Working in the area of process management always involves a number of different people- and the more international a company gets, the more cultures are involved in one process. The question that comes to mind is: do different cultures follow processes to varying degrees? And if so, what are the relevnat factors related to this question?
What are your thoughts on this topic?
I am currently conducting a study in this area and I would be interested in your opinion and experience :)
ooooh, this is a truly interesting topic. From a cultural perspective some cultures are more task oriented (anything to get the job/task done, often found in north-western europe (NL, G, Scandinavia) or the US) and others are more relationship-oriented (latin america, southern europe and middle east for example). This distinction does imply that the way people in these different orientation also look at processes in a different way. Now, I don't want to make this too big a deal here, but of course there are differences in the way people in the different orientations will work with processes.
People in a task-oriented culture might be deviating from processes quicker if they think it will enhance their chances of getting a task/job done. In the relationship-oriented cultures the adherence to the up-front agreed upon process probably will be greater.
In the end, I do believe that one of the most important factors for the adherence to a process still is the magnitude to which the people executing the process understand the WHY of the process and their specific tasks.
Just my two cents... I would be very interested in the results of your study obviously
Good luck with tha and regards,
Caspar