workplace culture – Success Across Cultures

Do you find the overall morale of your work team to be positive or negative?

How do you navigate it?

And have you ever considered whether the tightness/looseness in your company culture or societal culture might impact these attitudes?

In recent weeks, we’ve talked about tightness and looseness in culture and how this can affect innovation.

Today, we’ll be looking at another study examining tightness/looseness in the workplace to see how it can benefit morale, management policies, and behaviors.

The Study

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the impact of perceived cultural tightness at the work unit level on individual-level outcomes, both positive and negative.

This understanding can be used to enhance management policies.

The research delves into the influence of perceived T-L culture at the work unit level on various individual-level factors, including stress, intention to leave, organizational deviance, job satisfaction, effort investment, and organizational commitment.

Utilizing cross-sectional data gathered from 417 participants across 57 preexisting work units in diverse Italian organizations, participants were presented with 10 statements that they were asked to agree/disagree with.

These statements include:

In my work unit, there are many social norms that must be strictly followed
In my work unit, if someone acts in an inappropriate way, others will strongly disapprove
In my work unit, there are clear and well-defined rules that must be respected
In my work unit, it is not allowed to break the existing norms

The results from multilevel analysis indicate a significant and positive association between perceived cultural tightness at the unit level and individual-level job satisfaction, effort investment, and organizational commitment.

Conversely, this perceived tightness is significantly and negatively linked to individual-level stress, intention to leave, and organizational deviance.

These findings imply that fostering a culture of tightness within organizations can positively shape employee attitudes and behaviors.

Confirming the researchers’ hypotheses, the results revealed that perceived cultural tightness at the unit level exhibited a positive association with job satisfaction, effort investment, and organizational commitment.

Conversely, it displayed a negative association with perceived stress, turnover intentions, and organizational deviance.

Interpreting the Results

Based on the research, this study found that fostering a tight culture could be beneficial for leaders to cultivate positive attitudes within work units.

However, the suitability of a tight culture depends on individual characteristics and cultural diversity within work units, necessitating attention from HR managers and leaders.

Achieving a “person-group fit,” where the T-L culture aligns with employees’ mindset and individual characteristics, could promote positive attitudes and behaviors.

Interestingly, in loose societies, organizations may witness more positive workplace attitudes within loose culture work units.

However, the study did not find significant curvilinear effects, suggesting a need for further investigation, especially in creative, design, or high-tech settings.

Future

The study suggests examining creativity at work, especially given prior results on cultural T-L and creativity.

Exploring moderators of the relationship between tight culture and creativity, such as regulatory focus theory, could provide valuable insights.

Future research should extend the examination of these effects to the organizational level, considering that work unit culture is influenced by the larger organizational and national culture.

Investigating interactions between the T-L culture of the country and that of the organization or work unit in promoting workplace outcomes is recommended.

Overall, these findings contribute to a deeper understanding of T-L effects in real working environments.

Chronemics, which we described in a past post as the study of time’s role in communication, directly correlates with time orientation, discussed last week.

Knowing that some polychronic cultures view time as cyclical and sometimes don’t even have future tenses in their language, you may have guessed that polychronic cultures are often past-oriented.

Monochronic cultures, on the other hand, are largely future-oriented.

Here are a few ways in which chronemics direct cultural behaviors.

Queuing Culture

Have you ever queued up in a foreign country and been cut in front of?

If you have and immediately thought to yourself, “how rude!” then you’re probably from a monochronic culture. Monochronic cultures are often cultures of law and order.

As this article by Leon Mann, “Queue Culture: The Waiting Line as a Social System,” published in American Journal of Sociology writes:

“Cultural values of egalitarianism and orderliness are related to respect for the principle of service according to order of arrival which is embodied in the idea of a queue. The importance of time in Western culture is reflected in rules relating to ‘serving time’ to earn one’s position in line, and to the regulation of ‘time-outs.’”

Remember, monochronic cultures – like the U.S. – are also cultures where “time is money.” So, essentially, if someone cuts the line, individuals in such cultures might consider this behavior as theft of time and/or money. The offender is essentially saying their time is more valuable than that of those they’ve cut.

Polychronic cultures do not queue orderly, if at all. They crowd and scrap their way to the front of the line. In fact, cutting in line is almost a sport in such cultures.

Although even some of those who are of polychronic cultures might get upset when cut, the queueing culture (or lack thereof) is, more or less, accepted.

Actions & Their Consequences

Another way in which chronemics and time orientation impact cultural behavior is the consequences of certain actions at work.

The chart below highlights some examples:

Monochronic cultures are deadline-driven and task-oriented regarding both negotiations or projects. And, more often than not, the hierarchy within the organization is enforced.

For polychronic cultures, a deadline is just a suggestion, and negotiations don’t end until an agreement is made. Even then, the contract is amendable.

Moreover, organizations are interaction-oriented, rather than task-oriented, and the hierarchy within the organization is not as rigidly enforced if one even exists.

We’ll look at these ideas in action next week.

Tag: workplace culture

Attitude & Behavior in the Workplace: How Does Tightness/Looseness of Culture Apply?

How Time Orientation & Chronemics Impact Queuing & Workplace Culture