressively’. Internal competition does not seem to exist, three respondents mentioned that there is a collaborative environment.

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39 Overall, the two organizational culture types ‘adhocracy’ and ‘market’ as described by Cameron and Quinn (2006), seem to best describe the organizational culture of ***. Both types are according to the ‘Competing Values Framework’, externally focused. This is indeed what came forward in the interviews. What also came forward is the change of strategy towards a more internal focus, ‘bringing the bottom line’, as aforementioned. This is partly in line with what Cameron and Quinn (2006) describe about the connection between culture type and organizational life cycle. Indeed, *** is still a young company and has the related

‘adhocracy culture’, and indeed they are now changing into a more ‘hierarchy culture’ with focus on writing procedures and efficiency. The culture that not seems to pass by is the ‘clan culture’, perhaps this can be explained by the quick growth of the company. And another aspect which is not in line with the theory of Cameron and Quinn (2006) about the

organization life cycle, is that a ‘market culture’ appears in a mature phase of an organization. It seems that *** has, despite its immaturity, partly a ‘market culture’.

Although the view on the organization and the organizational culture is not consistent among the respondents, all characteristics of the company, treated in the interview, are according to all respondents the same in every subsidiary of ***. So there is, according to them, consistency in organizational culture, or at least the visible aspects of it.

The next question that was addressed during the interviews is if the organizational culture is embedded in the employees. To start, there were two respondents who weren’t able to mention the five core values of ***. None of the respondents thought that the culture of *** is embedded in all employees. Three respondents think that it is embedded in some employees, and the main reason for differences in this matter was explained by difference in function. One reasoned that employees who are working close to the core of the business, on the plants for example, will have a closer feeling with the *** culture than the supporting functions have. One respondent addressed a very clear opinion about how the culture and the

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40 values are dictated by corporate. ‘It’s very much a culture set by the Americans, being pushed out into all the other regions and it’s a very forced company culture. So instead of an internal feeling of pride, they try to force this, the values, the ways of working.’ The respondent explains that this internal feeling of pride is easier to achieve in well-known companies like Philips, Shell and Coca-Cola where you already feel the pride before you’ve become an employee. This degree to which a company is well-known by the environment sets the organizational culture, according to the respondent. Also the HR BP recognizes this as a weakness of ***, she thinks more effort should be put into branding. Two respondents think that the degree to which a culture is embedded has to do with seniority of the employees, by which they mean the amount of years they have been working for the company. One said: ‘I feel that the CEO who has been with the company for a long time, the way he communicates about the corporate mission and vision is in such a way that you really get the sense that he really does belief and that it’s really embedded in him’. Considering the term seniority, this can also be applied to the company herself. The HR BP and two other respondents have been thinking about the topic of organizational culture a lot and they think the reason that the culture is not yet embedded is that the company is very young. Another respondent has related thoughts about the maturity phase *** is in, he thinks that the instable and dynamic

characteristics of the company are resulting in a culture that is somewhat instable. At the same time he recognizes that once a company is mature and has, ideally seen, a strong culture, there may be less space for taking risks and freedom, which is a characteristic very much

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41 4.2 Cultural diversity

This paragraph contains the answer of two sub-questions about which national cultures are present in the Amsterdam office and how cultural diversity can be beneficial for

and its organizational culture.

4.2.1 National cultures

In this section an answer is provided to the sub-question: ‘How can the different national cultures present in the subsidiary in the Netherlands be described?’. *** employees have a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. The reason is that *** is a MNC that operates in 19 countries. Within the company the relocation rate of the employees is quite high and therefore the diversity on the locations is high as well. *** recognizes the diversity of their employees in geography, language and culture, and include this aspect into their organizational culture description. On the website they write: ‘Across our global workforce, taking into account our diversity in geography, languages and cultures, the *** corporate culture is unmistakably dynamic, yet consistent in its commitment to excellence, innovation and sustainability’ (***.com). Also in the Amsterdam office there is a great cultural diversity as there are 16 different nationalities present. The biggest group are the Dutch, they consist of 20 people. Furthermore, American’s are present with a smaller group of six people. Next to that, there are British, Irish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Pakistani, Singaporean, Brazilian, Venezuelan, and El Salvadorian employees working together in the Amsterdam office.

During the interviews the respondents were asked about several aspects of their cultural background. Questions were drafted on the basis of questionnaires from Hofstede (1980) and GLOBE’s project (House et al., 2002). Also they were asked if they still feel a fit with their cultural background. What came forward from the answers is that eight respondents

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42 have other norms than the general norms of their home country, and that three respondents do not even feel the connection anymore. Remarkable was that they often times answered that they do not know the current situation of the home country because they are away from that country for already some years.

4.2.2 Benefiting from cultural diversity

A question that followed from the fact that the office consists of a wide diversity of cultures is: ‘How can cultural diversity be beneficial for the MNC and its organizational culture?’. This sub-question is treated during the interviews by first raising the question if the respondents thought cultural diversity was consciously managed. Not any of the respondents had the idea that the aspect of cultural diversity was consciously managed or leveraged. Nine respondents mentioned something positive about the diversity and thought that the company also

recognizes the cultural diversity as something positive. They think it is interesting to work with such a diverse group. One respondent even thinks it is the success story of the company: ‘*** brought talent from every corner of the world, so its focus is on finding talent no matter where they are coming from’. Eight of the respondents think the cultural diversity is

beneficial for ***, the others did not gave an opinion on this matter. Two respondents think a benefit is that it brings best practices together and leads to innovative solutions because people look differently at the same problem. ‘There is a lot of great ideas that people can bring to the table from their previous positions’. Another respondent thinks it is not only beneficial, but it is really needed when you serve such a big diversity of markets. ‘If we were only managing the US, this model wasn’t as beneficial because you only need Americans there, maybe’.

Two respondents have a different way of working with colleagues depending on different cultural backgrounds. Although most respondents have not been consciously

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