1.1 Background
According to professional diagnostic and analysis reports (Muhammad, 2015), major problems in a company are always related to human resource management. Even if it is a good company with great operational system, it doesn’t always have spectacular outcome and performance. The main reason why this phenomenon emerges for almost every company eventually is because of internal management affairs within organizations.
More specifically, these reasons are mostly because of differences in culture, religions, and ethnic groups among employees. Within these reasons, culture is the most common and sophisticated one. Most of these cultural reasons are addressed as cultural impact or cultural difference among company management level.
Cultural impact is mostly referred as the influence that can be brought by indifference between two cultures which can happen at different cultural levels. For instance, a famous novel series from country A may affect readers’ perspectives from country B; or a unique cuisine from country B may affect gourmets’ tastes from country A.
In other words, cultural impact is simply describing anything that comes one place to another new place where it doesn’t exist.
According to Collings (2009), basic human resource management regulation, fully-trained employees should possess adequate ability to knowledge to fulfill their jobs’
obligation and company objective with team work spirit. If the employees are not sophisticated enough to endure differences (culture, region, religions and ethnic groups) with other coworkers, then the employees are not well-prepared. If the employees are not well-prepared, which also mean the decline of jobs satisfaction and then the company performance is going to lead to catastrophic consequence.
Cultural Orientations Approach (COA), one of the world’s leading culture consulting company, officially categorized culture into six general levels: (1) National, (2) Organizational, (3) Identity Group, (4) Functional, (5) Team, (6) Individual. National culture mostly deals with awareness of cultural dynamics and patterns by nationality. It is particularly relevant for (a) entrance of a new market, (b) cross-border division of labor, (c) international outsourcing relationships. Organizational culture focuses on the
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experience of cultural dynamics within an organization. This is especially relevant for global organizations and those involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Identity group culture is used for analyzing the diversification of society by gender, generation, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and other social groups; it is particularly relevant for workforce diversity and talent management concerns. Functional culture is mostly used for addressing cross-functional effectiveness, based on the cultures created by specific business units.
Cross-functional or management teams concentrate on functional cultures and leverage their differences cautiously, which bridge the distinct cultural differences across their constituent units. Team culture is only apparent when management teams develop a distinct identity and culture. To effectively build such teams in global and matrixed organization, an understanding of how to collaborate in complex and dynamic situations is essential.
Individual culture is like the "building blocks" of culture that are present in both intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics. An understanding of this level is critical for successfully addressing the concerns at any level of culture. The relationship
between these six levels is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Coherent relationship between six levels of culture Source: Cultural Orientation Approach (2016)
Culture
National
Organizati onal
Identity group
Functional Team
Individual
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1.2 Research motivation
As I mentioned in previous section, there are many factors that may cause the personnel management problems, such as morale, friends, family, culture, nationalities, religion, and ethnic groups. Among these factors, culture is more common one in terms personnel management issues. Cultural impact may affect employees’ job satisfaction which may lead to downgrade of companies’ performance. Since employees’ satisfaction determines company performance, this has been a major reason of loss for most of the companies in the world. Taiwan is one of these countries which have encountered countless cultural impact cases due to expedition of many foreign companies. Therefore, this is the main reason why I choose the cultural impact on employees’ satisfaction for my study.
Exemplified cases are expats who work in Taiwan. For instance, Jenna Cody, an expat who has lived in Taiwan for more than ten years, shared her working experience (Quora.com) insulating that the working hours in Taiwan are longer than expected and there is this rule called “I can't go home until the boss does so as to prove my loyalty”. In order for foreign employees in Taiwan to apprehend as many cultural impacts as possible, personnel management level employees need to perceive the cultural impact on employees’ job satisfaction, such as expatriates’.
1.3 Research purpose
In recent years, globalization has become a fundamental strategy for most of the firms on this world. The first obstacle of this strategy is cultural impact among the employees who work in foreign countries. Therefore, it is very important that a company can have adequate human resource management system which may reduce the conflict between different culture, regions, gender, and ethnic groups. As mentioned in previous section, this study focuses on culture and its influence on employees’ job satisfaction.
The purpose of my study is focusing on possible method to conduct better working environment and relationship among employees from different countries working in Taiwan. By doing so, employees may have better jobs satisfaction which also directly affects the company performance. I have to gather opinions and experience from people who worked in foreign countries before they worked in Taiwan. My approach would be qualitative interview which may help me to find out more in-depth personal experience and
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unambiguous perspective from the interviewees. In other words, I would like to find out what kinds of cultural impacts take places for foreign employees in Taiwan? And if possible, I would also like to know how these cultural impacts affect their job satisfactions.
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