Cultural Dimensions (Asynchronous Session)
Symptoms of Tobephobia Impacting Job Behavior
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Prakash Singh
Research affirms that tobephobia (TBP) is the fear of failure (FF) that can impact the job behavior of any employee. Symptoms of TBP can be prevalent in any working environment, at any time. Symptoms of TBP such as anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and depression can either be expressed overtly by employees, or be suppressed, for fear of embarrassment or humiliation by their coworkers and employers. The target population for this research comprised teachers who were selected using convenience sampling based on their accessibility and availability. Three-hundred-and-eleven respondents completed the questionnaire. This represented a return rate of 92.8% from a total of 335 distributed questionnaires. The focus of this paper was on the section of the structured questionnaire that listed forty-nine symptoms. Participants identified fourteen symptoms which impacted their job behavior most. These responses were classified as either intrapersonal or interpersonal symptoms. For example, 95.8% of the participants thought that stress, as an intrapersonal symptom, strongly impacted their job behavior. The results suggested that participants perceived the symptoms of TBP had permeated and consequently, impacted their job behavior. Internal consistency was examined using Cronbach’s alpha, which resulted in a value of 0.98, well above the recommended value of 0.7. Evolving from this study is a generic framework of the symptoms of TBP that can be used to address the emotions and the FF of employees. This framework can function as a foundation for future research in different organizational contexts. Findings of this research can be used to improve organizational policies and practices.
Creating Culture for a Disruptive Evolutionary Time: Developing Adaptive DNA View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laurie Yates
We must leapfrog ahead to explore the type of cultural design that is needed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an era of rapid and continual transformation. The future of organizations, communities, teams, and leaders must evolve. Most are stuck in the current paradigm, unable to see the shift to a more self-organizing, adaptive world. Organizational cultures will become the catalyst for reinventing how organizations, societies, and members function. Taking cues from the natural world and adaptive DNA, new cultural characteristics emerge. Complexity Theory and complex adaptive systems are introduced to illustrate how and why this organic model can work. Innovation, self-organization, and adaptation emerge as means by which responsibility and problem solving are driven downward. This is an environment in which learning, innovation, connections, and adaptive capacity are present. This work builds on the existing body of scholarship on culture but expands on it to include a scan of the external environment created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The project is founded on an extensive literature review and critical reappraisal of established theory. A theoretical reconceptualization of proposed cultural properties follows. Relationships set the stage for a cultural environment in which people closest to the problem, or who are most passionate about it, can lead change. They inspire and ignite innovative ideas, increasing adaptive capacity. The journey ahead almost certainly requires navigation of turbulent waters but, armed with a reimagining of organizational culture, we can also envision exciting and ennobling possibilities for the future.
Disability Culture in the Museum Context: Representational Issues and the Need to Move Away from Stereotyped Depictions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Berube Patricia
What impact does the cultural model of disability have on the way we acknowledge and address representational issues in organizations? Also, how do these representational issues materialize in disability imagery and art? For some, the binary between disabled and non-disabled seems to be transposed to the museum context in the form of a dominant culture (or ‘disabling culture) vs. a disability culture. As such, one of the observations that can be made is that the portraiture of disability is often either ignored, or stereotyped. While museums have always played a role in the social triage of its visitors, the role of the representational critique, along with the amazing work carried by curatorial activists (such as Amanda Cachia), are representative of a need for change.
Bridging the Cultural Gap in the Process of Learning External Business Knowledge: Four Cases of Japanese Organizational Learning to Be Competitive View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yayoi Hirose
This study focuses on how Japanese people learn new business knowledge generated in different cultures. After World War II, Japanese companies had drastically grown based on low cost by introducing Anglo-American companies’ technology. But now, their cost has become higher and they need to transform their business model from catching up with Anglo-American companies to creating new idea by collaborating with Anglo-American companies. In order to do so, Japanese companies started introducing Anglo-American business learning methods which enable business people to generate new ideas by actively participating in discussions. However, these methods were developed based on Anglo-American cultural assumptions, such as individualism and a low-context culture. As Japanese people grew up in a different culture which values collectivism and a high-context culture, it is hard to understand Anglo-American business knowledge. Based on qualitative interviews, the study analyzes cultural impediments and enablers generated from this cultural gap and discusses how these factors affected their learning. This result implies that in order to learn business knowledge generated in different cultural values, it is not enough to simply introduce the knowledge and business learning methods, because cultural gap negatively affects learners’ understanding and learning. The research result will support solving the problems of Japanese companies which aim to globalize their ideas and take alliance with Anglo-American companies. The research is expected to bridge the cultural gap in knowledge transfer and activate strategic alliances between organizations which have different values.
