Towards Simulating the Impact of Culture on
Organizations
1
Lo¨ıs Vanh´ee
abFrank Dignum
bJacques Ferber
aa
Universit´e de Montpellier 2, France
bUtrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands
Abstract
This article describes conceptual connexions between a theory of culture and of organizations. These connexions aim at determining key features that should be observed in an agent-based model integrating these aspects: we describe concepts to be considered when modeling the influence of culture on individuals and thus the global consequences of culture that should result at the organizational level. We describe in particular the impact of culture on organizational performance (efficiency, robustness, flexibility).
1
Introduction
Both topics of culture and organizations [4] have been independently studied for a long time from in social sciences. More recently, some authors [1, 2] built theories integrating together these two concepts, aiming at explaining how individuals behave in organizations in different cultures. Nevertheless, these theories do not explain how culture influences individuals which in turn influences emerging social patterns. For instance, [2] suggest a correlation between the preference towards bureaucracies when individuals are culturally sen-sitive to anxiety but underlying reasons, yet intuitive are unclear. On a parallel track, former work (e.g. [3]) models the impact of culture on on some limited organizational aspects (trade, trust). This article aims at relieving important concepts described in theories of culture and organizations and their interconnection in order to build a conceptual map. This conceptual map (partially presented in Table 1) helps determining expected features and desirable outcome of models and simulations integrating culture and organizations.
Consider for example the following cultural and organizational concepts and their link. [2] describe the cultural dimension of power distance, measuring the importance of power status given by individuals (cultural concept). Individuals with high power distance culture require more solicitation before reporting some failure to someone with higher power status. Thus, such a culture makes uneasy for individuals to reject unfit requests from their leaders (organizational individual-level concept). As a result, in high power distance culture, mis-allocations made by leaders are likely to have more impact than in low power distance cultures. But, since this delegation requires less communication, delegating simpler tasks is more efficient.[2] found out clues showing that organizations in high power distance cultures perform better in simpler environments while low power distance cultures are more efficient in complex environments.
Highlighting such a link does not produces knowledge in fine since necessary pieces of knowledge are available in the theory. Nevertheless, logical sequences linking individual to collective aspects are not studied as such in theory, which relies instead on descriptions. But, these sequences are crucial to figure out what to include in an agent-based model of organizations, to determine how collective expected behavior
Table 1: Example of links between culture concepts (national cultural dimensions) and of organizations. First line of each cell corresponds to low cultural dimension score while second line represents high score. [2] also studied organizational cultures. We focus on national cultures that appear to be less environmentally driven than those.
Power Distance Masculinity Uncertainty Avoidance Organization set by members security, member care undefined, opportunism goal set by leaders high risks and rewards well defined, specialism Individual unconstrained quality of life exploration
goal advancement earning, advancement stability Workflow democratic modest, balancing informally defined definition by the leader by well-performer, assertive by expert
Role democratic by affinity generalism allocation by leaders by performance roles linked to expertise Coordination dedicated roles consensual informal, global
structure encompass hierarchy efficient explicit, restrictive Delegation dedicated roles balance workload informal, global
structure matches hierarchy assertive delegation explicit, restrictive Control dedicated roles part of the cooperation subjective, casual structure encompasses the hierarchy performance measure objective, explicit Information unconstrained, no locus interpersonal care informal networks
structure encompass hierarchy task oriented standard process Failure responsible forgiveness change practice responsibility downwards blame, discredit change the rule Exception unrestricted solve together find solution
handling hierarchically upwards challenge exception protocol Efficiency redundant communication cooperation redundant structure
tight coordination competition efficient protocols Robustness decentralization cooperative solving redundancy
central hierarchy failure as a challenge restricted by rules Flexibility possibly inefficient cooperative changes dynamic network restricted by hierarchy challenging restricted by rules results from individual interactions and thus how to model individual interactions. Consequently, the map described in this article offers an necessary step from brute theory to models and simulations.
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Conclusion
This article presents a conceptual map linking the influence of culture on individuals behavior and collective organizational behavior and performance. These concepts are drawn from a seminal theory of culture [2] with a leading theory of organizations [4]. Building this map is a crucial step to determine the content of relevant agent-based models of organizations where agents are influenced by culture, including several organizational and cultural aspects and describing the collective output expected by such model.
References
[1] A. Hampden-Turner, C. Trompenaars. The seven cultures of capitalism: value systems for creating wealth in the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. 1993. [2] Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the
Mind, Third Edition. 2010.
[3] Gert Jan Hofstede, Catholijn M Jonker, and Tim Verwaart. Cultural Differentiation of Negotiating Agents. Group Decision and Negotiation, 21(1):79–98, 2010.
