How Authority and Decision-Making Differ Across Cultures

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Erin Meyer, professor at INSEAD, discusses management hierarchy and decision-making across cultures. Turns out, these two things don’t always track together. Sometimes top-down cultures still have strong consensus-driven decision-making styles — and the other way around. Meyer helps break down and map these factors so that managers working across cultures can adapt. She’s the author of the article, "Being the Boss in Brussels, Boston, and Beijing" in the July-August 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
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0:15.0	Women at Work, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cash from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green-ichael.
0:32.0	Managing across cultures is about as tricky as it gets for a leader.
0:37.0	Different assumptions and blind spots can cause all kinds of confusion.
0:41.0	So for example, how much should a leader pay attention to
0:44.4	someone's rank or status and who makes the tough calls? Does the boss decide or
0:48.8	does the team hash it out together? This all depends on the culture you're working in and it turns out that even the managers
0:55.4	who are saviest at working cross culturally make a common mistake.
0:59.5	They confuse these two things, authority and decision-making styles. That's because even in
1:05.2	cultures where status is hierarchical people can decide things by consensus. Here to
1:10.7	break down these factors and explain why they're so important and often
1:14.0	misunderstood is Aaron Meyer. She's a professor at Inciad and
1:17.7	researchers doing business across cultures and she's the author of the article
1:21.6	Being the Boss in Brussels Boston and Beijing's the author of the article Being the Boss in Brussels, Boston and Beijing and the July-August-2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.
1:28.0	Aaron, thanks for coming back on the Ideacast.
1:31.0	Pleased to be here with you, Sarah.
1:34.0	So let's start by talking about authority.
1:36.9	How do different cultures deal with hierarchy?
1:40.8	Different cultures defer to authority at different levels. different cultures
	...

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