THE ROLE OF NATIONAL CULTURE IN CHOOSING A CHANGE STRATEGY IN ORGANIZATIONS

Nebojsa Janicijevic

Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

In this paper, the causal relationship between certain dimensions of a national culture and certain organizational change strategies are analyzed. The paper uses two of the four dimensions of national culture, identified by G. Hofstede: the power distance and masculinity–femininity ones. On the other hand, the four organizational change strategies have been differentiated: the coercive strategy, the normative-re-educative strategy, the rational-empirical strategy and the creative strategy. The identified dimensions of national culture and the identified organizational change strategies differ from one another with respect to the same criteria: the distribution of power and task orientation versus people orientation. Based on this fact, it is possible to establish eight hypotheses about a causal relationship between certain types of national cultures and certain organizational change strategies.

Keywords: organizational change, national culture, organization, strategy

JEL Classification: M14