The two role-plays illustrate on how people from different cultures are dealing differently with the issue of quitting (changing their job). The first role-play described how a Portuguese employee wants to quit his job and tries to announce it to his Brazilian manager. It is however not going according to plan, as he cannot emotionally detach from the company. Finally, he ends up not quitting the job and stays in the company due to the relation he shares with the boss and the firm.
On the other hand, the second role-play describes how an American employee is dealing with the same issue. He does not have any bad feelings about quitting harshly and moving on, demonstrated by the way is communicating it to his job by literally singing and song and dancing to it.
After narrating these stories, we entered into a deeper analysis of the two respective situations. Mainly two issues were raised: firstly, the way of dealing with the issue (how); and secondly, the reason of why they want to quit their job (why).
We analyzed these elements by approaching a global management challenge that includes both problems. The human resource issue that we want to raise is the retention practices among different cultures. Indeed, they can lead to turnover if they are not managed efficiently. As Tanova and Holtom (2008) argue, from the perspective of the organization, employee turnover creates both tangible and intangible costs.
The presentation used Hofstede’s findings (1980) to structure a comparison between the cultures used in the role-plays. More specific, on one hand, individualistic cultures are compared with more collectivistic ones. On the other hand, the difference in power distance of the considered cultures also helps to identify and develop potential solutions.
Based on research of Kirkman and Shapiro (2001), there is a tendency for higher levels of collectivism to be associated with greater job satisfaction (Hui, 1996; Hui et al., 1995)
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