NORTH AMERICA

In this blog I will explain the main characteristics of the American culture, trough some codes and trough the American Football metaphor

THE CODES

These codes are going to try to explain some of the fundamentals archetypes in American culture giving us a glimpse of why they do the things they do. These codes are the code for America, the code of work and money, and the code of quality and perfection.

For America

In this code, Americans see themselves as new, as adolescents; they say the only ancient things are the forests and canyons. They are always renewing, preferring to destroy things rather than preserve them.

Also the sense of size pervades in American culture. They are the masters of the macro-culture; they want everything in abundance, from their homes to their meals.
Another thing about America is that one can find diversity and unity. They have a great variety of landscape that changes dramatically across countries. They have the rocky coast, wide plains, expanses, concrete cities, and on the other hand you can find the same kind of things in all this places, the same Starbucks, the same Holly Day Inn, and the same Mc Donald.

The American cultural code for America is DREAM: of the explorers, of the entrepreneurs, of the immigrants, of the new explorers. For them also the constitution is a dream, a dream for a better society. Disney, Hollywood, and the internet were created to project Americans dreams to the world. They consider themselves as the product of dreams and as makers of dreams
Their notion of abundance is also a dream is the dream if limitless opportunities. Their need of constant movement is a dream in which they can do always more, always create and accomplish. Even their cultural adolescence is a dream, a dream in which they believe they are going to be always young and that they never have to grow up.
They have become the most powerful, the most influential culture, because they believe in the power of dreams. They have raise again after the Great Depression because of the Dream of the New Deal, and also raise back up from the 1970’s crisis because they believed in the dream of the new America of Reagan administration.
Remaining on code means supporting their dreams. They want to encourage people to have big ideas, to take risks, and to learn of their mistakes. They want to promote reinvention and starting over. This is American primarily mission, to keep the dream alive.

Work and Money

From the very begging of American culture their approach to work is to work hard, earn money and not resting. For Americans, work wasn’t simply something you did to make a living or because you have to do it. Even if they don’t want their work, it had a much powerful dimension, a life- defining dimension.
The American culture code for work is WHO THEY ARE: when you ask an American what she does for living, you are really asking who she is. They believed that they are what they do in their jobs. When they are unemployed they get depressed but not because they don’t have to pay their bills, but rather they think that if they are doing nothing they are nobodies. Even a billionaire still works sixty hour a week because he needs constant affirmation of who he is.
They also believed that they never have to be stuck in what you do. It is possible to be happy doing the same job for thirty years, but only if the job provides consistent changes. But if the work they do don’t provide them with the sense of who they are, it preferable to seek something else.
There is also an important connection between work and money in the American culture, and although we saw that they don’t work to make money, rather to feel they are somebody, it’s significant as well.
Money reminds them that their “business is a good one”, that they have work hard to get something, that they can carry their burdens, that they are appreciated, and that they are moving up to the next level. Not having money make them feel like if they were in a hole.
The American Culture Code for money is PROOF: this code shows that money isn’t a goal for most Americans. On the contrary it shows that they are good in what they do, and that they have true value in the world. Money is the barometer of success, if someone is doing a similar job, and the other person is making more money, unconsciously they believed that she or he is doing a better job.
Another important issue to take into account about Americans is that they are the most charitable people in the world, and according to their competition about who earns more money they also have a competition of who makes the largest donations.
Work is essentially part of who they are and they just want a chance to prove themselves and receive tangible evidence that they have succeed.

Quality and Perfection

The culture Code of Quality is IT WORKS: Americans have a simple and clear quality demand for their products. They need to work. They just need to make it sure that things operates the way it was supposed to.
The culture code of perfection is DEATH. The perfect car would be useless to Americans, because they wouldn’t have the excuse that their old car doesn’t work well enough anymore and they need to change it. Therefore the plan obsolescence, in which many manufacturers employ on building things that needs to be replaced in a relatively short period of time, is on Code with the American Culture.
Because Americans associate perfection with death, they don’t expect anyone to make the perfect product; they expect them to break down, but companies want to learn about their mistakes and continue improving. However, because the code of quality is it works, they expect problems to be resolved quickly and with a minimum of disruption. For Americans great service is more important than great quality.

The American Football: individualism and competitiveness specialization, huddling.

The American football is an appropriate metaphor to describe American culture and the manner in which business is practice by Americans. This sport captures many of the central values, beliefs and ideals of America society, and has progressively become an integral component of its community. The peculiar speed, the constant movement, the high degree of specialization, the consistent aggressiveness, and the intense competition in football, all typify the American culture.

Individualism and Competitiveness Specialization

Equality of opportunity, independence, initiative, and self-reliance are some values that have remain as basic American ideals through history. All of these values are expressive of a high degree of individualism. As a matter of fact, according to Hoftade’s (1991) 53 -nation study of cultural values, the United States ranks first on individualism. Those same ideals have been in professional football and have been so over the years.
Another important characteristic to take into account is the competitive specialization, which appears to be the most evident aspect of America. The notion of specializing to compete is the principal ideological ideal that Americans adhere to practice, safeguard and promote worldwide. Competitive specialization is the tool with which Americans tend to undertake in life’s main challenges. This tool is often serviced and maintain with high levels of emotional intensity and aggressiveness.
Competition seems to be more than a mean to an end in America and has apparently become a major goal. Just as over a half of the rules and regulations in professional football deal with protecting and enhancing competition in the league, so too in American antitrust laws and regulations are essentially created to safeguard competition and equality of opportunity for individual and groups.

Huddle

Another characteristic that represent the American football is the huddle (how offensive teams gather together before each play to call a certain plan into action). In the huddle there are different players from diverse backgrounds and with various levels of education. All have agreed that the only way to accomplish certain task is to put differences aside and cooperate objectively to achieve certain goal. After the game every player returns to his own world, living his own life in his own unique way. That is the essence of melting pot, a diversify group of people who forget their differences temporarily to achieve a common goal.
The huddling is necessarily in most American groups and organizations in order to handle their problems and achieve their objective. Although the huddle is quite different form many other countries. For example the Japanese normally socialize with coworkers after work and if major problem occurs they will sometimes go off-site for a drink, a dinner, informal friendship and finally discussion of the problem at hand and how to address it. Periodically they will repeat such sessions until the long-term problem is solved. Americans on the other hand, tend to huddle together in business meetings specifically to address and solve the problem at hand, after which they disperse to complete their other work-oriented activities. If additional meeting are necessary, they are normally conducted in the same way.
Americans tend to believe that any problem can be solved, as long as the solution process comprises a specific number of steps to follow and questions to answer. Likewise in football, no matter how complicated a situation may be, teams are convinced that they can overcome the complexities through a standardized planning process

Rapaille, Clotaire. The culture code: an ingenious way to understand why people around the world buy and live as they do. New York: Broadway books, 2006. 208p.

Gannon J., Matin (2007). Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 29 Nations, Clusters of Nations, Continents, and Diversity, Fourth Edition. Chapter 16. Pgs 205-219.

"The HP Way"

The proposed case study for this module illustrates the importance of organisational culture in the context of the USA It also enables the reader to understand the strong relationship between national and organisational culture.
Based on the class presentations and the assigned case study, please answer the following questions:
1. List and explain 3 strategies used by HP in order to develop and sustain a strong organisational culture - "The HP Way".
3 of the strategies used to develop and sustain the HP organizational culture are:
1. Participative management style: in which they support individual freedom and initiative while emphasising unity of purpose and teamwork
2. Selection of new recruits: they recuit people who either share or can easily adapt to the HP company's values. There is an emphasis on adaptability and cultural ‘fit’ with HP and, once employed by the company, all employees were offered some degree of job security.
3. Formal and informal communication: communication of the company's values also helped to transmit and maintain its corporate culture. They implemented the ‘open door’ principle in which every employee had the right to seek advice from, and be counseled by, any member of HP management, concerning any personal or job related problem.
The company also encouraged informal communication through ritual coffee breaks and ‘Beer Busts’, where managers and employees came together and got to know each other and discussed projects and problems together.

2. By 2001, Carly Fiorina was facing a huge dillemma in terms of organisational culture. "Should Fiorina try to revitalize the HP way or attempt to replace it with a “better” culture than the one established by Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett in the 1940’s?". Explain your answer.
I do think that if the “HP way” has been working for so many years, I don’t consider it is necessary to change it. Many of the people that has been working there and are used to work with that culture won’t accept this kind of transformation and as the case said “a small number of HP middle managers elected to leave during 1999 and 2000, and also a number of long-standing employees begun to worry about the erosion of the HP Way, the revered corporate tradition of employee support and innovation. Even an anonymous HP employee, cited by Hamilton (2000) said:
‘The HP Way works and has seen us through difficult periods on the past. We must be careful that principles that this company was founded are not destroyed in the pursuit of short- term gains or cost-cutting to ramp up the company’s share price.’*

*Forster, Nick. 2002. “Managing excellence through corporate culture: the HP way” The Management Case Study Journal 2(1): 13-25.