Bridging Culture Worldwide

By Don Southerton, Editor

We’ve received some great feedback on the 3 Korea Facing hierarchy articles…. hope you enjoy, too.

To subscribe, go to 
http://forms.aweber.com/form/24/175507524.htm

Don
This is really interesting stuff and is helping to give me a valuable insight into the working culture of my Korean colleagues.

Thank you.

…love your Korea Facing educational newsletters, it is really a great and easy way to get the basics so that you want to know more….

Great pieces!

Hi Don,

This information is very timely

Aloha Don,
Again, great points! I liked Part 3.

Like today’s organizations in America, Korean organizations are also presented with the internal challenge of bringing multi-generational employees together to create harmony and cohesiveness.  Individuals from each generation, such as traditionalist, baby boomer, generation X, or generation Y, bring divergent values, beliefs, attitudes, and expectations based on their pivotal experiences and events that portrait both personal and societal backgrounds.  These multi-generational terms may be not used exactly the same in Korea, but the challenges that Korean organizations face at the moment caused by the gap between different generations are virtually the same. 

Individuals of each generation group were born and grew up in the same time period which allows them to witness/participate in common historical events such as political and economic changes.  For this reason, individuals with shared experience have an easier time building bonds and working together in harmony rather than working with individuals from different generation groups.  The particular characteristics of each generation group deeply influence how employees think about many aspects of organizational behavior such as motivation, satisfaction, creativity, innovation, loyalty, commitment, and team work.  This accentuates the importance of understanding those distinctive characteristics of each generation group in order to engender successful outcomes while working with the multi-generational workforce in an organization. 

In my opinion, this type of issue should be dealt at the top management level rather than middle or lower level management for more satisfying outcomes.  As the middle managers noted, they are fearful of losing opportunities to get promoted or even losing jobs by provoking their superiors and subordinates in a negative way.   Expecting them to make a difference in their views and behaviors without getting full support from top management may have a very little bearing on acquiring successful outcomes.

Change is not easy, but feasible as long as transformative leadership is practiced by every single member of an organization from top to bottom.

Thank you for sharing and allowing me to contribute my two cents!

Jennie  

Chunghea  (Jennie) Oliver shares that she grew up during the wild days as South Korea sought to shed its image as the Hermit Kingdom and to engage the hyper-modern world of global business as an engine of technologic wonder and manufacturing excellence. She travelled to the Philippines and to America to study, work, and discover a life for herself.

Along the way, Chunghea has earned degrees in both business and education, which culminated in her successful defense of an interdisciplinary dissertation looking at the question of cultural competence and second language acquisition in order to complete the Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership offered by Argosy University/Hawaii.