How Does Country Culture Affect Motivation Efforts

How Does Country Culture Affect Motivation Efforts

Abstract:

This thesis focuses on the influence of different country cultures on motivation by giving the definition of motivation, explaining two types of motivation, and comparing the cultural differences between China and the USA and at the same time tries to apply all the findings into human resource management in modern companies around the world. The key point of this thesis is the way country cultures affect intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.

Introduction:

With the rapid development of globalization process, the economic exchanges between different countries are increasing. Social cultures vary greatly from country to country. So the motivations can be affected distinctly in different culture. In the 21st century, the competition among enterprises has turned into human resources. Therefore the motivations of human are significant. Human Resource Management is getting more important in business nowadays, because people and their knowledge are the most important aspects affecting the productivity of the company.

1. Country culture can affect motivation:

According to web, motivation is the explanation about human behavior, such as actions, desires, and needs and which can also be defined as one's direction to behavior or the reason people repeat a behavior, which can be generally divided into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Just as its name implies, intrinsic motivation means the inner motivational stimuli of an individual. As a matter of fact, the individual has the desire to perform well during a task, because its results are in accordance with his belief system or fulfills a desire and therefore importance is attached to it. Some of our deep-rooted desires which have the highest motivational power are such like acceptance, curiosity, honor, independence, order, power, social contact, and social status, because all of us what to be valued by others and take an important place in other people’s mind, we have to get stronger and make improvements constantly and consciously. Compared with intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation simply refers to the outside motivational stimuli of an individual which means the individual’s desire to perform a task well is controlled by an outside source. The most well-known and the most debated motivation is money and whose forms could be month award, benefit package, bonuses and organized activities. No matter intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, if were well used, both of them could benefit the individual and the company he works in.

However, different countries have different cultures, which are determined by their respective geography, history, economy, and politics and so on. Those various cultures influence more or less the two types of motivation, evidence of which is showed in management of transnational corporations around the world. In the below words, such examples will be given by comparing companies in terms of culture and motivation of their employees in China and in the USA.

2. Intrinsic motivation: work attitudes

As we have mentioned before, intrinsic motivation is usually in the form of desires from the inner part of an individual, which is usually produced spontaneously. In other words, this kind of motivation is the reason why the individual takes an initiative to complete a specific task which is in the form of work attitudes in the management of companies.

Chinese companies always emphasize the importance of collectivism and pay attention to the pattern of interpersonal relationship, both of which are under the influence of traditional Chinese Confucian culture. The core of traditional Confucian culture is righteousness, used for keeping good interpersonal relationship within companies and for maintaining a steady development of society and enterprises, which is also beneficial to establish today's "people-centered" corporate culture in China. However, things can go to extremes, for example, if the company in China put too much attention on collectivism and interpersonal relationship ignoring the interests of personal people and development of the company, people there could not advance and make improvements on their work abilities, thus the company could not run well.

American business emphasizes the self-realization of personal worth and advocates individualism pursuing competition and adventure. American entrepreneurs and ordinary employees believe in the "free competition" and "equal opportunity" code of conduct, think that independence is more reliable than relying on others, the interests of the individual is supreme, and personal rights is sacred. All values, rights and obligations are from the "unique" person, therefore, self-confidence, self-esteem and self-actualization are emphasized frequently in companies and , enterprises also provide each staff opportunities to give full play to their potential and encourage personal struggle, adventure and innovation, showing strong individualistic. Besides the advantages of the company culture in American companies, it could bring some bad results, for example the tendency of money worship and vicious competition among employees.

How could we solve the problems lying in Chinese and American companies? Maybe we should learn from each other, take in the advantages of the other country’s culture, and their idea and experience of management, and train the managers and employees’ cross-cultural conscioueness.

And in the article—Motivation: New Directions for Theory, Research, and Practice(1982), Mitchell, T. R. quotes “Most organizations function under the principle of rationality.” from Scott & Hart (1979). And then, he says that the primary goal of management is to increase efficiency by getting the greatest output at the lowest cost and that therefore, any behaviors that contribute to greater efficiency will be actions that management will want to encourage. Intrinsic motivation usually urges individuals to work harder and make more improvements in work which are beneficial to the management of companies both in China and in the USA. But sometimes intrinsic motivation would cause vicious competition between employees within a company, because many people nowadays pursue success like being a wealthy man by taking shortcuts under the action of market economy. Thus we have to see the two sides of intrinsic motivation, absorb the advantages of company management both in China and in the USA and finally don’t be controlled by a utilitarian heart.