Bpm203 Construction Project Management : Assessment Answer

The paper reflects upon an understanding of Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions. It will discuss the way of how it helps to understand people and their cultures. It will focus upon one of the cultural dimensions as well discuss the results based on Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. Different cultural dimensions help an individual to deal with society by understanding their culture and behavior. Also, the Personality Type Indicator provides with the personality that is needed while working in a fast-paced organization. Therefore, the paper will evaluate an understanding of the culture as well as the behavior of others in society.

1.  Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions is considered to be a cross-cultural communication that demonstrates the impact of societal cultures on the values of its members (Khlif, 2016). Hofstede’s cultural dimensions would help me to understand my classmates and lecturers with the use of six cultural dimensions such as uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, power distance, long term/ short term orientation, indulgence/restraint and individualism/ collectivism. The dimensions explain the relationship between the behavior and values of the people (Mazanec et al., 2015). This will help me to distinguish between values, norms, and beliefs of my classmates and lecturers. One of the cultural dimensions such as uncertainty avoidance will help me to understand the cultural factors of my classmates and lecturers. Uncertainty avoidance is determined to be the extent where the members associated with the community are capable of dealing with future uncertainty without having stress. It deals with community tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. It provides with the truth of the society that shows the way to what extent a culture makes the members feel comfortable or uncomfortable in certain unstructured circumstances (Beugelsdijk, Kostova and Roth, 2017).

This particular dimension of Hofstede’s theory would help me to reduce the occurrence of unusual and uncertain situations with my classmates and lecturers. By planning and implementing specific laws and regulations to make careful changes that will help me to understand the cultural aspects of my classmates and lecturers. People who adopt this particular culture are more tolerant of change and pragmatic. Uncertainty avoidance is classified into three factors they are high uncertainty avoidance, low uncertainty avoidance, and moderate uncertainty avoidance (Degens et al., 2017). The difference in culture and behavior is the main factor that makes it difficult for an individual to interact with the members of the society. Thus, with the help of low uncertainty avoidance, it will become easier for me to communicate with my classmates and lecturers who are different than me regarding culture and behavior. It is considered to be the extent to which a community, group or organization depends on social procedures, norms, and rules to alleviate the unpredictability of future events. Low certainty avoidance will help me to communicate with others conveniently. It will help me to undertake risk based on the particular circumstances. I will be able to handle the unfavorable circumstances with flexibility. It will also help me to tolerate different behaviors and opinions of my classmates and lecturers without having any stress.  

2. After completing my graduation with a diploma, I would like to engage in an active and fast-paced job. As per Myers-Briggs Personality Type, I am very well suited for the job as it presents the fact that I possess all the qualities required for the particular job. As per Personality type indicator, I immediately react to a sudden event that takes place within the organization. This quality will help to handle the situations adequately and rapidly. I have the quality of utilizing every second for executing something good. Utilizing every minute helps an individual to have better management of the work (Bakir et al., 2015). Based on Personality type indicator I must continue the quality of never being late for the appointments and plan my actions. It can be seen that a person who wants to achieve something better in life takes advantages of every opportunity. Therefore, it is observed that I always look forward to grabbing every possible opportunity comes in my way. I acknowledged that making wise use of every opportunity will help me to get better results to attain the organizational target.

Every individual possesses some of the weaknesses that need to be changed to get better outcomes while working in an organization. Hence, I want to change some of my weaknesses such as I get influenced by my emotions as well as I execute my work in a hurry. It is observed from the Personality Type Indicator that I easily get influenced by strong emotions that will put a negative impact on my work. Therefore, in the future, I will learn a few techniques to control my emotions in the workplace. Moreover, it is noticed that executing work in hurry results into mismanagement of the working process that will bring negative outcomes (Beugelsdijk and Welzel, 2018). Hence, I will take care of not to execute the work in a hurry. Before beginning with a project, I must go through it thoroughly to get better output. While working in an organization, it is important to have better communication with the other team members and the management team. Better communication leads to better execution of the work. Hence, it becomes significant for me to change my personality of being a reserve and interacting less with others. I must communicate with the management team and other team members based on the project to have better knowledge of the project.

Conclusion:

The paper concluded by demonstrating the theory of Hofstede's cultural dimensions that help to deal with the classmates and lecturers. It also provided with the explanation of one of the cultural dimensions. It is observed that uncertainty avoidance helps an individual to understand the culture and behavior of others. The paper also aimed to discuss the personality based on the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. The Personality Type Indicator provided some of the strengths that are required while doing a fast-paced job. It also discussed a few of the weaknesses that need to be changed while working in an organization.

References:

Bakir, A., Blodgett, J.G., Vitell, S.J. and Rose, G.M., 2015. A preliminary investigation of the reliability and validity of Hofstede’s cross cultural dimensions. In Proceedings of the 2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 226-232). Springer, Cham.

Beugelsdijk, S. and Welzel, C., 2018. Dimensions and dynamics of national culture: Synthesizing Hofstede with Inglehart. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(10), pp.1469-1505.

Beugelsdijk, S., Kostova, T. and Roth, K., 2017. An overview of Hofstede-inspired country-level culture research in international business since 2006. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(1), pp.30-47.

Degens, N., Endrass, B., Hofstede, G.J., Beulens, A. and André, E., 2017. ‘What I see is not what you get’: why culture-specific behaviours for virtual characters should be user-tested across cultures. AI & society, 32(1), pp.37-49.

Khlif, H., 2016. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in accounting research: a review. Meditari Accountancy Research, 24(4), pp.545-573.

Mazanec, J.A., Crotts, J.C., Gursoy, D. and Lu, L., 2015. Homogeneity versus heterogeneity of cultural values: An item-response theoretical approach applying Hofstede's cultural dimensions in a single nation. Tourism Management, 48, pp.299-304.