The following incident took place in a company based in South Africa and which had a Dutch management team. Those employed in the production department were black.

The general manager was pleased with the performance of the production workers, and as is usual in his own country, the Netherlands, he awarded them a bonus at the end of the year equivalent to two weeks’ wages.

The Christmas holidays came and went and the New Year started. However, none of the production workers turned up for work, even though the factory was open. Eventually, on 15 January they re-appeared.
The general manager was perplexed. What had gone wrong?

Questions

1. Why was the factory empty for the first two weeks of January?

2. Analyse the attitude of the workers using the relevant ‘culture construct definitions’ given in Table 2.7 as well as relevant data in Table 2.8 ( Chapter 2 ).

Table 2.7

Table 2.8

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Culture construct definitions Power distance: the degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally Uncertainty avoidance: the extent to which a society, organisation or group relies on social norms, rules and procedures to alleviate the unpredictability of future events Humane orientation: the degree to which a collective encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring and kind to others Collectivism 1 (institutional collectivism): the degree to which organisational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action Collectivism 2 (in-group collectivism): the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organisations or families Assertiveness: the degree to which individuals are assertive, confrontational and aggressive in their relationships with others Future orientation: the extent to which individuals engage in future-oriented behaviours such as delaying gratification, planning and investing in the future Specific questionnaire item Followers are (should be) expected to obey their leaders without question Most people lead (should lead) highly structured lives with few unexpected events Performance orientation: the degree to which a collective encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence People are generally (should be generally) very tolerant of mistakes Leaders encourage (should encourage) group loyalty even if individual goals suffer Employees feel (should feel) great loyalty towards this organisation Gender egalitarianism: the degree to which a collective minimises Boys are encouraged (should be gender inequality encouraged) more than girls to attain a higher education (scored inversely) People are (should be) generally dominant in their relationships with each other More people live (should live) for the present rather than for the future (scored inversely) Students are encouraged (should be encouraged) to strive for continuously improved performance