By Midori Nishioka, Principal Behavioural Scientist at Social Machines and Lead Behavioural Scientist at Culturlabs

“How can I account for different cultural backgrounds across employees while aligning my initiatives with our organisation’s culture – which might sometimes clash with their cultures? “

Most cross-cultural research in organisations has focused on cultural differences between countries, but the underlying principles might still be useful for other sources of culture (e.g., religion, gender, occupation, team). 

Before diving into what the evidence says, though, the first thing to recognise is that culture may not always be important. An analysis of key national culture dimensions that aggregated nearly 600 studies showed that while national culture often impacts employee outcomes like workplace behaviours, attitudes, and performance, an employee’s personality and abilities are sometimes equally or more important.  

So, when does culture matter, and how should we account for it? We can break down insights from cross-cultural research in the following ways: 

• Universality: Some things are nearly universally good or bad. In such cases, you might not have to account for cultural differences. 

• Congruence: Sometimes you might want to adapt your practices to match the employees’ cultural expectations and norms. This is what most people think ‘accounting for’ different cultures means. 

• Incongruence: An approach that is different from your employees’ culture isn’t necessarily bad, and might in fact be welcomed.  

• Multiculturalism: Beyond specific cultures, there are practices that are particularly effective for culturally diverse teams. 

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail and with practical take aways.  

Universality 

Despite our differences, people have quite a lot in common. Some workplace practices are regarded positively in most cultural settings, while others are widely seen as harmful. This means that you can often depend on these ‘near-universals’ regardless of your employees’ cultures. 

Multinational enterprises (MNEs), while accounting for differences in cultural practices and norms across different regions in which they operate, still maintain cohesion and standardised practices. In one case study, an MNE developed an employee idea suggestion scheme from  their US operations and rolled it out globally without making any changes to it. Even in places where employees voicing their opinions might be seen as counter-cultural, the initiative yielded useful suggestions. The fact that many MNEs successfully implement global initiatives tells us that not everything needs to be culturally specific. 

Some leadership styles are also universally effective. Studies (including a large-scale study of 24 countries) showed that ‘transformational leadership’ enhances employee performance, innovation, and commitment across cultures. Transformational leaders are grounded in their convictions, inspire with vision, stimulate creativity, and attend to  employees’ needs. ‘Servant leadership’ is also linked to better employee performance, creativity, and employees going ‘over and above’ what’s required. Servant leaders are driven by empathy and altruism, and puts the needs of their followers and the wider community first. By contrast, unsurprisingly, ‘abusive supervision’ – characterised by sustained hostility and demeaning behaviours toward employees – is associated with worse employee outcomes across countries, including lower job satisfaction and poorer attitudes toward the supervisor.  

Beyond individual initiatives and leadership styles, certain HR systems seem to work well across cultures. An analysis of over 35,000 firms across 29 countries found that ‘High Performance Work Systems’ (HPWS) were consistently beneficial to firm performance. HPWS is a set of HR practices designed to enhance employee ability, motivation, and opportunity to contribute – for example, through selective staffing, investments in training, pay-for-performance incentive structures, and employee participation in decisions. 

What this means in practice: You don’t need to customise everything. Wherever you are, you can incorporate basic principles like considering employees’ needs, investing in their growth, and encouraging creativity. However, the exact implementation of an initiative might need to be adapted to the local context – which brings us to ‘congruence.’ 

Congruence 

Congruence is what most people usually have in mind when they talk about accounting for culture: adapting your approach so that it better fits employees’ cultural expectations and norms. A large body of research suggests that this intuition is often correct.  

One potentially important difference across cultures is where they’re placed on the individualism-collectivism continuum. In simple terms, it’s about whether people define themselves as ‘me’ or ‘we’ – individualist societies (like the UK) tend to have an expectation that each person takes care of themselves and their loved ones only, whereas in collectivist societies (like India and China), people belong to a group that they depend on, and contribute to.  

These differences can matter in the workplace. People in individualistic cultures tend to feel more confident in their abilities from personal feedback, whereas people in collectivistic cultures also benefit from group feedback. Relatedly, in collectivistic cultures, it’s important for a person’s group to have control, whereas people in individualistic cultures focus on personal control. And even though going along with the group when there’s peer pressure is a universal phenomenon, some research suggests that the tendency to conform to the group is stronger in collectivistic cultures than individualistic cultures. 

Another cultural dimension that seems to matter, particularly for leadership, is power distance. Power distance is about societal expectation and acceptance that power is distributed unequally across people. Whereas ‘abusive supervisors’ are unpopular across the world, in low power distance cultures (where people don’t expect or accept unequal power), employees respond particularly negatively to such supervisors. 

What this means in practice: The aims and main features of your work initiative might not need to change, but keeping in mind some of the key cultural dimensions can help you adapt to the employees’ cultural context. For example, if your organisation aims to instil a sense of confidence and control – across individualistic and collectivistic cultures – perhaps your initiative can strategically incorporate personal and group-based feedback and emphasise personal and group-based control. 

However, there’s also evidence that counter-cultural practices can stimulate innovation, bringing in fresh ways of doing things. This brings us to ‘incongruence.’ 

Incongruence 

Different cultural practices and beliefs can complement one another and stimulate change in ‘how we’ve always done things.’  

Research on firms operating outside of their country of origin shows that ‘foreignness’ can sometimes be an advantage, such that these firms can achieve better innovation than local firms, distinguishing themselves from their competitors. The oddity of outsiders can be turned into curiosity and creativity. 

Inside the walls of the organisation, some research shows that leadership styles that don’t quite ‘fit’ the country’s culture can be effective. For example, one might assume that cautious leaders that don’t take risks would be favoured in cultures with high uncertainty avoidance – places where people want predictability and don’t like surprises – like Japan and France. In contrast, research shows that in these cultures, charismatic and transformational leaders – visionaries who emphasise breaking the status quo – are particularly effective at enhancing employee effort and innovation.  

Multiple studies have also shown that in collectivistic countries, HPWS, which tends to incorporate individualised pay-for-performance schemes, are actually beneficial for employee performance. Employees in high power distance cultures also respond positively to more egalitarian practices like employee opportunities to voice their opinions and participate in decision-making – despite the prevalent acceptance of unequal power distribution in these cultures. 

What this means in practice: The lesson here is that lack of cultural fit does not automatically mean failure. In fact, sometimes employees might welcome your counter-cultural approach. If you’ve spotted elements of your work initiative that seem to conflict with the employees’ culture, ask yourself whether these elements might in fact offer something that employees would value – like a solution to a long-standing problem or permission for them to explore new ways of doing things. 

Multiculturalism 

We’ve been talking about employees as if they all have the same cultural background, to which you respond with universal, congruent, or incongruent strategies. But increasingly, people are working in culturally diverse teams, with employees from different backgrounds working side-by-side. What should you do when there are clear cultural differences among your employees? 

Research has shown that one key to success for multicultural teams is in communication. When leaders help to prevent communication breakdowns and help team members to share knowledge, culturally diverse teams can perform equally or better than culturally homogenous teams. Similarly, leaders with wide-ranging cultural experiences tend to be effective communicators, which in turn contributes to team performance; this positive impact of leadership on performance is particularly strong when teams are culturally diverse. Finally, one study found that when team leaders proactively get their team to work together toward a shared goal, team members make an effort to communicate in a way that others on the team would understand. Again, the impact of leadership on communication among the team was stronger among teams that were more culturally diverse. 

What this means in practice: Conflict and misunderstanding are genuine concerns when people are coming from different systems of values, beliefs, and practices. However, if you’re in charge of a work initiative, you can play a critical role as a leader by communicating clearly and supporting the flow of information among employees. And the more you work across diverse cultural contexts, the better you might get at it! 

Conclusion 

Put together, these four ideas lead to a practical answer. Start with a universal core – at the end of the day, we’re all people, who want to be treated with dignity, our needs considered, and our voices heard. Around this core, build congruence in how initiatives are communicated and implemented, so that they make sense to different cultural groups. But don’t assume that incongruence is always bad; some practices that seem counter-cultural to your employees may be exactly what you need. Finally, you can turn the challenge of multiculturalism into an opportunity by helping diverse teams communicate well and rally around a shared goal. 

References 

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