Professional Documents
Culture Documents
13th December
This is exactly what is happening now with globalisation, whereby rich farmers
from all parts of the world are relocating to Africa and South America in order to
buy prime land for plantations, thus increasing land rents. Prime agricultural
land with fertile soils have been located in Africa and South America. This
mobility is also increasing the rate of racial mix. Chinese and people from other
overpopulated Asian countries are fanning out in their numbers to look for the
legendary El Dorado or land of gold, alluded to by the English novelist, Rider
Haggard in his novels such as Allan Quatermain , King Solomons Mines, among
others.
Many eyebrows have been raised about the pros and cons of globalisation as
many skeptics have raised concerns that free trade or globalisation advantages
only the rich and powerful nations which apply double standards in their dealings
with the developing countries, in that they ask for abolition of trade barriers yet
they impose strict restrictions when importing from the developing countries.
They give advantage to their farmers by giving them subsidies and farm support,
yet they ask us to remove subsidies on fuel, electricity, water, food, education,
medicare, among others. The WTO has become a symbolic tool organisation
with a bias towards the interests of the powerful and mighty, and the world
economic scene is not a level playing field.
They also build global synergies working with their subsidiaries across the
globe. They also operate globally to reduce internal and external failure
costs by being present where their customers are, and knowing their
needs from their decentralised operations, thus applying the principle of
subsidiarity, and being customer-centric.
One needs the ability to overcome culture shock with regard to strange
habits, new types of food, new modes of dressing, new ways of greeting,
new work ethics, and the dos and donts of the new society that one
encounters. Expatriates have hurdles settling in with their families in their
new environments. They sometimes face challenges such as language
barrier, xenophobia, inter alia. Also a spouse or partner may not be willing
to relocate because of their job.
Childrens education may be disrupted, and you may lose physical touch
with friends and relatives back home as you become attenuated from your
roots and become a misfit, anomie and an erratic. You may leave a
lucrative job back home to take up appointment abroad, and on your
return after completing your contract, you may be assigned a junior
position. This can happen if you did not go on secondment. Sometimes a
foreign posting may not be all that profitable in the long run because of
high cost of living in the new location, and other hidden costs. You may
lose touch with what is happening on the ground back home, despite
being in touch through multi-media.
Our friends from the west are highly individualistic, future-oriented, time
conscious, result-oriented, competitive, aggressive, unemotional or
restrained, affirmative, assertive, risk takers, and cold in attitude. In
contrast, we in Africa tend to be short-term in orientation, collectivist or
communal, very emotional, empathetic, gregarious, and we revel in
groupthink. We are carefree, and we love procrastination. We forget that
time is the most precious asset of man. We tend not to be self-dependent,
independent-minded, and we tend to have low esteem of ourselves, thus
wanting to be led always. This is docility.
Thus, Ghanaian workers have to know the labour laws, their human rights,
and they need to be assertive when negotiating. International Human
Resource Management (IHRM) has now assumed greater importance
because of globalisation. It is more complex than managing people locally.
In IHRM, you are dealing with different people and a myriad of labour
jurisdictions, practices, and standards in economic zones such as the EU
and OECD. IHRM requires HR managers to pay attention to the social
sensibilities and sensitivities of employees from different cultural milieu.
Kenechi Ohmae has classified how some MNCs operate, by grouping them
into three, namely: Formalisation, Centralisation, and Socialisation. The
Americans have highly- structured and formalised systems in place in all
their subsidiaries, and they can monitor work through the internet without
being physically present. The European method of operation is through
socialisation of their foreign staff, whereby an experienced staff goes to
train the staff in their subsidiaries. The Japanese centralise everything at
headquarters through the use of the computer network.
In Ghana, the Kwahus are famous for their business acumen and they are
successful traders. They operate their businesses using close relatives
who are honest and trustworthy. They pass on the secrets of their
businesses to these relatives who serve them from infancy till they are
grown enough to be independent. They are like the Japanese and most
Asians who do not trust outsiders or foreigners. Geert Hofstede (1980)
and Fons Trompenaars, both Dutch, have done considerable academic
research in national manifestations of culture. Others in this field of
research include Hall, Inglehart, Stiles, Ghoshal& Bartlett, HampdenTurner, Schneider & Barsoux, Thomas DC, Lewis, RD, Adler NJ, Branine M,
Albrecht, MH, Smith P et al., Deresky, H, Caligiuri, P, Dowling, P, among
others.
Masculine cultures are found in the west, where they are independentminded, un-empathetic, aggressive, result-oriented, and highly
individualistic. Feminine cultures on the other hand, believe in
relationships, family values, and being caring, and having an egalitarian
society with equal opportunities for all, as is found in the Scandinavian
countries. Ghanaians fall within the feminine culture, but in a negative
way, as care and relationships are biased in favour of tribesmen and
clansmen.