martes, 23 de marzo de 2010

LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Cultural factor affecting leadership

A Colombian salesperson is highly influenced by the society where he/ she lives, and based on the Hofstede analysis, the Colombian people have a lower individualism, which means that the people is very collectivist, and for this reason loyalty and long term commitment are very important values for strong relations. Analyzing power distance, it is a little bit high and it means that the society is hierarchy oriented, exist an inequality in terms of power and in terms of wealth.

Relating these two factors high collectivism and high power distance, is possible to conclude that leadership characteristics in a Colombian sales person could be hampered by the high power distance factor; because she/he accept to obey orders from their superior and do exactly what their boss says to do, it means they have a strong dependence on them. This is way it is more like a “trickle down” process and is very difficult to be viceverza, based on the hierarchy pattern of this society, and also is important to highlight the high uncertainty avoidance Colombian people have, because they attached to rules, and they don’t like to take risks, in this case for example do things different from what was assigned.

Organizational Commitment

The Colombian sales personnel tend to follow rules give from their superior because they think, that in that way their job will be more “secure” in the organization, and thus they can continue working there. Is very important to highlight that due to the economical environment Colombia has (unemployment 14,6%) [1], the employees are more willing to keep working there, even if they don’t really want it. Talking about affective commitment, as Colombian society is very collectivistic the employees tend to be more loyal with their group, in this case the organization so they will accept the beliefs and values it has.

Leadership Behaviour
A Colombian sales personnel know which is their position and their roles on the pyramid, because is root on their culture the existence of a hierarchy order, thus the person limits their work on what she/he must do in the position that is located, based on the instructions made from their leaders ,on what and how the tasks need to be done. On the other hand, the leader likes to give orders, in a respectful way, and that generates a good work climate, because the subordinates are expecting that role from him/her.
Role Stress
Colombian sales personnel have low role ambiguity because they accept to receive orders from their superiors due to the fact that this society has a high power distance; and this at the end causes that employees have enough information of what they need to do. At the same time Colombian sales personnel have low role conflict because they know very well their position and from whom they need to receive orders.

sábado, 13 de marzo de 2010

COLOMBIA MANAGMENT STYLE

In Colombia is very difficult to analyze a defined management style, because there are many Colombian companies that have managers without a good preparation in the administrative science and for that reason they tend to use more empirical practices. This is because many of the companies are family owned, and usually the positions are inherited by the family members, no matter if they studied other fields such as engineering, legal profession among others.

MANAGMENT STYLES

JAPAN

KOREA

COLOMBIA

Strategic goals

· They focused more on market share

· Emphasize on market share and profit maximization.

-Scale based cost reduction

· Emphasize on profit maximization

Environment analysis

· Large firms are active on the environmental analysis of substitute goods and service suppliers.(potential threats)

· Large firms are less active about the environmental analysis than Japanese ones.

Focus more on monitoring the rivals

(oligopolistic).

· Focus more on monitoring the rivals.

Closeness with customer

· Emphasize information exchange with customer

· Managers don`t highlight to much information exchange with customer

· But highly internationalized firms are as closed to the customer as Japanese ones.

· They don’t emphasize to much on the information exchange with customer.

Marketing

Large firms

· Managers emphasize more on those aspects.

Internationalized firms

· Is similar the develop of corporate brands/trade mark

Large firms

· Emphasize on development of corporate brands/ trade mark

Internationalized firms

· Is similar the develop of corporate brands/trade mark of Japanese firms

· They usually don’t invest to much in market research, they tend to use “ensayo, error” (empiric)

Human resource management

Growth/internationalized firms

· Information sharing with the organization and corporate values

· Group oriented

Growth/internationalized* firms

· Information sharing with the organization and corporate values

· Hierarchy oriented.

· Hierarchy oriented.

International Orientation

For the large/ internationalized firms

· The same as the large/internationalized firms from Korea

For the large/ internationalized firms

· Conduct

customer analysis globally

· High involvement in the direct international marketing

· They are aware of international markets but they try to focus more on the local area.

· Supplier relationship

Large and internationalized firms

· Cooperative supplier relationship is very important; its one of their competitive advantages

Large and internationalized firms

· Try to do the same as Japan with suppliers but in terms of new product development and longterm relationship with them.

· Weak the relationship with suppliers (be afraid of sharing information, but the managers are doing efforts to create stronger relations with their suppliers.

Technology development and manufacturing

· The same issues tend to converge between japanese and korean internationalized frims

· Emphasize on flexible manufacturing

Internationalized firms

· Long term technology, use of economies of scale in manufacturing are very important

· Managers less emphasize on flexible manufacturing

· Less flexibility because of the lack of high technology