Managing multinationals - international cultural issues u7 p118

Conflict arising from differences in cultural styles can be made worse by people's ignorance of such differences. People tend to react adversely to behaviour that is culturally different to their own, and they also tend to interpret the behaviour of others by their own cultural standards.
There are examples of different attitudes to control systems in box 5.8 p120 u7

Hofstede's four core cultural dimensions (1980) u7 p121

Power distance - the extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organisations is distributed unequally
Uncertainty avoidance - the level of anxiety in a society when faced with unstructured or ambiguous situations
Individualism vs collectivism - individualists take care of themselves and their immediate families only, collectivists remain emotionally integrated into in-groups which protect them in exchange for loyalty
Masculinity or femininity - masculine societies have strongly differentiated gender roles, whereas femine have overlapping gender roles. Tough vs supportive.

1 and 2 above are most relevant at organisational level, 3 and 4 most relevant at personal level.

 Woolsey et al carried out an analysis into the gulf between Asian and Western notions of industries and markets. For example, Westerners assume that social relations in a market lead to price fixing and other collusion. Western capitalism dictates that economic actors are kept apart.

Asian economies are organised through social networks and have institutions that encourage and maintain ties between people.

The role of the state is crucial to understanding management accounting and control in developing economies, as it is normally the major source of capital, controlling a large proportion of GDP and employment opportunities. Here, account must be taken of the interaction between subcultures and family sub-units, ethnic groups and status systems. Example cited by Hopper et al (2003) of a mine in Ghana where conflicts over rewards occurred between miners and office workers from different ethnic groups.

It is not a valid assumption that western norms of legal rationality will prevail in developing nations, or that decisions are based on collective goals, appointments are made on merit and that employees accept the hierarchy of authority. In many countries loyalty may lie with familym village, ethnic or religious group in precedence to employer.