Cultural Crossvergence

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie 

Published: 11/12/2013

1.0 The concept of crossvergence of cultures

The increase in economic challenges, globalization and competition is a common phenomenon in modern business and is the background from which certain corporate goals are set. The reason is because such an understanding will allow the company to apply updated policies that have the capability of yielding the same outcome irrespective of the market where it is being deployed.

Researches have shown that businesses tend to adopt the policies of other successful organizations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), and the understanding presented above is of the notion that some of the organizational practices and cultural patterns are changed in order for the company to adjust to its environment and stay competitive.

The question asked in this case is geared towards gaining an understanding of where these changes are driven by convergence or by the normal complex interplays of simultaneous convergence and divergence reactions that tend to present for companies that desire enhanced efficiency and competitiveness. The concept of crossvergence is used to present the understanding that when different cultures are diverged or converged longitudinally over a given period of time, there will also be a noticed shift in the ranking of cultural differences between these cultures as they will merge to share certain cross-cultural similarities or dissimilarities (Webber, 1969; Casson and Lundan, 1999). The basic understanding is that when two cultures are mixed, they will tend to gain a certain level of acceptability with what is wrong between these two cultures as time goes on –even if this was not what was obtainable in the past.

In order to demonstrate the above argument, Ralston et al. (1997), conducted an empirical study to examine the cultural differences between socialist and capitalist nations by examining the convergence-divergence-crossvergence (CDC) phenomena. Crossvergence was defined in the study as the value that are set to exist between the values found in national culture and economic influence (ideology, policy, and trends) (Ralston et al., 1997). The researchers also went on to submit another view in which individuals and sub-groups synergistically combined both influence of national culture and economic influence to form a form a difference, unique set of values that govern the system (Ralston et al., 1997). The finding revealed that economic influence can lead to cross-national influencers mitigating anew form of national boundaries in the form of foreign direct investment partnerships/IJVs (international joint ventures), new competition (and necessary response to new competition), and in a host of other formats. Child and Yan (2001) also found that importing management approaches from different countries in through international joint-ventures can led to mitigation of two cultures with transnational organization.

On that ground, it can be seen from the above discussion that crossvergence of culture is now a common phenomenon as a result of increase in globalization and internationalization of firms. As companies interact between two countries, they tend to form a common cultural understanding and this will be gradually internalized into their workforce from the two countries – with the final outcome being an internalized common culture that mitigates the differences existing between the cultural values of the two countries.

2.0 The dynamic view of culture

The suggestions made by Hofstede (1997) is that if culture is stable, and then there should be a sort of change that is relative to the perceived values and positions between people from different cultures. If culture is influenced by crossvergence, then certain cultural values such as work, time, authority, gender, religion and/or ethnicity will experience variations over time (Heuer et al.,1999; McGrath et al., 1992). Therefore, the implication is that culture is not static and it will be change over time as a result of certain changes and influence of external forces on the cultural values.

For instance, international brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Pepsico and Samsung have been able to adopt a common corporate culture of “increased innovation, creativity and productivity,” and this have increasingly become the order of the day firms across the world. Therefore, culture values can actually change over time as people are constantly being exposed to other cultures outside of their original cultures, with different values that complicate understanding – thus, forcing these cultures to crossverge and develop a common value that might be different from their originally perceived values.

References

Casson, M., Lundan, M., 1999. Explaining international differences in economic institutions. International Studies of Management & Organization 29 (2), 25– 42.

Child, J., Yan, Y., 2001. National and transnational effects in international business: indications from Sino-foreign JVs. Management International Review 41 (1), 53– 75.

DiMaggio, P., Powell, W., 1983. The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48, 147– 160.

Heuer, M., Cummings, J., Hutabarat, W., 1999. Culture stability or change among managers in Indonesia. Journal of International Business Studies 30 (3), 599– 611.

Hofstede, G., 1997. Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill, New York.

McGrath, R., MacMillan, I., Yang, E., Tsai, W., 1992. Does culture endure, or is it malleable? Issues for entrepreneurial economic development. Journal of Business Venturing 7, 441– 458.

Ralston, D., Holt, D., Terpstra, R., Kai-Cheng, Y., 1997. The impact of national culture and economic ideology on managerial work values: a study of the U.S., Russia, Japan and China. Journal of International Business Studies 28, 177–207.

Webber, R.A., 1969. Convergence or divergence? Columbia Journal of World Business 4 (3), 75– 83.