Managing Across Diverse Cultures in East Asia by Malcolm Warner

Author:Malcolm Warner [Warner, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415680905
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Managerial values

Managerial behaviour is influenced by managerial values. Where do these values come from? As we have seen, these include history (i.e. Japan’s role), the military and Confucianism. Thus, Korean organisations ‘… are like families as well as armies’ (Cho and Yoon, 2002: 79). In particular, Confucianism’s influence on values ‘… spilled over to the fundamental underpinnings of the Korean management system and human relationships within Korean companies’ (Song, 1997:192).

A late 1980s survey of Korean large companies showed various common core values in their vision statements (Lee, 1997). These included, for nearly one-half, inhwa, solidarity, and cooperation (46.4 per cent); and devotion and hard work (44.2 per cent) – and, for just over two-fifths, creativity and development (41.2 per cent). Other common values were: honesty and credibility (28.8 per cent); quality, technology and productivity (16.9 per cent); responsibility (16.9 per cent); progressiveness or enterprising spirit (14.3 per cent); national wealth through business (14.3 per cent); rational and scientific approach (10.4 per cent); and sacrifice and service, etc. (6.9 per cent). However, since then companies have begun to further emphasise the issues of creativity, competitiveness, diversity, customer satisfaction, value-creation, and so on.

In-group harmony is one of the most important managerial values (Chung and Lee, 1989). Korean employees, therefore, tend to respect group opinion and sometimes are even willing to keep silent about their own opinions for group harmony. For the sake of this people sacrifice their own goals for collective ones. In return, companies take care of employees and management helps subordinates

Table 8.8 Cultural influences and paradoxes in Korea

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