Relations between National and Organisational Culture—Case Study

Abstract

Management science focuses on organisational culture. This reflection also applies to the broadly understood cultural context, as organisations operate in specific places and at specific times. As entrepreneurs enter foreign markets, there is a need to deepen their knowledge of cultural aspects, which results in the possibility to generate practical guidelines for shaping organisational culture in a different cultural environment. The article assumes that out of four elements conditioning organisational culture—type of environment, type of organisation, features of organisation and features of participants—two of them, type of environment and features of its participants, are the basic ways to organisational culture, by means of which the organisational culture is permeated by artefacts, values and basic assumptions, characteristic of national cultures. This permeation is exemplified by organisations from the same industry, having the same top management but functioning in different cultural environments. The study was conducted with the use of the multiple, exploratory and explanatory case study method. It consisted of three stages: The first stage included literature analyses (analyses of secondary data and legacy data), which aimed to determine the features of two cultures—Polish and Ukrainian. At the second stage, the authors conducted pilot studies among the representatives of the Polish and Ukrainian national culture. At the third stage, the organisational cultures of companies operating in the environment of the Polish and Ukrainian culture were surveyed. The research sample included 590 people. The authors based their studies on the Milton Rokeach Values Scale and an author’s tool, in which Hofstede’s concept of cultural dimensions. The statistical analysis involved the nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test.