Developing Global Managers and Appreciating Individual Differences

Culture is important in many spheres of life. Currently, with the technological advancement, business managers need to appreciate and understand different cultures to be competitive in the business.

An individualistic culture is where people of individuals views themselves as individuals, emphasize their individual needs, and interest (Kinick and Kreitner 23). Most western countries are associated with individualistic cultures. On the other hand, collectivist cultures are where people view themselves as member of a certain group. In such culture, people do their things in a group and consider their needs and interest of a group to be of more important than individual needs. Example of cultures with such cultures is Asian countries such as China.

High context cultures are characterized with high context messages. People in these cultures, use few words in their communication but the words used convey complex messages. The groups that understand such language understand such language. On the other hand, low context language cultures tend to use languages that are easily understood and in most cases many words are used to convey general messages. Example of high context cultures includes use of technical terms for example people in a certain field of study such as physics uses complex terms that they understand. While low context languages includes daily conversations that occurs between people.

In monochromic cultures, people do one thing at a time. People in this culture are orderly and are very sensitive to time and space. They also tend to show or demonstrate a great deal for respect for private property. On the other hand, individuals who like doing multiple things at a time characterize polychromic cultures. Example of such cultures is where a manager does many things at a time such as receiving phone calls, attending to visitors, arranging for a meeting and many others.

Self-esteem is defined as general feeling of self-worth or self-value. People are proud of themselves and therefore most of them exhibit self-esteem. However, some people have a negative attitude about them hence; they develop low self-esteem (Bandura 1130). They lack self worth and therefore are not proud and confidence in themselves. Self-efficacy is the defined as a believe in oneself that you have the capability to succeed in performing a certain task. Self-efficacy, is demonstrated through a person believing and having confident to execute a certain assignment with confident. A good example is in the school environment. A student who does not believe that can write well will doubt him/herself the moment a task is assigned. This pre-judgment of not being good at writing will contribute to the student scoring low grade because of the perceived incapability. This situation can be reversed or developed into high self-efficacy through guiding, counseling, and encouragement of the student.

In social learning, individual get to learn from what they observe from others. The society and the environment play a crucial role in developing the cognitive and social traits of individuals. Therefore, people get to choose those behaviors that conform to them or which they perceive to be right and acceptable to the entire society. Therefore, self- management can be referred to as the process of selecting or adapting to behaviors that conform to an individual. From the many behaviors that are demonstrated by the society, individual through self-management has the prerogatory to choose those that he/she is comfortable with. The social learning model consists of behaviors, learning environment and innate person. Environment is where behaviors are demonstrated. Behaviors are the ways people conduct themselves and innate person is the cognitive of an individual. These three contributes to the self-management of individuals.

High self-monitoring individuals tend to monitor their actions more closely. They aspire to project positive image to the society by conforming to what the society expects of them. They behave is a manner that is highly responsive to situational context and social cues. On the other hand, low self-monitoring individuals demonstrate expressive controls. They are more concerned about their internal states than what the society projects to be right. They do not abide to the social context. High monitoring individuals are likely to be proud and seek for identity in the society while low self-monitoring may exhibit behaviors that are contrary to the expectation of the society.

Works Cited

Bandura, A. (2004). Social cognitive theory of posttraumatic recovery: The role of perceived self-efficacy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 1129-1148-630.
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. (2009). Organizational behavior: Key concepts, skills & best practices (customized 4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin. ISBN: 9780073381411.