A friend of mine is a technical manager in a multinational computer software company. Last year's company restructuring means that she now directly reports to a director based in India. This has meant many changes for my friend, but the cultural adjustment that has been most challenging is that of "power distance." In the United States, managers and their subordinates have a more equal relationship, while in India businesses are typically structured with greater hierarchy and formality between bosses and their subordinates.
Power distance is a term first defined by Dutch cultural anthropologist, Geert Hofstede, who studied IBM employees based all over the world to better understand the role of cultural context in business. It is the relative distance between the top and bottom of an organization. Low-power distance cultures include the U.S., Australia and Scandinavia. High-power distance cultures include Japan, Philippines and Korea.
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