Culture, Self-Identity, and Work

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, Aug 12, 1993 - Business & Economics - 280 pages
A great deal of research has recently been completed on behavior and the organization of work, most of which has viewed it from an ethnocentric perspective. In this work, Erez and Earley show how this is insufficient to develop a global theory of work behavior--it necessitates the inclusion of a cultural perspective. Solidly grounding their work in the fields of psychology, management, and anthropology, the authors propose a new theoretical framework utilizing individual's self-concept as a means of linking cultural beliefs and social interaction to emergent work behavior. The book includes specific recommendations for structuring work environments and managerial processes to match cultural practices and enhance productivity in the workplace, making it an essential reference for scholars, students, and professionals.

From inside the book

Contents

1 Introduction
3
2 Cultural SelfRepresentation Theory
18
3 Cultural Frameworks
38
4 Individualism and Collectivism
74
5 Work Motivation
97
6 Culture Self and Communication
119
7 Group Dynamics
144
8 Leadership
172
9 Negotiation and Bargaining
196
10 Summary and Conclusions
217
References
235
Index
255
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 41 - Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (ie historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action.
Page 48 - A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of ''conduct or end-state of existence. A value system is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existence along a continuum of relative importance.
Page 177 - The leader is characterized by a strong drive for responsibility and task completion, vigor and persistence in pursuit of goals, venturesomeness and originality in problem solving, drive to exercise initiative in social situations, self-confidence and sense of personal identity, willingness to accept consequences of decision and action, readiness to absorb interpersonal stress, willingness to tolerate frustration and delay, ability to influence other persons' behavior, and capacity to structure social...
Page 104 - It is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.
Page 41 - On a cultural level we view the organized set of rules or standards as such, abstracted, so to speak, from the actor who is committed to them by his own value-orientations and in whom they exist as need-dispositions to observe these rules. Thus a culture includes a set of standards. An individual's valueorientation is his commitment to these standards We shall speak of three modes of value-orientation, which parallel the modes of motivational-orientation.
Page 41 - Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional [ie, historically derived and selected] ideas and especially their attached values.
Page 104 - Individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family. Collectivism as its opposite pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive ingroups, which throughout people's lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
Page 74 - Man is not unless he is social; what he is depends on his social being, and what he makes of his social being is irrevocably bound to what he makes of...
Page 48 - has a value" is to say that he has an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally and socially preferable to alternative modes of conduct or end-states of existence.

About the author (1993)

P. Christopher Earley is the Corporate Partners Research Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine and Professor of Organization Behavior at the London Business School. Miriam Erez is Dean and Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Bibliographic information