Culture and Human Resource Management

Culture and Human Resource Management
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Every business is affected by various factors that are dependent on the culture of the country where the business is located it is therefore crucial for one to do an analysis and research on the cultural background of the inhabitants of any given economic environment. This calls for human resource to consider a numbers of things in determining whether it is worth investing in a particular country or not. This paper will be looking into some of the values affecting businesses in different countries. In this case there will be a comparison between United States of America focusing on masculinity, power distance, uncertainty and individualism. There are also the implications of the differences on any business in the two countries and pitfalls that an American business may encounter while investing in Kenya.
Individualism is one of the factors to consider. This basically is the level of interdependence of members maintained by a society (Ferraro, 2010). In a community that is based on individualism, members are mostly concerned with themselves and their immediate families. The low score of individualism in Kenya shows that the society believes in hierarchy where the seniors are left to make decisions for the business. There are lots of controlled equality to groups of people. This is unlike in America where individuals are all equally represented in terms of rights. The hierarchy is there for convenience purposes only (Ferraro, 2010). This tells you that Americans unlike Kenyans are able to interact and relate with individuals they probably do not know well. This is a minus for Kenyan economy. Therefore, there is likely to be a setback in a business from America being established in Kenya.
Masculinity is another cultural dimension worth considering. It is a way of determining whether a community is driven by competition or by individuals caring one for another (Ferraro, 2010). A high score indicates masculinity while a low score is feminine. In this case, both countries are above the average with a difference of two. This is indication that American has a high advantage of Kenya in terms of business success. Employees will seek to perform better than others hence leading to high levels of production. On the other hand, in consumption everybody wants to have the best. Therefore demand for services and products is high where masculine is high. Therefore, it could be safer for an American company to invest in Kenya.
The other cultural dimension is that of uncertainty avoidance. ...