Overview
The Company is a provider of business consulting, technology integration and other IT services. The company offers payment transactions, consulting and technology services, systems integration, and managed services. It also provides application management and implementing processes, information and data processing systems, and data centers. The company caters its products and services to a wide range of industries, such as transport, chemical, manufacturing, logistics, oil and gas, retail, public sector, consumer products, financial services, and healthcare institutions. The Company has a business presence in Germany, the UK and Ireland, Benelux and the Nordics, France, Central, and Eastern Europe, and North America. The Company is headquartered in Bezons, Ile-de-France, France.
Regarding diversity, The Company has created a program to address the inequities caused by these differences. Their programmes concern: gender, disability, LGBT, culture, generations. They are committed to fighting against all forms of discrimination such as those mentioned above, and for more than 10 years they have been in favor of the professional integration of people with disabilities, a dedicated team implements measures to maintain employment for employees with disabilities or who become disabled during their professional career. A women’s leadership development program has been set up in 2019. Similarly, a mentoring program for female executives by the most senior leaders within the company has been implemented worldwide. Their LGBTQI networks and their Allies provide employees with advice and shared resources to foster an inclusive work environment. it has a range of talent development programmes for its 50 employees that enable them to progress within the organization.
Hofstede Dimensions
All societies share standards, values and symbols that differ in other societies. That’s why we say they have different cultures. Among the studies of cultural differences, it is essential to use Hofstede. Hofstede showed that people share characteristics at the regional and national level. These characteristics affect their behavior and are maintained over time. These are cultural models, cultural dimensions.
These dimensions are distance from power, individualism against collectivism, masculinity against femininity, avoidance of uncertainty, and short-term orientation against long-term orientation and indulgence. All cultural dimensions have two poles. Companies can more or less focus on each of them, so their characteristics will be different, and their behavior will be different.
Regarding The Company, I chose to compare France and the United States, because in France there are the headquarters and nearly a dozen companies and the United States are second only to France. also, these two cultures are very different, and this is what the cultural dimensions of Hofstede show us. First, what is most striking are the spider webs that are completely different, which is also why I found the comparison of the two countries interesting.
Power distance
We can observe that the Americans with 40 points, favor decentralized organizations, when they are given a minimum of autonomy at work. Unlike French people with 68 points, who prefer to be mentored by their superiors.
Individualism
On individualism, the two countries agree despite a 20-point gap, it anticipates collectivism, even if the Americans prefer group work to the French, the French also like this feeling of belonging and working together.
Achievement
As we can see, France is at 43 points while the United States is at 62 points. This shows some differences in the orientation of the two cultures, in France companies are more focused on masculinity, social gender roles are clearly distinct, challenge, earnings, recognition and advancement are important. Competition is also present between employees, performance and results are the key words. A quality life-oriented company is characterized by support between colleagues, employees get along well with each other, they make sure that there is a good atmosphere at work. Cooperation, modesty, service, and compromise are valued.
Certainty
In terms of certainty, the results are opposite, with the United States, with 46 points, having more tolerance regarding future uncertainty in relation to the company. While France, with 86 points, is far from liking uncertainty, companies try to plan everything so that there are no bad surprises.
Time orientation
For tile orientation, the two cultures are still not on the same wavelength, France with 63 points is more focused on the short term, i.e., it is rather conservative, preferring to maintain traditions, and well-established norms, while considering social change with suspicion. with the United States it is a different story, with only 26 points, they favor long-term orientations, which means, they are more future-oriented, they prepare the future by investing in modern education for example. Persistence, perseverance, thrift, and adaptability are the main qualities of the long-term orientation.
Indulgence
For the latter, only 20 points of difference are seen. This means that France, with 48 points, has more of a culture of indulgence than the Americans. This means that in France one can do as one pleases, spend money or do leisure activities with friends or alone. Whereas in the US, actions are more limited, there are rules and restrictions to be respected. doing activities that make you happy are somewhat frowned upon.
Outcome
Despite the efforts made by the company in recent years, several problems were reported to me by the interviewee. Firstly, the problem of gender equality in engineering, it is that in France, gender equality at work is far from being a battle won in advance, despite the efforts of the company, we note that the total workforce of the company is mainly made up of men.
There is also a problem of understanding about different religions, especially about food, which is not going to be suitable for everyone. For example, for people of Muslim faiths who have a different meat diet to non-believers. Also, staying about food, Pakistanis don’t eat meat on Fridays and the company cafeteria has not taken this into account. During Ramadan, there was no awareness, nothing was put in place.
A recurring problem in all companies, the language barrier, obviously, everyone speaks English, however, some things can only be expressed in the mother tongue and do not have the same meaning in different languages. Therefore, there can be misunderstandings between people, which can create problems within the company.
The possibility of climbing the ladder is one of the problems noted to date, there is a sort of barrier/filter to climb the hierarchy, cultural differences can be an obstacle to the ascent of certain people. it is always the same cultures that manage to have important positions, with greater responsibilities. there are therefore inequalities linked to the origin of the employees as well as to gender, a woman will have less chance of accessing such a position Last but not least, the company organizes weekly afterwork sessions to strengthen cohesion between employees. However, the afterwork is done in bars, and some employees, due to their religion or beliefs, are not allowed to drink alcohol. As a result, they are somewhat segregated from the others because of their personal beliefs.
Possible solutions
In order to overcome all these adaptation problems, the company can put in place various solutions, so that the working environment is pleasant for everyone, and all employees are considered. To address gender, cultural and other differences. The Company can promote diversity in hiring: focus recruitment on skills, characteristics and personality traits as opposed to other factors such as gender, origin, age, or disability. Requiring the recruiter to remain neutral when recruiting, and possibly doing blind recruiting. About wages, given that there are several gender inequalities, such as accessibility to certain positions or in the sector itself, the company should promote pay equity: by reducing pay gaps between similar positions if the reasons for these gaps are not justified. This also applies to cultural differences. As regards religious people, who must be a certain number in this type of company, a consideration on the part of the leaders would not be too much. For example, for Ramadan, no message was transmitted in the company, so the people practicing it were somewhat excluded during this month of fasting. to remedy this, the company could send a message by e-mail or make a small campaign to warn everyone and so that this kind of situation does not happen again. Similarly, for people who have a special diet, surveys should be distributed among employees to know the demand, and the prohibitions of each. The language barrier, an omnipresent problem in a multicultural company, to remedy communication/understanding problems, HR could organize a short training course to facilitate exchanges between cultures, and to better understand the people they work with. The last solution I could omit is about after works, which is at first a good initiative of superiors to promote cohesion, however some cannot get there because it happens in a bar. instead, they could organize after works during the day, and organize group activities, such as football matches, workshops of all kinds, seminars, shows, etc. The more varied the choice of activities, the fewer people will be excluded.
Authors
Laporte Emma (linkedin)
Student: international management , Kozminski university
Block 4, Semester 2, 2022