ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR:
Practices’ Comparison
Costa Rica versus United States

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. Henry Ford
When talking about organizational behavior the first thing that comes to my mind is the best fashion to integrate people to a “group” with the goal of achieving the best results for the institution behind that group, and simultaneously creating the correct atmosphere to make it happen. As explore on the Ford’s phrase above; reaching success impose a challenge, because cohesion and willingness have to come first. My thinking about organizational behavior is not that “off” from the scholar definition: “Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving and organization’s effectiveness.” (Robbins, page 10).
Organizational Behavior embrace many thematic areas that are directly related to the core structure of any organization such Communication, Leadership, Motivation, Diversity and Teams. A good understanding of those aspects will offer a competitive advantage to any professional entering the labor force. Thus, I would like to synthesize the learnings from the organizational behavior course taken at UCSD extension. More than homework this document is a practical tool to review and reinforce those concepts. The best alternative to really gasp a new concept is to compare and related it to something you already know, something you are already familiar with. Therefore, I would like to explore this paper with an intimate approach by observing and comparing my own country’s views to the prevailing ones in the US spectrum. ). I have been fortunate to experience work environment in both; Unites States society as well as Costa Rican society and in addition both experiences were develop within the same industry: Hospitality. That gives me enough leverage to formulate strong perspectives of both regions.
“No individual, group or organization can exist without sharing meaning among its members… in communication that meaning must also be understood. The communication must include both the transfer and the understanding of meaning” (Robbins, page 336). As exposed before, communication has intrinsic value for expressing and understanding meaning and ideas. Therefore clear communication is necessary at all levels of any organization. Latin countries in general tends to have a very simple an informal communication structure within a business organization while US cultural communication and organizational decision has the tendency of what I call “by the book”, where most things are restricted under a tide system of rules. In my experience US managers are much more aware of searching proper ways of distributing information for their teams and following structural procedures for action. An example can be the one on one interaction among colleagues in Costa Rica where jokes involving sarcastic notions of racism, sex and minorities are part of the daily routine and not just that but working information can be transmitted in humoristic and informal ways. In US a simple joke can be consider harassment of some sort and therefore should be out of the working professional atmosphere. Out of experience I have seen a big difference between the two patterns; I would not say that one worked better than the other one. They are just different.
In regards of leadership a study run by Center for Creative Leadership on 2012 found ”how different cultures conceptualize outstanding leaders… leader effectiveness is contextual, that is, it is embedded in the societal and organizational norms, values, and beliefs of the people being led. In other words, for a leader to be effective, the time-tested adage applies: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Culturally Unites States is seen by many other nations as a cutting edge model for business development and as a consequence the higher education level applies the most up to date standards, giving to the new professionals all necessary tools to succeed in the business world. From my point of view leaders in US are nurture from the beginning and they are learning by observing strong companies conquer the market with driven blazing determination, competitiveness, innovation, full decisiveness and new outside the box smart thinking. Therefore those characteristics are a “must have” for leaders performing within US grounds. On the other Costa Rica higher education school system is more systematic and less edgy. Professional’s early experiences are still rooted to the basic notions of hard working and value system. These ideas are part of the leader’s mentality and one’s culture along with conservative risk taken actions. Been able to see the insides of both school systems is a very valuable experience because looking at the big picture the school’s job is forming the future leaders. There is an additional interesting finding from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) study. They concluded that “there are also some leader characteristics that are universally endorsed across all the societies: People want their leaders to be trustworthy, just, honest, decisive, and so forth. However, how these traits are expressed and enacted may still be noticeably different from society to society. CCL added valuable examples that in despite of been outside our area of analysis are worth to mention: “…for a leader to be described as decisive in the U.S., he or she is expected to make quick and approximate decisions. In contrast, in France or Germany, being decisive tends to mean a more deliberate and precise approach to decision-making.”
The definition for motivation says: “… processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal” Out of that, the main component to gasp is the fact that intensity, direction and persistence are linked together. The intensity and persistence that a person may apply towards an objective can’t do any good if that objective isn’t channeled in the right direction (Robbins, page 202). The ultimate goal for any organization is find the common ground where the individuals and the organization share values and believes that are meaningful for both, that is the ultimate motivator or trigger factor and it is call job engagement. From personal experiences I can truly say that I found a very high job engagement level in both of the last companies I experienced: Costa Rica with the Four Seasons Resort and in US with The Grand del Mar. They both make a big deal about sharing their believes among employees in all the levels of the organization. I am sure that both of my former employers where one way or another, very much aware of a theory call “Golden Circle” presented by Simon Sinek. He says that all the great companies, organizations and leaders think, act and communicate from the inside to the outside. They start with the “Why” of things rather than the “How” or the “What” Purpose and believes needs to come first and then people follow you. It is all about finding the people who believe what you believe. If a company hires people driven by the same believe as the organization’s core structure then; the company will have people working with sweat and tears rather than people working for just a salary (Fritzenkotter). So, motivation from my view point is that there is not a real differentiation between US and Costa Rica. Motivation is subjective to the needs, values and believes of individual and the organization. However I also think that there is an additional player into the game: the soil/country where an individual and a company are interacting. The combination of political stability, profitable economy and peaceful/security atmosphere invites to be motivated and energized. In this area Costa Rica shows a statistical advantage of been ranked as the happiest place to live in (CNN online) especially if we compare it to US which rank among the hundred places.
Diversity. Costa Rica has a long trajectory of welcoming many US companies to develop side branches in the country. Therefore the country is quite familiar with diverse working places. It is also important to mention that in general in Latin America “there is great emphasis on respecting human dignity. People always take time to greet one another with a show of genuine pleasure, asking after their health and family. …Interpersonal relations are seldom tense or unpleasant. To a much larger degree than in the United States, for example, interpersonal relations in Latin America are predictable and follow the comforting format of a courtly dance.” (Osland, 1999). Now that we established ground for those two facts, what do you think could happen when diversity exist in the costarican working place? Yes, there is the obvious such language barriers, cultural approaches, etc that impose a challenge for the smooth operation of a company, but on the same page it opens doors for improvement by learning insights of the different cultures at stake. Then, it benefits the company’s overall understanding of otherwise, unknown markets. I would like to bring up an example from my previous job as Concierge at a Four Seasons Resort. One of our front desk managers was a young female from Spain. Her strong willed at the time of delegate work load was seen as “bossy” and extremely authoritative from many of my peers. That situation created friction between the team that eventually reached the HR department. On the other hand the same manager was very handy and helpful when it came to analyze the affairs of our European guest. She was able to relate to then in a very personal and caring way creating rapport with the guest. On the other hand a country like US that was greatly established by foreigners since its foundation must be more permeable to diversity. To bring on board my personal case I need to say that working at the Grand del Mar was a very pleasant experience and I didn’t encounter any sort problems because of my Hispanic ethnicity.
A team is said to be in a state of cohesion when its members possess bonds linking them to one another and to the team as a whole. (Molnau, Web). Latin American countries are generally described as collectivist cultures, which are characterized by individuals who give their loyalty to a group, and in return, the group takes responsibility for the individual. The collectivist unit in Latin America is the family. The strong sense of family and the loyalty owed to family are evident in organizational life (Osland, Web). I experienced on my last job in Costa Rica a level of closeness to my peers that can be closely paired to family level. I cared about my peers and I was certain they cared about me. I was even involved in their family functions such kids birthday, weedings, etc. At comparing that structure with my US job experience I find a big difference because the relationship with my peers wasn’t as close, we all worked along well and we were in very good terms, but we didn’t care much about socializing among ourselves outside the workplace. Osland highlights on his study how companies in Latin America also get more involve with the employee’s life. For example routinely place newspaper advertisements extending their condolences to the family when an employee or employee’s relative dies. Some benefits, such as recreational and vacation facilities are part of most public positions in Costa Rica. I would think that those will be new to any abroad manager surprise foreign managers who are more accustomed to financial benefits. Lastly but not less important to highlight is the notion of Paternalism government that rules in most latin countries including Costa Rica and it reflect the way latinos see the world including working place. Creating something call the pobrecito (poor thing) attitude. “When employees perform poorly, some supervisors and managers excuse them, saying something like, “Poor thing, we can’t fire him-he has to support his family.” Thus, expatriates must anticipate the cultural consequences (at times shock, disapproval) of firing or downsizing.” (Osland, web). The best example of this was the second quarter of 2014 when the resort upper management and investors took the decision of downsizing. It awful to see how terrify people was. The ones left where at least for two weeks after that in an very uncomfortable and uneasy mode. California particularly presents the other size of the coin by been an “At-Will Employment State”.

Bibliography

Center for Creative Leadership, comp. "Leader Effectiveness and Culture:The GLOBE Study." Leader Effectiveness and Culture: The GLOBE Study (n.d.): n. pag.Http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/assessments/GlobeStudy.pdf. Center for Creative Leadership, 22 Mar. 2011. Web. <www.ccl.org>.

CNN online. "Costa Rica Tops List of 'happiest' Nations." CNN. Cable News Network, 05 July
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Fritzenkotter. Class notes from Elements of Marketing class with professor Stephen Fritzenkotter. Video recording of TED workshops with Simon Sinek

Molnau, Daniela. "High-performance Teams: Understanding TeamCohesiveness." ISixSigma. N.p., 16 Dec. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. <http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/teams/high-performance-teams- understanding-team-cohesiveness/>.

Osland, J. S., S. De Franco, and A. Osland. "Organizational Implications of Latin American Culture: Lessons for the Expatriate Manager." Journal of Management Inquiry 8.2 (1999): 219-34. Web.

Robbins, Stephen P., and Tim Judge. Organizational Behavior. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.