Organizational cultures, the way we use the term, distinguish
different organizations within the same country or countries.
Geert's research has shown that organizational cultures
differ mainly at the levels of symbols, heroes and rituals,
together labelled practices; these are more superficial and more
easily learned and unlearned than the values that form the
core of national cultures. As a consequence, the Hofstede
dimensions of national cultures are not relevant for comparing
organizations within the same country. National cultures belong to
anthropology; organizational cultures to sociology.
A separate research project into organizational culture
differences, conducted by Geert's institute IRIC across 20
organizational units in Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1980s,
identified six independent dimensions of practices:
process-oriented versus results-oriented, job-oriented versus
employee-oriented, professional versus parochial, open systems
versus closed systems, tightly versus loosely controlled, and
pragmatic versus normative. The position of an organization on
these dimensions is partly determined by the business or industry
the organization is in. Scores on the dimensions are also related
to a number of other"hard" characteristics of the organizations.
These lead to conclusions about how organization cultures can be
and cannot be managed.
Managing international business means handling both national
and organization culture differences at the same time. Organization
cultures are somewhat manageable while national cultures are given
facts for management; common organization cultures across borders
are what holds multinationals together.