Affect of Cultures

Personal and cultural values affect decision making in a person's personal life because they define who the person is and how they will react to different situations. Different cultures often have vastly different value systems, such as the respect for elders in Eastern cultures, the faith-based beliefs of different religious groups such as Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus. These factors play a major role in the way people think and how they approach problems. In some cultures it is customary to seek the advice of elders in decision-making whereas in cultures such as America this is not necessarily so. In Saudi Arabia, a young man would never dream of approaching a young woman and asking her for a date, but this is quite acceptable in America.

At the corporation level, culture takes on a totally different meaning. There is a corporate 'culture' to which members of a company must belong to be able to work effectively in that company. This culture can be defined as a "manifest pattern of behavior" which describes patterns of cross individual behavioral consistency, or "the way things are done around here" (Scholl, 2003). It defines the way in which people consistently perform tasks, solve problems, resolve conflicts, etc. Corporate culture can also be defined as "a set of mechanisms creating cross individual behavioral consistency," meaning the informal values, norms and beliefs that control how individuals and groups in an organization interact.

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ypes of decisions have to take into account the corporate culture and the internal workings of the organization. Failure to do so will result in discontented workers, unmet goals, non-cooperation between different work groups, and a general reduction in work output because of job dissatisfaction. Ethnic cultural values play a role here too because different cultures look at business in a different way. A study in Taiwan showed that employee commitment is influenced by personal variables, managerial leadership styles, and corporate culture, in a study with a specific focus on the higher education and insurance sector in Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization (Wu, 2003). The response of academic participants in the study confirmed a link between Taiwanese social values, Confucian cultural values and academic commitment. The relationship between leadership behaviors, corporate culture and employee commitment were dependent on whether the organizations paid attention to the concerns of their employees. This showed that personal, organizational and cultural values were important in decision-making in these situations. An Australian study by Ali, Pascoe and Warne (2002) into social learning also involves the idea of

Category: Psychology - A