organizational practices in kurdistan

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN A Managerial Prespective on the Role of Iraqi Kurds Cultural Values in Organizational Effectiveness in Private & Public sector Organizations

SARDAR HASSAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………...ii LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………………...…….ix LIST OF GRAPHS………………………………………………………...……………….xi LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………………………...……..xii INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY…………………………...…….1 Introduction……………..……………………………………………….…………………..1 Background of the study……………………..……………………….……………………..2 Statement of Problem & key Research Question…………………..….…………………….5 Research Objectives …………………………………….……..……………………………6 Theoretical Framework of the Research………………..…………….……………………..7 Significant of the Study ……………………………………………………………………..8 Organization of the Book …………………………………………………………..……...10 CHAPTER 1 CHANGE IN THE SCORES OF HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS IN IRAQ BY USING INDIVDIDUAL LEVEL OF MEASURE, A CASE STUDY OF IRAQI KURDS………………………………………………………………………….…………13 ABSTRACT ……………………………………..…………………………….…..………13 INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………14 WHAT IS CULTURE? ……………………………………………………………………14 HOFSTEDE’S STUDY ……………………………………………………………...……15 Hofstede’s Findings …………………………………………………..……………….…..15 Argument in Support of Hofstede’s Metrics …………………………………………..…..16 Problems with Hofstede’s Framework ……………………………………………….…....17 Arguments Against Hofstede’s Study ……………………………………………….….....17 INDIVIDUAL CULTURAL VALUES SCALE (CVSCALE …………………….……....19 HOFSTEDE’S FINDINGS ON IRAQ …………………………………………………….19 METHODOLOGY ………………………………………………………………………...20

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Sample ……………………………………………………………………………………..21 RESULTS ………………………………………………………………………………....21 Frequency …………………………………………………………….……………………21 Reliability test of five dimensions …………………………………………………………22 Normality test……………………………………………………………….…..………….22 Factor analysis ……………………………………………………………………………..23 RESULTS & DISCUSSION ………………………………………………………………24 LIMITATION ……………………………………………………………...……………...27 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………...…………….27 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………….28 CHAPTER 2 THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON INTERNATIONAL MARKETING & CONSUMER BEHAVIORS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN, USING HOFSTEDE’S MODEL AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ……………………………………………………...…..……32 ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………...…………..32 INTRODUCTION...………………………………………………………………………..33 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING …………………………………………………...….34 CULTURE ………………………………………………………...………………………38 HOFSTEDE’S STUDY …………………………………………………………...………40 Hofstede’s findings & Iraqi Kurdistan …………………………………………………….43 PROBLEMS & QUESTIONS……………………………………………………………..45 DATA COLLECTION & METHOD ……………………………………………………..45 Sample ……………………………………………………………………………………..48 MEASUREMENT & RESULTS ………………………………………………………….48 The reliability test of five Dimensions …………………………………………………….49 Factor Analysis …………………………………………………………………………….50 Descriptive Analysis ……………………………………………………………...……….51

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DISCUSSION …………………………………………………………………………......53 LIMITATION …………………………………………………………………….……….57 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………57 REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………………58 CHAPTER 3 THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN, A CROSS – SECTORIAL COMPARISON ……………………………………………...….65 ABSRACT ……………………………………………………………………...…………65 INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………66 NATIONAL CULTURE …………………………………………………………………..67 Trompenaars Model ………………………………………………………………...….….67 House Study (GLOBE) Model …………………………………………….…………..…..69 Hofstede’s Model ……………………………………………………….…………..……..70 Some key differences between models……………………………….………………..…..71 The KURDS AND KURDISTAN …………………………………..………………….…73 Pervious Finding on Iraqi & Iraqi Kurds’ Cultural Dimensions …………………………..74 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ………………………………………………………...75 Perspectives on Organizational Culture ………………………………………….……..…76 Organizational Climate ………………………………………………………..….……….77 Different Organizational Culture Typologies .………………………………….………....78 Roger Harrison Typology ……………………………………………………….……..….78 Hofstede Typology ……………………………………………………………..…………79 Deal and Kennedy Typology …………………………………………………...…………80 Cameron and Quinn Typology ………………………………………………...…………..81 Organizational Culture in Iraqi Kurdistan …………………………………………………83 METHODOLOGY ………………………………………………………………………...85

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Data Analyses ……………………………………………………………………………...86 RESULTS …………………………………………………………………………...…….87 Frequency ………………………………………………………………………………….87 The Reliability Tests of Constructs ………………………………………………………..87 Factor analysis ……………………………………………………………………………..88 Descriptive Analysis …………………………………………………………….………...89 HYPOTHESES TESTING ……………………………………………………….………..90 Correlation Analysis ……………………………………………………………………….90 Multiple Regression Analysis ……………………………………………………………..91 DISCUSSION …………………………………………………………………………......96 IMPLICATION TO RESEARCH …………………………………………………………99 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………..100 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………..101 CHAPTER 4 EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATIONAL & ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES WITH ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLES, A CROSSCULTURAL STUDY OF PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATINS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN……………………………………………………………………..107 ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………...107 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………..107 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ……………………………………………………….109 LEADERSHIP ………………………………………………………………………...…111 Leadership versus Management ………………………………………………….…..…..114 LEADERSHIP THEORIES & APPROACHES.….……………………………….…..…115 Personality and Trait Approaches ………………………………………………….….....118 Behavioral Approaches ……………………………………………………………...…...119 Contingency Theories of Leadership …………………………..…….…………………..122

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Transactional – Transformational Leadership Approach ………………………………..124 Components of Transformational Leadership…………………………………………….126 Components of Transactional Leadership ………………………………………………..127 Leadership & Organizational Culture ………………………………………………...….129 Leadership in both Non-profit and Public Sector Organizations ………………………...134 Organizational Culture & Leadership Style/s in Iraqi Kurdistan ……………………..….136 SUMMARY STATEMENTS & HYPOTHESES …………………………………...…..142 RESEARCH METHOD …………………………………………………….….………...143 Method of Analysis …………………………………………………………….……..….144 RESULTS …………………………………………………………………………...…...144 Frequency ………………………………………………………………………..….……144 Reliability Test …………………………………………………………………...………145 Factor Analysis …………………………………………………………………………..146 Descriptive Analysis ……………………………………………………………………..134 HYPOTHESES TESTING ……………………………………………………………….149 DISCUSSION ……………………………………………………………………………155 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………..158 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………..….159 CHAPTER 5 THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE & LEADERSHIP ON ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS IN PRIVATE & PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN, A CROSS-SECTORIAL STUDY………………………………………………………………………………..….166 ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………….…..166 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………..166 EFFECTIVENESS & PERFORMANCE ………………………………………………..168 EFFECTIVENESS & EFFICIENCY ……………………………………………….……170

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ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE ………………………………….……………171 The Balanced Scorecard ………………………………………………………………….173 ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS ………………………………………………175 Organizational Effectiveness Definitions ………………………………………………..176 Organizational Effectiveness Criteria ………………………………………………...….177 Approaches to Organizational Effectiveness ……………………………………….……179 Goal approach …………………………………………………………………………....181 System Resource Approach ……………………………………….……………………..182 The Internal Process Approach ……………………………………..……………………183 The Strategic Constituencies Approach ………………………………………………….184 Competing Values Model ……………………………………………………….…...…..187 Four Models of Effectiveness ……………………………………………………………189 Public Sector versus Private Sector ………………………………………………………191 Organizational Effectiveness & Organizational Culture …………………………………193 Organizational Effectiveness & Leadership ……………………………………………..196 The Use of Competing Values Framework in the Measuring Organizational Culture and Organizational effectiveness …………………………………………………………......199 SAMPLE, DATA COLLECTION & MEASURMENT …………………………………201 RESULTS ………………………………………………………………………………..202 Frequency ……………………………………………………………………….………..202 Reliability Test …………………………………………………………………………...203 Factor Analysis …………………………………………………………………………...203 Descriptive Analysis ……………………………………………………………………..204 HYPOTHESES TESTING ………………………………………………………………206 Regression Analyses ……………………………………………………………………..207 DISCUSSION ……………………………………………………………………………211

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RESEARCH IMPLICATION ……………………………………………………………213 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………..213 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………..215 CHAPTER 6 LEADERSHIP STYLE AND GENDER EQUALITY IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN...……………………….……..225 ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………….….………….225 INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………….………………225 Leadership & Gender Parity ………………………………………….………….……….227 GAP IN THE LITERATURE …………………………………..………………………..233 SAMPLE, DATA COLLECTION & MEASUREMENT ……………………………….234 RESULTS ……………………………………………………………………………......235 Frequency ……………………………………………………………………………...…235 The reliability Test …………………………………………………………………….....236 Descriptive Analysis ………………………………………………………………….….237 HYPOTHESES TESTING ……………………………………………………….………238 DISCUSSION …………………………………………………………………………....243 IMPLICATION TO RESEARCH ………………………………………………………..245 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………..246 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………...247 INTIGRATED MODEL………………………………………………………………….250 APENDIX ……………………………………………………………………………......251 QUESTIONNAIRES IN ENGLISH ……………………………………………………..251 QUESTIONNAIRES IN KURDISH ………………………………………………….....260

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LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1.1: Hofste’s findings on Iraq ………………………………………………….…20 TABLE 1.2: participants’ frequency………………………………………...……….…….21 TABLE 1.3: Gender Frequency………………………………………………...……….…22 TABLE 1.4: Reliability Statistics ………………………………………………………....22 TABLE 1.5: KMO and Bartlett's Test……………………………………………….……..23 TABLE 1.6: Descriptive Statistics ………………………………………………….……..23 TABLE 1.7: Hofstede’s Old Scores with New Scores on Iraqi Kurds …………………....24 TABLE 2.1: male-female …………………………………………………………….…....49 TABLE 2.2: Sector ………………………………………………………………….……..49 TABLE 2.3: Job title ………………………………………………………………………49 TABLE 2.4: Reliability Statistics (both sectors) ………………………………………….50 TABLE 2.5: Reliability Statistics …………………………….…………………………...50 TABLE 2.6: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient …………………………………………...50 TALBE 2.7: KMO and Bartlett's Test ………………………………………………….….51 TABLE 2.8: Descriptive Statistics ………………………………………………………...51 TABLE 2.9: Iraqi Kurds national cultural dimensions on Different sample Population. …52 TABLE 3.1: Hofstede’ Value Dimensions …………………………….…………………70 TABLE 2.2: The key differences between Hofstede’s Model, GLOBE Model, Schwartz Model, & Trampenaars Model ……………………………………………….………..…..72 TABLE 3.3: The Hofstede Scores & Iraqi Kurds Scores in Multiple Samples…….. …….74 TABLE 3.4: Managerial Perspective and Social Science Perspective …………………….76 TABLE 3.5: Martin’s contrasting perspectives on organizational culture ………………..77 TABLE 3.6: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient …………………………………………..88 TABLE 3.7: KMO and Bartlett's Test (Organizational Culture) ………………………….88 TABLE 3.8: KMO and Bartlett's Test (National Culture) ………………………………...88 TABLE 3.9: Organizational culture Dimensions in Iraqi Kurdistan ……………………...89 TABLE 3.10: The Results for Correlation Coefficients Tests between Variables ………..90 TABLE 3.11: Coefficients tests for Organizational Culture Types as Dependent variables & National Culture Dimensions as Independent Variables ………………………………….91 TABLE 3.12: ANOVA results for Organizational Culture Types & National culture dimensions as predictors …………………………………………………………………..92 TABLE 3.13: showS the Model Summery for Organizational Culture Types & National Culture Dimensions as Predictors ………………………………………………………....93 TABLE 4.1: Defining leadership ………………………………………………………...113 TABLE 4.2: Eras of Mainstream Leadership Theory and Research ……………………..116 TABLE 4.3: the Situational Relationship Theory …………….………………………….122 TABLE 4.4: the Demographic Data for the Sample Population …………………………145 TABLE 4.5: Cronbach’s Alpha for Leadership Styles …………………………………..146 TABLE 4.6: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient ………………………………………….146 TABLE 4.7: KMO and Bartlett's Test ……………………………………………………147 TABLE 4.8: Leadership Profiles in Iraqi Kurdistan ……………………………………..148 TABLE 5.1: Interchangeable Words & Phrases for Organizational Effectiveness ……...169 TABLE 5.2: Summary of Accounting Measures ………………………………………..172

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TABLE 5.3: Balanced Scorecard ……………………………………………………...…173 TABLE 5.4: level of analysis for measuring organizational effectiveness ………………177 TABLE 5.5: Organizational effectiveness criteria ……………………………………….178 TABLE 5.6: Approaches to Organizational Effectiveness ………………………………180 TABLE 5.7: Reliability Statistics for Organizational Effectiveness …………………….203 TABLE 5.8: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient ……….………………………………....203 TABLE 5.9: KMO and Bartlett's Test (both sectors) …………………………………….204 TABLE 5.10: KMO and Bartlett's Test (public sector) …………………….……………204 TABLE 5.11: KMO and Bartlett's Test (private sector) ………………………………....204 TABLE 5.12: The level of Organizational Effectiveness in both Sectors …………….....205 TABLE 5.13: Correlation Coefficient results ………………………………………...….206 TABLE 5.14: Table summery …………………………………………………………....207 TABLE 5.15: ANOVA ………………………………………………………………......207 TABLE 5.16: Coefficient …………………………………………………………….......208 TABLE 6.1: Six Statistically Comparable Demographic Data for Male – Female population ………………………………………………………………………………..235 TABLE 6.2: Reliability Statistics …………………………………………………...…...236 TABLE 6.3: KMO and Bartlett's Test for male ………………………………………….236 TABLE 6.4: KMO and Bartlett's Test for female ………………………………………..237 TABLE 6.5: Male & Female Leadership Styles in Private & Public Sector Organizations……………………………………………………………………………..238

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LIST OF GRAPHES GRAPH 2.1: Hofstede’s findings ………………………………………………………….45 GRAPH 2.2: Scree Plot …………………………………………………………...……….51 GRAPH 3.1: Percentage of civil servants who received help in recruitment, by those who facilitated recruitment & by region, Iraq (2011) …………………………………………..84 GRAPH 3.2: Frequency ………………………………………………………………...…87 GRAPH 3.3: Frequency ………………………………………………………………...…87 GRAPH 3.4: Frequency data ………………………………………………………………87 GRAPH 3.5: Organizational Culture Scree Plot …………………………………………..89 GRAPH 3.6: National Culture Scree Plot ………………………………………………....89 GRAPH 4.1: shows the percentage distributions of civil servants who have attended a work-related training course, by region and period of the last training course, Iraq (2011). …………………………………………………………………………………....140 GRAPH 4.2: shows the levels of bribery in each governorate …………………………..141 GRAPH 4.3: Scree Plot for 45 Leadership items ………………………….……………..147 GRAPH 5.1: Education ………………………………………………….………………202 GRAPH 5.2: Numbers of Employees ……………………………………………………202 GRAPH 5.3: Number of years & Numbers of Employees ……………………………....202 GRAPH 5.4: Gender & Sectors ……………………………………………………….....202 GRAPH 5.5: Scree Plot for Organizational Effectiveness ……………………………….204 GRAPH 6.1 what Prevents Women from Advancing to Corporate Leadership? …….….231 GRAPH 6.2: Frequency of Male & Female in Numbers ………………………………...238 GRAPH 6.3: Frequency of Male & Female in Percentage ………………………………238 GRAPH 6.4: Genders & Ages …………………………………………………………...239 GRAPH 6.5: Genders & Education in Numbers………………….………………………240 GRAPH 6.6: Genders & Education in Percentage …………………………………….…240 GRAPH 6.7: Genders & Job Titles in Numbers ……………………………….…….…..241 GRAPH 6.8: Genders & Job Titles in Percentages ……………………………….….…..241 GRAPH 6.9: Genders & Numbers of Employees in Numbers …………………………..242 GRAPH 6.10: Genders & Numbers of Employees in Percentage ……………………….242 GRAPH 6.11: Genders & Years of Experience in Numbers …………………….……....243 GRAPH 6.12: Genders & years of Experience in Percentage …………………….……..243

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LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 3.1: The Influence of National Culture on Organizational Culture in Iraqi Kurdistan……………………………………………………………….…………….……94 FIGURE 4.1: The Original Source of Organizational Culture ……………..….………...111 FIGURE 4.2: Leadership Grid …………………………………………...………………121 FIGURE 4.3: Full Range of Leadership Model ………………………………………….125 FIGURE 4.4: The Competing Values of Leadership, Effectiveness & Organizational Theory…………………………………………………………………………………….131 FIGURE 4.5: Leadership Model in Arab Context ……………………………………….137 FIGURE 4.6: Examining the Relations between national culture dimensions, organizational culture types and leadership styles in both private and public sector organizations ……..154 FIGURE 5.1: COMPETING VALUES MODEL ………………………………………..187 FIGURE 5.2: The Impact of Organizational Culture & Leadership Style on Organizational Effectiveness in both Private and Public Sector Organizations ………………………….211 AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL ……...……………………………………………………250

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Introduction Universally culture is not an accepted notion and it is notoriously difficult concept to define (Hofstede, et al., 2002; Mullins, 2005). Because it has many facets and impacts many dimensions of human behaviors different disciplines tried to define culture in their own way. Similarly, Schein (2010) argued for the past several decades, leadership and organizational culture turned into two complicated topics. Organizational culture in particular has drawn several different themes around itself such as: anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and cognitive psychology. DePree (2010) stated leadership is not an easy subject to explain because leadership means different things to different scholars in different disciplines. Moreover, Henri (2004) added, Since 1950s, the concept of effectiveness was subject to numerous studies. Due to its complexity only few different studies have tried to define effectiveness (Reimann, 1975). Organisational effectiveness is inherently paradoxical (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). To be effective, it must possess attribute that are simultaneously contradictory, even mutually exclusive (Cameron, 1986). Thus, the only agreement is there is disagreement over definitions and criteria of measurements. Therefore, there is no best model/s to include all these factors as a single model. Hofstede, et al. (2010) considered culture as ‘software of mind’ within a society. Sun (2008) stated culture works as ‘software’ within an organization too and so, managers are responsible to study it carefully and understand how each element of ‘software’ works on the basis of ‘hardware’ (organization). Hofstede and his associates believe organisations are distinct social systems differ from nations because it is a phenomenon by itself (2010). Once you are born into a particular society you cannot leave its culture completely while it is up to you to join an organization and leave any time you want (Isaksen and Tidd, 2006). Thus, members can only influence organizational culture during working hours. In addition, both national culture and organizational culture focuses on norms, values, beliefs and behavioural patterns shared by a group of individuals. Organizational culture, however, is created by founder and managers of organisations which it is viewed as an artificial creation popularized among employees from different backgrounds (Morrisson, 2002). Schein (2010) stated both leadership and organizational culture are the two sides of the coin, they are related and none of them can be understood on its own. However it is the leader’s responsibility to create and manage organizational culture. Avolio and Bass (2004) from another side believe organizational culture also can influence organizational leadership style. A leader can have a significant influence on the behaviour and performance of group members (Rollinson, et al., 1998).The GLOBE theory suggests the attributes and entities of different national cultures can reflect in their organizational practices and, inside organisation leader’s behaviour and values are very effective in influencing culture (House, et al., 2006). Thus, it is very important to understand this relation between these variables.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Robbins and Judge (2011; 2013) suggested most of the theories and organizational approaches have cultural implications and reflect western cultural values. House and Aditya (1997) have argued that most of leadership literature is based on a limited set of assumptions, which it reflects western industrialized culture. Alvesson (2002) warned about the risk of overgeneralizing too much. Thus, this study will look at the complexity and confusions over these concepts and tries to explain how in literature, the importance of national culture in influencing organisational and managerial practices is ignored due to its complexity and the area needs broadening. For the first time, this research will explore the Kurds cultural values, its impact on organizational culture, leadership, international marketing and consumer behaviour and how organizational culture and leadership style effect organizational effectiveness and gender parity in both private and public sector organisations in Iraqi Kurdistan and generally investigates the relationship between these variables. It will use the quantitative research method to answer questions such as: Are there any positive relationships between national culture dimensions and organisational culture types and leadership styles? How national cultural values can impact international marketing and consumer behaviour in general? Does national culture influence organisational culture and leadership? Whether organisational culture and leadership style affect organisational effectiveness in private and public sectors? What is the level of gender parity and gender balance in both sector organizations and how transparent the process of recruitment and advancement is? Background of the Study Culture refers to the pattern of development reflected in a society system of knowledge, ideology, values, law, and social norms; consequently culture varies from one society to another (Aquinas, 2007, p. 84). According to Trompenaars and Turner (1997) culture for a society is like water for a fish. Schein (2010) stated culture is a dynamic phenomenon that affects everyone in many ways that led to re-enact and recreation of culture. Similarly, Alvesson (2002) stated culture is very important in comprehending behaviour, social events, institutions and processes. Schwartz (2006) suggested it is the cultural values that shape and justify individual and group beliefs, actions, and goals. De Mooij (1997; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2010; 2011; 2013) has investigated the influence of national culture on different aspects of marketing and consumer behaviours. Trompenaars and Turner (1997) argued different societies may deal with the same problem differently and what one culture may regard important i.e. power and money may not be so vital to other cultures. Thus this can also be applied to management techniques and philosophy too. Gray (1998) believes organizational cultures are reflection of themes and patterns of wider culture. McShane (2000) stated similar to societal culture, each organization has different cultural content; which is the belief, values and assumptions. Smerek (2010) argues, an understanding of culture offers managers a strong ways to learn deep-level of assumption and values, partly non-conscious sets of meanings, ideas, and symbols. Although, culture cannot be observed directly, yet it influences everyone, everywhere (McShane, 2000). For that reason many professional and academics are in constant search to establish a universal ‘right’ culture that can bring efficiency and effectiveness to SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN organizations (Pfister, 2009). A culture that has a profound effect on outputs such as loyalty, productivity, and perceived quality of services (Alvesson, 2002). This means if the culture is favoured then it can be passed into the later generations (Moore, 2005). Schein (2010) argued it is not only superficial but also dangerous in assuming there are “right” cultures for organizations. Robbins, et al. (2011) acknowledged the original source of organizational culture reflects the vision of the founders passed to employees. Schein (2004) stressed the importance of founders’ role in defining and solving organization external adaptation and internal integration problems which these values make culture strong. In dynamic contexts leadership involves leader, follower, and situation which they face highly unpredictable environment that is very difficult to interpret (Hughes, et al., 2012). McShane (2000) suggested strong cultures are effective only when their values are aligned with organizational contexts, and it should not be so strong that stop people from change or suppresses dissenting subculture. Thus, an adaptive outward focused culture was recommended by McShane. According to Crainer there are over 400 definitions of leadership (Mullins, 2005). Each emphasis different things – for example, the focus is on leaders abilities, personality traits, influence relationships, cognitive versus emotional orientation, individual versus group orientation and appeal to self-versus collective interests (Hartog and Koopman, 2011). Givens (2008) argued that transformational leaders can inspire the followers to achieve organizational goals by focusing on the values of followers and helping them align their values with organizational values. Avolio and Bass (2002) warned that transformational leadership can have two sides: socialized which works in the benefits of organisations and society while the personalized leaders work for self-benefit. Alvesson (2002) believes It is hard for leaders in business world to be charismatic because they need to attend to too many administrative duties as part of normal management practice and when the results are not good then the perception of charismatic leader will disappear. Flat structure, team work, specialization, and virtual and networked organizational forms all weaken traditional leadership positions that are based on hierarchy and symbolism (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007; Kondalkar, 2007.). According to Hughes, et al. (2012) it is very important for leaders’ of organizations to have a clear understanding of societal culture, failure can lead organization to dysfunctional conflicts. House, et al. (2004) indicated from a scientific and theoretical perspective, there are too many reasons for leaders to consider the role of societal and organizational culture because they present a substantial challenge to the design of global companies and their leadership. Brannen (2009) have stated even executives with global experience cannot guarantee of understanding how culture impacts the day-to-day corporate strategy in their subsidiaries. Cameron and Quinn (2006) suggested that when leaders, executives and employees within a firm have clear understanding of their organizational culture, it brings social order, continuity, collective identity, increase commitment. Leadership brings efficiency and effectiveness to work operation and increase the quality of goods and services (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007). Ineffective leaders are barriers in creation of healthy environment that encourage innovation, creativity, and SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN revitalizing the organizational culture (Van Wart, 2010). Quinn and Cameron have discovered the highest – performing leaders are those who are self – contradictory, behaviourally complex leaders in the sense that they can be simultaneously hard and soft, entrepreneurial and controlled that allow them to succeed in each organisational culture types (2006; 2011). Blunt (2010) found leaders learn to be effective in helping others to become leaders. Effective leadership is the result of leader and followers having a unique and satisfactory relationship which based on followers’ participation in the leadership process (Perkins, 2009). Cameron and Whetten (1996) stated the terms such as performance, success, ability, efficiency, improvement, productivity or accountability are occasionally substituted for effectiveness but when it comes to measurement, effectiveness is usually what is required. Academics believe both system performance and organizational effectiveness are related and used synonymously (Sowa, et al., 2004). Henri (2004) sees the evolution of both measurement models as two brothers grown up similarly but progress differently. As a result, the organizational effectiveness models have significantly influenced the performance measurement models. Moreover, effectiveness and efficiency concepts may look synonymous too, yet they are very different in meanings (Rollinson, et al., 1998). Daft (2012) suggested efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to accomplish companies goals, while, effectiveness as a degree to which organizations achieves their goals. Isaksen and Tidd, (2006) argued that most of the private and public sector organizations use explicit measures when intended to improve the performance. Like private sector, efficiency and effectiveness is one of the major governmental issues and governments’ abilities in providing social services are under huge criticism (Schein, 2010). The means for private firms are efficiency and productivity and, they are financially driven, while, public organisations are politically driven, and they must serve public interest which can results in inefficient systems (Parhizgari and Gilbert, 2004). Christensen, et al. (2007) rejects the traditional view that both sector organisations are different and dismissed them as stereotypes. These academics have found variables such as size, tasks and technology that can impact organizations more than their private or public status does. The public and private sector organisations have melted in certain areas, and too many organizations operate in the grey area for example, an organization may well be public in some respects but private in others (Christensen, et al., 2007). Cameron and Quinn (2011; 2006) argued to measure organizational performance effectively, researchers need to understand different model of assessment and suggest CVF includes multiple models in itself. Hearn (2004) have notice that organizational cultures are presented as men’s cultures. Public institutions play an important role in the construction of gender because most of the civil servants are women (Alvesson and Billing, 2004). A report on Women and Power (2015) have found public institutions are gender-sensitive and it criticiz public organizations for not doing enough in tackling the gender parity. Moreover, women are seen as weak leader because they cannot present themselves as men leaders and connect themselves to the related men and masculine culture (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Pofessor

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Lynda Gratten (2013) argued that women responsibilities in home as caretakers and at work as managers are never been so overloaded because the concept of fatherhood has not changed. Prasad and Prasad (2004) suggested that due to the globalizations and postmodernity these differences and difficulties have disappeared. Fiona Wilson (2002) added that we are living in a fast changing time and the skills needed for today’s managers are feminine. A report by European Commission (2013) has urged public institutions and private corporations to take advantage of this under-represent and unused-talent segment because it has human case as well as economic case to it. STATEMENT OF PROBLEM & KEY RESEARCH QUESTION After a deep review of past studies related to the development of this research, some gaps were spotted in the existing literature. There is a lack of research in this area in this part of the world and this study tries to close the gap by answering the research questions and contribute to the current theoretical literature. As it was argued earlier, most of the theories and models are developed in Western countries and they have cultural implications. Although these topics are examined broadly in developed societies, it was not explored in Middle-Eastern mostly Muslim countries. Several studies and management academics in these fields have concluded that national culture and organizational culture can influence organizational leadership style and effectiveness, yet there is non-acceptable model that includes all these factors that demonstrate the relationship between variables, and can propose and explain ways to improve. Therefore, based on the above problems a general question emerged: Due to the significant changes in Iraqi Kurds national cultural dimensions, what influence national culture may have on organizational culture and leadership style and, moreover, what categorization of organizational culture and leadership style can explain the variance in effectiveness in private and public sectors Organizations? The research questions that are derived from the main research question include: 1.1 Are there any changes in the original scores of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in Iraq and how we can measure Kurds cultural values at individual level? 2.1 Does the dimensions of national culture influence international marketing and consumer behavior? 2.2 How these dimensions can impact international marketing and consumer behavior and what companies need to consider before entering into the market? 3.1 What is the level of hierarchy, clan, market and adhocracy culture in organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan? 3.2 What type of organizational culture does dominant the organizations in here? 4.1 What is the level of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership behaviors of managers and leaders? SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN 4.2 What type of leadership style does dominate organizational managers and administrators in Iraqi Kurdistan? 5.1 What is the level of effectiveness in both private and public sector organizations? 5.2 Is there a relationship between organizational culture and leadership style with organizational effectiveness in both sectors? 5.3 Does organizational culture affect organizational effectiveness in both sectors? 5.4 Does organizational leadership style affect organizational effectiveness? 6.1 What is the percentage of both sex in both sector organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan and whether there is gender parity? 6.2 Does the level of education and experience associate with promotion and span of control inside organizations? 6.3 Whether there is any relation between current organizational culture types and dominant leadership style with gender parity and empowerment? Research Objectives 1. To investigate the current changes in the original scores of Iraqi Kurds cultural values at individual level. 2. To find out how Kurds cultural values can influence international marketing and consumer behaviour. 3. To explore the dominant organizational culture types in both private and public sector organizations. 4. To discover the level of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire style of leadership in private and public sector organizations. 5. To examine the relationship between national culture, organizational culture, leadership style and organizational effectiveness. 6. To explore whether national culture influences organizational culture and leadership style. 7. To investigate whether organizational culture and leadership style impacts organizational effectiveness. 8. Based on the data of this research, to identify the dominant style of leadership between men and women managers and explore the level of gender balance in both sectors.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH In order to answer the research questions, quantitative research technique was used to project the quantitative findings in number forms such as statistic and percentages. The main goal of quantitative survey method is to provide specific facts and estimates from a large, representative sample of respondents (Hair, et al., 2002). In opposite, qualitative research method is concerned with establishing explanations for social phenomena to answer questions start with why and how (Hancock, 2002). This research adopts convenient sampling method which is a non-probability sampling. Bryman and Bell (2007) stressed the importance of sample representativeness. Because the researcher has the full authority in deciding the participants it is subject to significant sample errors (Baines and Chansarkar, 2002). To reduce the sample errors the sample was drawn on managers and professionals in some of the major public and private sector organizations in different geographical areas in Iraqi Kurdistan. Additionally, to make the sample population more representative and brings accuracy and consistency to the results, this author thought at the beginning to review and investigate documents related to budgets and customer satisfaction and interview some managers. According to Alexander and Hill (2000) the more knowledgeable the interviewer, the more accurate the results will be. In general interviewer asks series of open ended questions and participants have much freedom to respond in the way they desire (Fisher, et al., 2007). The interview and checking customer satisfactions was hoped to be part of this broad research, unfortunately, lack of resources, unavailability of demanded managers and other barriers did not helped this researcher to carry on further to the second part (qualitative section). Therefore, this author recommends other researchers in these areas to focus on both qualitative and quantitative part of the research. Additionally, quantitative survey questionnaires were used for this research which it made up of five sections. The participanted managers will indicate their answers using a 5point-likert scale. The first section is based on demographic information and it consists of 7 items. The second part is based on Hofstede’s model to measure the five cultural dimensions of Iraqi Kurd at the individual level using (CVSCALE) by Yoo, et al. (2011) which it has 26 items. The third and fourth sections will be concentrated on the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) by Quinn and Cameron (2006; 2011). The (OCAI) originally based on Competing Values Framework (CVF) and it has 24 items that assess organizational culture at individual level. And the fifth part is based on (CVM) by (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983) and Cameron (1986) to measure organizational effectiveness. To measure the perception of leaders about management in both sector organizations this author used the Multifactor Leadership questionnaire (MLQ 5X) by Avolio and Bass (2004) that has 45 items. The (MLQ 5X) was used to measure transactional and transformational styles of leadership. SPSS statistical Computed package was used for this research to calculate the frequency, means, Cronbache Alpha, factoring and normality test for every dimension at aggregated level. To test the hypotheses and examining the relation between variables this study use correlation coefficient test to find the multi-colinearity between several items and multiSARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN regression analysis to discover the predictability of dependent variables by independent variables. SIGNIFCANT OF THE STUDY This in-depth study of organizational practice in Iraqi Kurdistan is unique in a way that there is no other work in this scale produce such significant results and provides a clear and simple understanding to some complex concepts such as culture, leadership and effectiveness in this scope. This is a practical study shows the Kurdish managers’ perceptions in how they understand and handle their home and work values together and how these values are reflected in their everyday managerial practice and decision making. This is a realistic and uncensored picture of today’s management in Iraqi Kurdistan ever since they are liberated by collation countries in 1991. It explores the dominant national cultural values, organizational cultures and leadership style and investigates the relationship between these variables. It examines the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior in a properly balanced account. This research continues by discovering the effect of organizational culture and leadership on organizational effectiveness in private and public sectors organizations. And based on the available data, it identifies the gender balance in both public institutions and Private Corporations. It also shows how transparent these organizations are in their hiring and promoting women in their organizations. Nevertheless, it contains some valuable insights and recommendations for government and policy makers, companies and managers, academics and professionals, to the current unusual situation and possible future change in this key strategic region of Northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan is semi-autonomous federal region in northern Iraq with three official institutions: Kurdistan Regional Government, The Regional presidency, and the Kurdistan National Assembly (Human Rights Watch, 2010). These legislative bodies have the authority to allocate their budget and resources, control their borders and issue policies regarding education and judiciary systems. Although, the Iraqi Kurds are surrounded by reactionary and ruthless neighbors, and they are still facing many difficulties by them, they have enjoyed a de facto statehood for more than two decades. It encompasses three governorates with close to five million populations. Kurdistan region is rich in natural resources. According to a report by OPEC (2015) Iraqi Kurdistan has world’s 8th oil and gas reserves. According to the same report Kurdistan region, has 50 billion barrels of proved reserves, and 8-10 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves (EKurd Daily, 2015). Despite being rich in oil and other natural resources, Iraqi Kurdistan like the rest of Iraq is suffering from corruption, nepotism and monopolization of private sector by politicians through the use of their power. These have caused many companies to bankrupt, close or pull their money out and invest in somewhere else. Many people still live in difficult social and economic situation. It worth to notice, one third of people in here work for public institutions and due to bad management of budget and gross national income for more than six month peoples’ salaries are missed by government. However, half of these civil servant names either does not exist or goes to unanimous sources. Therefore, this research tries to SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN look at the problems through managerial perspectives. It aims to cultivate national, organizational, and managerial values and investigate the relationship between these variable, explore the causes and effects and provide a general model to bring academic understanding into the issues. The importance of this study lies in the fact that it will bring an understanding to Kurds cultural values, organizational culture types and leadership style in both genders and sectors and it will expand the knowledge of how these values impact organizational effectiveness and equality inside organizations. Moreover, this work will help this researcher to spot the faults, understand the relationship between different variables and identifies the important of effective organizational culture and leadership styles in both sector organizations in this turbulence time and how they can be more effectives based on the new knowledge. In addition, the new findings indicate that there is direct strong relationship among some national culture dimensions, and the dominant organizational culture type and leadership style. It is true that people create institutions and brings their values and beliefs into these organizations, but it is also true that organizations and their leaders influence society through adopting and updating old values and recreating new ways of thinking for what is important and what is taboo. However, the importance of national and organizational cultures influence on leadership perception and behavior should not be ignored and it is crucial to pick the managers carefully in selection process. From another side, leaders’ role should not be under-estimated in directly influencing organization culture and indirectly social values. Additionally, the results also suggest that organizational culture and leadership have direct effect on organizational effectiveness in both private and public sector organizations. The indirect impact of national culture on international marketing and organizational culture and leadership on gender parity were other significant parts of this study. Throughout each chapter, a discussion was created and the implication of each research was highlighted. Therefore, this study makes important contribution to the literature in these areas by developing an integrative model for the whole study and some conceptual figures based on the new findings. For the first time this research produce some significant data in these mentioned field in this region and to the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that clearly investigates the relationship between these variables in here. Understanding the connection between national and organizational cultures and leadership and how they influence organizational performance help managers to become more effective and successful in implementing organizational change and innovation. The suggested recommendations enable them to become more competitive and achieve strategic advantages. In fact, the implications of this study help government and policy makers to bring change into their institutions and make them more effective. It helps academics to develop a managerial model that can be used by both academic and professionals in analyzing organizational culture and leadership based on the cultural values of the society and how they can create a change response culture to increase organizational effectiveness.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK This book was organized into six inter-related chapters: At the beginning of this book this author provides an idea of what the book contains through an introduction and background of the research. It also provides the theoretical and significant of this study to understand the problems of this research. Chapter1. provides in-depth understanding of what is culture, Hofstede model for analyzing the national culture, arguments against and in support of his work and discuss (CVSCALE) as an alternative to his model to measure cultural values at individual levels. It uses a sample population of 441 university students from three different departments at one of the largest university in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the end, it present the analysis of empirical measurement and discussed the new results. Chapter 2. Investigate the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior in Iraqi Kurdistan. It started with in-depth literature review on international marketing and culture. Multi-methods was used to investigate the relationship between both national culture and international marketing. This relation was studied directly by exploring the national culture values but this time on a sample of 272 managers and indirectly by investigating the past research and studies to explore the relationship. Researcher’s personal and professional experience was another part of this research. A discussion was built at the end. Chapter 3. Based on the above sample and past studies, this author tries to explore the influence of national cultural dimensions on organizational culture types in both private and public sector organizations. Different national culture approach and different organizational culture typologies by different authors was presented and explained in this chapter. Although, Kurds and Kurdistan are new to the literature and for that reason there are very few studies on who are the Kurds and organizational culture in Iraqi Kurdistan, this author tried to put the available knowledge and understanding on paper. Through the use of SPSS the relationships between hypotheses were tested and the results indicate positive correlation between variables. A conceptual figure was developed at the end which it can explain the relation in one graph. Chapter 4. Based on the current knowledge in chapter one and three, the relationship between national and organizational cultures with leadership in both sectors was examined. Thus, a deep literature review was established to investigate the past studies explaining the relationship between the variables but also leadership was studied in-depth especially transformational, transactional and laissez-faire styles of leadership. By looking at the current knowledge on leadership in this region and similar cultures, a discussion was built on leadership in Kurdistan. After the perceptions of managers and professionals on organizational culture and leadership were measured, the data were regressed and analyzed. This chapter provides some staggeringly new data on the relationship between variables and how national and organizational culture impact organizational leadership styles but also SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN how leadership influences the other two variables directly and indirectly. A conceptualized figure was created at the end to explain the relationship more clearly. Chapter 5. In this chapter the impact of organizational culture and leadership on organizational effectiveness was examined in both sectors organizations. At the beginning, this author was troubled by use of different concepts instead of effectiveness. And for that reason, an in-depth literature review was established to understand and investigate their distinctions and similarities. Their alternative measures and criteria were discussed and different models for assessing organizational effectiveness were explained. At the end CVM model was used to measure organizational effectiveness and the suitability of model in each sector was discussed too. After the data were analyzed, a discussion on new the findings was made. A conceptualized figure was developed to show the relationship between both independent and dependent variables. Chapter 6. Based on the existing data and the sample population of 272 managers and decision makers, gender parity and balance were investigated in both private and public sector organizations. Thus, after studying the past research on international context and relating them to here, a discussion was created and the data was examined. All the new findings were also presented in statistical graphs and some suggestions to public institutions and Private Corporation were made at the end. An integrative model was proposed by this author to demonstrate the relationship between different variables. Each factor is given a particular color and the significant of the relation was shown by plus and minus. The pointing arrows show the predictability of each variable by different independent variables. At the end, at the apendex part, the questionnaires for each section are provided in boht English and Kurdish langauges.

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Chapter 1

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN CHANGE IN THE SCORES OF HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS IN IRAQ BY USING INDIVDIDUAL LEVEL OF MEASURE, A CASE STUDY OF IRAQI KURDS Sardar Hassan MSc International Business Management, Salahaddin University - College of Administration & Economics Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq *[email protected]–[email protected]

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this paper was to highlight some of the key features of Kurds cultural values in Iraq. This paper has been divided into different sections. In the first part culture and some of culture definitions were examined. In the field of cross cultural study Hofstede’s work on cultural dimensions has been regarded as a paradigm. Therefore, in the second part of this paper, Hofstede’s study, arguments in support and against his work has been discussed broadly. In the third part the author have looked at Iraq’s culture in Hofstede’s study and what each index means. It was argued by many scholars that Hofsted’s typology can only work best when measurements are on national level which it looks at the whole nation as homogenous society. Therefore, it was regarded as not applicable at individual level. In the light of this criticism a new framework was introduced by Dorfman & Howell (1988) later it was extended to five dimensions by Yoo, et al. (2011). In the fourth part CVSCALE framework as a self-administered quantitative survey questionnaire was discussed and explained why it can be a better alternative to Hofstede’s scale which measures culture at individual levels. Based on the CVSCALE cultural orientation of Kurds in Iraq have been discovered and discussed. Even though, still many scholars still refer to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the validity of measurements holds no guarantee after almost three decades. This paper suggests cultural values can change over time, thus culture is not static. The sample of this study was based on 743 individuals from one of the biggest public university in Erbil the capital city of Kurdistan region but only 441 were valid to be used. The result of this sample seemed to be not in line with Hofsteded’s findings. Although there were some limitations with size and scope of sample, the finding demonstrates that there are some major differences compared with the original study done on Iraq by Hofstede, for example this research has indicated a decrease in PDI, MAS and moved from being short term to long term oriented culture compared to the original study. Therefore, the author concludes that there is a shift in the result of these cultural dimensions and it needs to be re-investigated every so often. It is hoped that the new finding will benefits the literature in general and culture of nations in particular, also it would help international managers understand cultural values of people in this part of the world. KEY WORDS: culture, Hofstede model, argument against & support, CVSCALE, Iraq,

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN INTRODUCTION It is only a few decades since culture has come to business research and its importance has grown fast. The process of economic globalization has caused an expansion of research into international business and work related culture. De-Mooij & Hofstede (2010) in their recent paper found focus on researching and investigating culture is becoming more popular. Looking at expansion and influence of multinational, more and more International Managers are becoming aware of the impact and importance of national culture on organizational culture. The relationship between national culture and work related culture was explained by Hofstede’s typology (1980) which is one of the most frequently cited frameworks.The influence of Hofstede’s research has been significant in helping managers understand characteristics of different cultures across different society revealing each society may have different values concerning the nature of organizations. Hofstede’s work was not out of criticism and problems. Hofstede, et al. (2010) believe cultures are static; they change in a slow process that cannot be noticed. They also tend to generalize different groups to a homogenious nation to explain individual behaviour and ignore different communities in each society. His data were collected three decades ago and seen as outdated. Hofstede, et al. (2002) suggested that it is the complexity and dynamism of culture that cause problem for validaty and reliability of the the measurement. Morrison stated we are heading to cultural globalization, a movement towards a world without border, in which cultural differences are fading (2002, p. 146, cited in Ohmae, 1995). Thus, adaptation and managing cultural diversity brings change gradually into both local and foreign companies (Morrison, 2002). De-Mooij (2011) argued technology, and “internet” in particular is not a factor of homogenizing and changing people’s values, instead people are trying to apply their own language and laws based on location and interest of individuals. Thus, the primary aim of conducting this research is to update and expand Hofstede’s study. Therefore, there are two purpose of this research. First, this study has collected data from students in three different departments of Tourism, Management and Economic in Salahaddin University, one of the largest universities in Erbil the capital city of Kurdistan region in order to discover and provide updated information about cultural values of Kurds in Iraq. The study measures Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions at individual levels based on CVSCALE. Second, this study has expanded Hofstede’s study by studying cultural values in higher education level. The following section of this research review the existing literature and research related to hofstede’s five cultural dimensions. WHAT IS CULTURE? Culture is not universally accepted notion, and there are many ways to define culture (Hofstede et al., 2002, p. 40). Because culture influences many dimensions of human behavior it is extremely difficult to define it. Also because different disciplines examined and study the concept of culture intensively in their areas, there is a diversity of definitions SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN and for that reason there is no best definition. Therefore, many sociologists and anthropologists argue that it is easier for them to explain the culture rather than to define it (Hofstede, et al, 2010). One of the early definition of culture were provided by an anthropologist Edward Tylor in (1870) as “the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other capabilities and habit acquired by man as a member of society” ( Hill, 2007, p. 90). Trompenaars and Turner (1997) pointed out “culture is a shared system of meaning. It dictates what we pay attention to, how we act and what we value.” On other side, Hofstede himself provides a rather confusing definition as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another…. Culture, in this sense, includes systems of values, and values are among the building blocks of culture” (Hill, 2007, p. 91; Hofstede et al., 2010, p. 6; De-Mooij, 2011, p. 33). Interestingly the three definitions assume that national cultures are static and people have acquired their basic value systems from early childhood. They believe culture is not a trait of individuals; it contains people and these people behavior were conditioned by the same education and life experiences. They have ignored that society may change over time and so individuals as they move on into a new environment. HOFSTEDE’S STUDY Hofsted’s study is one of the most popular approaches for analyzing differences among cultures; it is widely used by many different disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and management (Sondergaad, 1994; Steenkamp, 2001 cited in Hofstede, 2007)). De-Mooij (2011) believes culture can be described according to specific characteristics which countries can be distinguished by. Over the last 30 years Hofstede surveyed more than116, 000 IBM employees in over 40 different countries (Rugman & Collinson, 2006, p. 134; Robbins & Judge, 2013, p. 184). The questions were about participants’ values and perceptions of their work situation. From the collected data Hofstede discovered managers and employees are different on five value dimensions which try answering the questions of how and why people are affected by national cultural structures. The dimensions are: Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Power Distance (PDI), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), and Long term-Short term Orientation (LTO) (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Hofstede’s Findings Individualism-Collectivism Describes the relationship individuals have toward each other in a society. In an individualistic society from childhood individuals learn to think of themselves as “I”. Individuals are concern for their primary interest, they will decide for themselves on some of major things in their life and their family members can only advise. Whereas in a collectivistic culture people are “we” conscious, group or family comes first, individuals are willing to sacrifices their immediate wishes for the sake of family (De-Mooij, 2001). In

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN collectivistic culture there is no individual success but group that you are belong to and look after you in exchange for loyalty (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Masculinity-Femininity In masculine society the dominant values culture favors are competition and success, achievement and control, men are supposed to be assertive, tough and focused on material success whereas in feminine society for both male and female the dominant values are caring and nurturing for others, concerned for safety and quality of life where men and women are equal (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Power Distance (high-low) In this dimension reflections are on how power is distributed in house, in work place, in society and what the consequences of power inequality are and authority relation in society is. In power sharing, how individual feels to have less power (high power distance) or it is not acceptable for a manager to control all power (low power distance). Thus it is based on the value system of less powerful members and explained from the behavior of the more powerful members such as leaders (Hofstede, et al., 2010). In high PDI societies everyone has his/her rightful place in hierarchy; as a result it will be accepted by others whereas in low PDI societies authority is not as important as equality and opportunities (De-Mooij, 2011). Uncertainty Avoidance (high-low) It refers to how much people of that society feel threatened by uncertainty, ambiguity, change and new ways of doing things and whether they have high tendency to take advantage of them or avoid the uncertain situations (Mooij, 2011). To cope with ambiguity people in strong UAI try to make rules. Paradoxically it deals with risk taking and the rule of laws for prescribed behavior, anxious people are often prepared to do some risky behavior in order to reduce the uncertainty (hofstede, et al., 2010). Long Term-Short Term Orientation “Long-term orientation stand for the fostering of virtues oriented toward future rewards-in particular, perseverance and thrift. Its opposite pole, short-term orientation, stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present-in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of “face” and fulfilling social obligations” (Hofstede, et al., 2010, p. 239) . It is a degree to which people feels about traditional values, the truth and perseverance. Whether people are ready to give up present fun for a better future (long term oriented) or they value tradition, for them past and present is important and do not see commitments as obstacle to change, they are willing to spend whatever they have now and future is less important (De-Mooij, 2011). Argument in Support of Hofstede’s Metrics Throughout the world Hofstede’s metrics is widely used by many scholars and practitioners to measure cultural values and understand cultural variations (Ross, 1999 cited in Hofstede, 2007).Tara and Steel (2009) in their recent research paper found Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences book was an extraordinary piece of classical work which received 5000 SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN citations. The popularity of Hofstede’s study was explained in the following points which many researchers agree on them. The number of culture studies appearing in business journals totaled to 2212 from 1980 to 2007 (Nakata, 2009, p. 22). 1. The framework is a comprehensive piece of work and explains for managers the significant relationships that exist and how the diversity of cultures effects managerial practices in work place. Also many scholars have found strong evidence that differences in culture affect values and practices of the work (Hill, 2007). 2. His frameworks have been accepted by many scholars as one of the most popular theory of its types and also have been heavily cited as it is growing in use (Shackleton & Ali, 1990). For the social science Hofstede’s theory was one of the most important theories of culture type. 3. Unlike other Scholars Hofstede’s study was empirically developed. On that time there was very little research on culture and up to now his metrics are highly relevant in explaining cross-cultural behavior (Shackleton & Ali, 1990). Problems with Hofstede’s Framework Hofstede’s famous study has numerous problems: As it was mentioned earlier there is no best definition. If a single word like culture is open to different interpretations and explanations then there are other terminologies which can be subject to different interpretation and create confusion for respondents and translators ( Henry,1990 cited in Hostede, 2007). The time of the survey was also subjected to questions and criticisms. First, it’s outdated, its date goes back to the world war two, cold war from one side and political instabilities from other sides, market shock had a precedent effects on society to change from then until now (Rugman & Collinson, 2006). Another problem with Hofstede’s work is his research is based on an ethnocentric pattern with a single time frame. In this situation scholars are subject to misinterpretation and bias (Nasif, et al., 1991, pp. 83-84 cited in Hofstede, 2007). Ethnocentrism signifies a fixed rigid approach of relating to the world only in terms of our own culture. Adaptation and managing cultural diversity brings change gradually into both local and foreign companies (Morrison, 2002). His work under-estimate the functional roles from one society to another e.g. what loyalty mean to different society as conceptual or instrumental equivalence in different countries (Cavusgil & Das, 1997 cited in Hofstede, 2007). Even though Hofstede’s works on culture was not one of the first systematic study on cross-cultural study but his cultural values matric was very successful and undeniable in influencing the international business and management despite the criticisms against his study. Arguments Against Hofstede’s Study Hofstede’s works was not out of controversies and criticism either. His works were complemented by many scholars for being short on the breadth and its depth. SARDAR HASSAN

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Relevancy The accuracy and suitability of his metrics were criticized and questioned by many researchers for not being an appropriate tool in measuring culturally sensitive value/s (Dorfman and Havell., 1988 and Shackleton and Ali., 1990). Hofstede’s work is extremely useful in studying national culture and society but in the managerial situation the reflection of culture at individual level is more useful (Kamakura & Novak, 1992; Kamakura & Mazzon, 1991 cited in Yoo, et al., 2011). Western Stereotypes Because Hofsted’s work was done in one industry and in one company with its own strong culture may scholars believe his work approved western stereotype. The research itself was undertaken in western countries. Everyone involved in research, research team, the participants and analyzers were from western countries and the whole process may have been analyzed and shaped by their own cultural biases (Hill, 2007, p. 112). Generalization One of the widely held criticisms of Hofstede’s work is to assume the whole population is homogenous and there are no other ethnic groups in that society. This is especially true when the country has a heterogeneous population with different cultural values, for example how different individuals may feel with the outcomes of collectivism (Yoo, et al, 2011). Hofstede tends to ignore the significant of community, and the variation of its influences (Smith 1998., p. 62). Generalizing society and group to explain individual behaviors is a delusional mistake because on that base our interpretation cannot be applied to individuals (Yoo, et al, 2011). It would be wrong to treat all British people individualist and all Iraqi as collectivist. National Identities For Hofstede national identities are the only tools to measure cultural differences but recent studies have discovered across group and nation, culture is fragmented and not essentially limited by borders (Dorfman and Hovell, 1988). Therefore, there is no one-to-one correspondence between culture and society, there are many countries like Iraq have more than one culture and sub-cultures. In a joint article, McCrae and Hofstede argued there could be different personalities within every country but it is the culture of the country influence their descriptions, therefore, culture and personality are not independent (Hofstede, et al, 2010., p. 40). Nakata (2009) went a little bit further by arguing, on that time world was simpler, more stable and intact but more than thirty years on nations have become more heterogeneous, integrated, markets are more fragmented. Culture Change Hofstede, et al. (2010) believe that culture is almost stable, what is changing is more to do with external world rather than human core values. In the other word the idea of culture change is a naive idea; he predicted there will be no substantial change but the toys we use. Many scholars believe the culture is not static, it evolve but slowly. Individuals, organizations and even societies do change overtime. SARDAR HASSAN

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INDIVIDUAL CULTURAL VALUES SCALE (CVSCALE) In lights of these critiques, a new framework has been proposed by both Dorfman and Hovell (1988). The framework has 22 items for analyzing the cultural values at individual levels. The key weakness with their framework is it measures only four dimensions. To address these concerns, many other scholars such as Yoo, et al. (2011) have also used Hofstede cultural typology at individual level. But their framework is more complete that Dorfman and Hovel (1988) because it has 26 items and it measures the main five cultural dimensions at individual level. De-Mooij (2001., p.34) argued that measuring values at individual levels is not easy because values are learnt unconsciously and culture always play a role. In addition, a cross cultural psychologist kitayama criticized the idea of selfreflective reports because such reports fail to accurately reflect mental responses when individuals make certain judgments. Scholar believes Hofstede’s work is useful when unite of analysis is country with a homogenous population such as Japan but it would have no significant effects when it is used on a heterogeneous society like Iraq to measure the effect of individual on cultural orientation. Hofstede, et al. (2010) warned about the misunderstanding about the measurement and argued the scores measures differences between country cultures not culture in an absolute sense. According Farley and Lehmann (1994) there is a very strong need to measure culture at individual level. They have argued that it would benefits business researchers and practitioners who deal with individual consumers. Yoo, et al. (2011) stated that considering (CVSCALE) in analyzing cultural orientation at individual level it is possible to link individual behavior to individual attitudes, because the data about the cultural values, attitudes, and behaviors come from the same primary sources. HOFSTEDE’S FINDINGS ON IRAQ In his findings Hofstede categorized Iraq with other Arab countries in Middle East. The results indicate that Iraq scored high on “Power distance” which means there is inequality in power distribution inside organizations and Iraqi people are accepting the inequality. Looking back into the history of Iraq and the experience people have had with wars and revolutions, and religious institutions the outcome might not surprise many. Hofstede also categorized Iraq as a “Collectivistic” culture which indicate that Iraqi do well in team work but also can sacrifice their individualist goals for the benefits of group. Hofstede’s findings on Iraq also suggest that Iraq is a masculine society favors masculine roles, achievement, and control with no interest in uncertainty, ambiguity and new ways of doing things. Iraqi scores very low on LTO which it reveals that it has a normative culture. People have a strong concern with establishing the absolute truth; they are normative in their thinking, (source, Hofstede’s website).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN TABLE 1.1: Hofste’s findings Country IDV 30 Iraq 41 Iran 37 Turkey 54 Israel SOURCE: Hofstede’s website

MAS 70 43 45 47

PDI 95 58 66 13

UAI 85 59 85 81

LTO 25 14 46 38

From the above table Hofstede’s study shows different countries score differently and so different regions. Table (1.1) shows the ratings for the four countries in the region which data are available on his website, for example, Iraq is either scoring the highest or the lowest in compare to other three countries in the region. It was argued earlier that change in environment could cause changes in values and norms of particular culture and as result, these changes may affect the scores of these dimensions over time. In order to investigate cultural change over time we need to conduct a new research on Hofstede’s work by using (CVSCALE) and compare the new findings with the old one. Too many research and studies are done in comparing countries but Iraq was not subjected to any studies. Hofstede’s study treat Iraq as homogenous country which in fact Iraq is a heterogeneous country made up of too many ethnic groups e.g. Arab, Kurds, Turkomans, Yezidi, and Assyrians, (cited in Iraqi constitution). Thus, for a country like Iraq with heterogeneous population (CVSCALE) is a psychometrically sound scale. Therefore, it can be confidently used for measuring individual cultural orientations. Despite its popularity (CVSCALE) would be the best alternative to Hofstede’s framework. METHODOLOGY The (CVSCALE) as a self-administered quantitative survey questionnaire was used in this research as the research instrument which measures Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions at individual level. As it was explained earlier Hofstede’s measures and analytical procedures have been subjected to criticism by Dorfman & Howell (1988) and were considered as paradigm. Based on problems and criticism of past studies Hofstede’s (1984) cultural dimensions were replaced by Yhoo, et al. (2011) new measure which maintains 26 items. However, what makes (CVSCALE) especial is the flexibility to conceptualize, measure, and combine cultural orientation at any level or society. CVSCALE were used in several developed countries i.e. US, Korea, and Brazil and to validate the scale has to be used by more countries in larger samples. It is hoped (CVSCALE) will provide researchers a chance to conceptualize and measure cultural values at the individual level (Yhoo, et al., 2011). At the beginning the (CVSCALE) was not available in Iraqi Kurdistan. Thus to ensure item equivalence, the questionnaire was translated from English to Kurdish and checked by two bilinguals assistance professors whose mother language was Kurdish. For the purpose of this research some minor adjustments were made into questionnaire such as easing the process of answering by entering the five likert points for each item. Also gender as an

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN extra item was added to the questionnaire to help researcher understand the percentages of male and female. After few pilot surveys the questionnaire was appeared to meet all criteria. Sample The samples for this study were based on the criteria of accessibility, functional equivalence, and representability (Fery, 1970 cited in Yoo, et al., 2011).Thus, for this study undergraduate student from similar demographic background was used as respondents. The data were collected in one of the largest public university named Salahddin University. They are accessible due to the nature of researcher’s work (university lecturer). Even though functionally equivalence is not absolutely vital for studying cross-cultural surveys (Wu, 2006) an attempt was made to match the sample in this university. Therefore, all participants in this study are first and second year undergraduate students from management, tourism and economic departments with the same age group (18-25). All departments in Salahaddin University are similar in structures, size and mission. A random sampling method was used and all the questionnaires were distributed randomly between first year and second year students in three departments. The data set for this study was based on 441 respondents out of 743. RESULTS Frequency Data were collected via a self-report questionnaire and respondents indicate their answers using a 5-point likert scale. In this way Cultural dimensions can be measured by calculating and aggregating the results. Therefore, standard deviations and means were calculated for every cultural value at the aggregate level using SPSS (Bernstein, M.J., 2011 and Ebster, C., 2012). After checking the questionnaires for validity the questionnaires were completed by 119 students out of 143 students from tourism department, 1 was exempted due to validity problem 118 (82%) lift. From Management department out of 360 students only 191 were returned but only 183 (51%) were valid and counted as completed. The third department is the economic department and only 142 (59%) students returned the questionnaires out of 240, again 2 questionnaires were rejected and 140 (58%) lift as valid. Please note the below table 1.2 and 1.3: TABLE 1.2: participants’ frequency Departments that Students questionnaires were distributed number Tourism 143 Management 360 Economic 240 Total 743

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Returned

Valid

By %

119 – 83% 191 – 53% 142 _ 59% 452 _ 60%

118 – 82% 183 – 51% 140 _ 58% 441 _ 59%

27% 41% 32% 100%

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN TABLE 1.3: Gender Frequency

Valid Male Female Total

Frequency 247 194 441

Percent 56.0 44.0 100.0

Valid Percent 56.0 44.0 100.0

Cumulative Percent 56.0 100.0

Reliability test of five dimensions Researcher used SPSS to measure Cronbach’s Alpha which it explains internal reliability of the study. It was argued that the closer the Cronbach’s Alpha to one the more internally reliable, anything above .7 would be considered adequate (Peter, 1979 cited in Prasongsukarn, 2009). The Cronbach’s Alpha is .689 for all the 26 items in five cultural dimensions which is considered adequate. By removing item 5 in the first dimension due to low correlation the internal reliability improved up to .706 which strengthen the measurement tool (Biostatistics, 2012 and Mueller, S., 2014). Therefore, all the items are measuring the same construct and there is strong inter-items correlation. See table 1.4 for farther explanation. TABLE 1.4: Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha .689 .706

Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items .713 .724

Based

on N of Items 26 25

Normality test In many statistical analyses there are dependent variables and independent variables. It is important to find out whether dependent variables (items) are approximately normally distributed for each category of independent variables (male & female). Skewness and Kurtosis z-value should be between -1.96 to +1.96) and the Shapino-Wilk test p-value above 0.05 ( Lofgren, K., 2013). It was long argued it is not necessary for data to be perfectly normally distributed but approximately normally distributed. Thus in SPSS measure should be as close to zero as possible but a small departure from zero is not problem as long as the measures are not to large compare to their standard errors. The z-value can be find out by dividing the measure by its standard error which should be somewhere between (-1.96 to +1.96). Therefore the author understands in this research data are little Skewed and Kurtotic for both gender but it does not differ significantly from normality (Lofgren, K., 2013). In this test the Shapino-Wilk p-value is not above 0.05 and the Null hypothesis for this test of normality is that data are normally distributed; if the p-value is below 0.05 this hypothesis will be rejected (Shapiro & Wilk, 1965; Razali & Wah, 2011). According to Hair et al. (2010 cited in Nazarian, 2012) if the variation from the data normal distribution

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN is sufficiently large, all resulting statistical tests are invalid, because normality is required to use the F and t statistic. Field (2009 cited in Nazarian, 2012) stated these tests are very sensitive toward the sample size and that might be the reason why the results of this study are significant due to large sample size (n=441). Factor analysis We need to verify whether the data set is suitable for factor analysis. The table 1.5 shows that Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin is .807 which is above .60 and the Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity Sig is .000 which is below .05 and it is significant (Biostatistics, 2013). Therefore, factor analysis is appropriate for our data. TABLE 1.5: KMO and Bartlett's Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .807 Bartlett's Test of Approx. Chi-Square Sphericity Df Sig.

1855.785 325 .000

By using Kaiser Criteria researcher can determine how many component need to be extract. In this research we are interested in component have Eigenvalue of 1 or more (Biostatistics, 2013). Only the first 8 components have Eigenvalues of above 1 and the cumulative percentage is 53.7% which is good, because the majority were explained by these 8 components. TABLE 1.6: Descriptive Statistics

Power Distance Power Distance Power Distance Power Distance Power Distance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism SARDAR HASSAN

N 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441

Minimum 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Page 23

Maximum 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00

Mean 1.5465 2.4422 1.5556 2.1610 2.5850 4.0068 4.2268 4.2063 3.8209 4.0884 3.5011 3.6372 4.2630 4.1565 3.6961

Std. Deviation .87814 1.21241 .92796 1.14571 1.34592 .75224 .63840 .71704 .71803 .73167 1.25068 1.17739 .77678 .93201 1.03494

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Collectivism Masculinity Masculinity Masculinity Masculinity Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Valid N (listwise)

441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441 441

1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00

3.4989 2.7755 3.2358 3.2041 3.8707 4.0159 3.2381 3.3152 4.0272 4.0363 4.2109

1.08109 1.33551 .97173 1.24283 1.06561 .95927 1.00680 1.15324 1.00643 1.15544 1.03505

RESULTS & DISCUSSION The results of this study show Iraqi Kurds have gone through some significant changes in their cultural values compared to the original scores in Hofstede’s study. Table 1.7 recap the statistical results of this study and compare with the old results. These statistical results of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are explained in following sections. TABLE 1.7: Hofstede’s Old Scores with New Scores on Iraqi Kurds Country (IRAQ) IDV MAS PDI UAI OLD SCORES .30 .70 .95 .85 NEW SCORES .38 .65 .41 .81

LTO .25 .76

Power Distance The total mean of the five items was 2.05806/5= 0.41which suggests that there is a change in score of (.95) to the new score (.41). It also indicates that there is huge decrease in this dimension compared to previous study. It is clear the participants in this research were more toward low power distance and high power sharing. Morrison (2002, p. 146) argued, growing material well-being, the benefits of education, new career opportunities and urbanization are some aspects of the changing environment that bring shift in cultural values in all countries, and this can explain why Iraqi Kurds scored moderately low on PDI. According to the ministry of higher education the total number of students studying at higher education in Iraqi Kurdistan are 94,700 which 48% of them are female students. http://www.mhe-krg.org/node/105 Kurdistan Board of investment reported the literacy rate in Iraqi Kurdistan is above 74% of which 84% male and 64% of female. There are many private and public universities; students are more diverse in deciding what they want to study. Also there is an equal chance for both girls and boys to study. According to InvestinGroup.com there are currently a total of 13 public university and 11 private universities in only three provinces in the Kurdistan region. The respondents in this survey were all university students SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN studying management and economics and this could explain why Iraqi Kurds score moderately low on PDI. From another side economy is booming in Iraqi Kurdistan and that helps rise in middle class family. It is very clear all these are linked. According to Hofstede, et al. (2010) there is a strong correlation between dimensions with data such as national wealth, population and even geographical latitude can have a significant influence on PDI. Individualism & Collectivism The total mean of the 6 items in collectivism was 3.7921/5= 0.76 or .36 which indicate that Iraqi Kurds are more toward collectivism rather than individualism. In Hofstede’s finding the score of IDV was .30 which suggest that Iraqis like other Arab countries are more toward collectivism and this probably will apply to Kurdistan region in Iraq. Although (Hofstede, et al., 2010, p.105) firmly believes that both dimensions PDI and IDV go together, there are countries such as France and Cost Rica both dimensions can be treated as separate and do not have to correlate with each other. Fougere and Moulettes (2007) stated Hofstede believes individualism correlates with modernity and a collectivistic society is characterized by less economic development, tribalism, more children per family, old fashion education system, law system is built on traditions and religion. Ironically, this statement can complement the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan. In here people are born into extended family and family protects them in exchange for loyalty, Kurds are more “we” conscious and purpose of education is learning how to do (Hofstede, 2011). The author can argue the third factor “wealth” has less influence on peoples’ behavior but Religion has a dominant role in encouraging loyalty and subordinate. According to the ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs of Kurdistan region there are over 5100 mosques in only three Kurdish cities which is more than the number of the mosques in the two most holy city of “Mecca and Medina” in Saudi Arabia (KNN.NET). Ali (1992 cited in Robertson, et al., 2002) believes in Arab world, one of the major sources of cultural values is the Islamic work ethic where it can be traced back to the Qur’an which explains hard working can be rewarded. Uncertainty Avoidance The total mean of the 5 items in uncertainty avoidance is 4.06984/5= 0.81which is very close to the original index 85. It suggests that Iraqi Kurds like other nationalities in the region are strong on uncertainty avoidance. It also indicates that there has been a little decrease in this index since it was first done. Kurds avoid risk and ambiguity but they prefer rules and regulations, standard laws that apply to everyone and also make different tasks and works more understandable. According to Hofstede, ET al. (2010) in these sorts of society’s people are more anxious and expressive and to avoid uncertainty they take refuge to technology, law and religion. Kurds are hot blooded emotional people with risk adverse attitude, they consider change and unknown as threat, gods’ rules and government regulations are seen as path of transcendent and clarification needed everywhere to explain what is expected from them.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Probably there is mistrust between government and people and the general view is the rules will protect them from the one in power and therefore, in the time of conflict or confusion over whose responsibility is they can always go back to the role of law. According to Transparency International Iraq ranks 170/175 and score 16/100 on CPI which indicate the level of corruption is one of the highest in the world. Hofstede, et al. (2010) argued there is strong correlation between strong UAI and corruption, they believe, poor pay from government is one of the reasons for side payment, it is not a matter of greed but another ways of survival and feeding their families. Masculinity and Femininity The overall mean of this dimension was 3.2715/5= 0.65 which indicates there is a decrease in original score. Hofstede suggested Iraq was more toward masculine society 70 compared with new score .65. The result of this sample seemed to be not in line with Hostede’s study. The new index suggests that masculine side have more weight in this study but there is a reduction in the orginal score. Hofstede, et al. (2010) have observed age and gender are both factors strongly associated with the nature of this dimension but not the wealth and in this research the majority of participants were young, age between18-25 and 247 male and 194 female students. Although there is still tendency toward male masculinity and male domination but there is also reduction in this domination toward a more equal culture. Masculine society value achievement and success, when combined with individualism, success can be expected but when masculinity combined with collectivism success is less luckily (Mooij & Hofstede, 2010). Masculine society also warship a tough god and Islam has always maintained a tough and masculine elements where for any wrong doing there is a tough punishment (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Clearly religion have specified different roles for men and women in society and this reflected in power sharing, giving responsibilities to female and differences in earning between both gender. Long Term – Short Term Orientation The overall mean of the LTO was 3.80723/5= 0.76 which indicates that Iraqi Kurds are more toward long term orientation. People are willing to give up today’s fun for tomorrow’s success and long term planning is more important than short term fun. According to De-Mooij and Hofstede (2010, p. 6) The values for long term orientate people are perseverance, ordering relationships by status, thrift, and having a sense of shame, also long term society implies investment in the future. Iraqi Kurds unlike neighboring countries trying and willing to learn from other countries, students attribute success to hard effort and failure to lack of efforts. From early stage of childhood kids are taught about future difficulty and saving. Like Hofstede, et al. (2010) pointed out; marriage in LTO is a pragmatic, goal-oriented arrangement. Couples are willing to live with in-laws after marrying, men and women are working and kids start helping at an early age, source (www.everyculture.com). Marriage is more like buying and selling and it is becoming a norm, thus love is not the main cause of

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN marriage (medyamagazine.com), according to the same source in 2012, 5,399 cases of divorce were registered across courts in Kurdistan. Kurdish society may look conservative but people are hardworking always think of a better future. They prefer to have large saving for the need time and most of large purchases are done in cash in advance. According to Zulan (2012) 80% of Iraqi do not have a bank account, most Iraqi rely on relatives and friends to borrow money. Probably it can be traced back to weak banking system and also the chaotic past they have had with all sorts of regimes in Iraq. LIMITATION While the author believes this research provides a substantial input to expand cross cultural study it is not out of limitations. One of the main limitations of this research is the inability to make direct comparison between both Iraqi Arabs cultural values with Kurdish counterpart. The explanations provided for these results are speculative at best, yet it does not prevent our ability to distinguish specific shifts in cultural values. Next, unlike Hofstede’s IBM white colored employees sample for this research was drawn from a population of large public university students. Even though, the sample size of this research met the requirements, a larger sample would enhance validity. CONCLUSION The intention of this research was to look at the changes in original scores in Iraq since it was first done by Hofstede in 1980. Very few or none previous studies have investigated these dimensions on Iraqi Kurds. Also this research was conducted 30 years after Hofstede’s study. The researcher used CVSCALE to measure notional culture at individual levels. Because as it was argued earlier Iraq is a heterogamous society which has too many different groups, each with its own characteristics. Therefore, CVSCALE is a very useful tool for those interested in cross cultural research and international business managers due to its functionality in linking individual behavior and attitudes with cultural values. This study used students in university of Salahaddin as example to study cultural dimensions. The result of this study on Iraqi Kurds demonstrated that there are some significant changes in cultural values of Kurds in Iraq compare to Hofstede’s original study. All the changes were compared and discussed. It indicates that Iraqi Kurds are less masculine and more toward equal culture. The new findings suggest the tendency is toward low PDI where inequality is not acceptable and seen as taboo. The result also suggested Iraqi Kurds are long term oriented which mean they plan for the future and willing to give up todays fun for success in the future. It was argued earlier that when change happens in economy, politics, and society, they can influence cultural values and cause changes perception of individuals and behaviors. De-Mooij (2011) believes the idea behind an increase in national wealth will lead to change in values because there would be more expenditure on education and media resulting in more democratic system which lead to change in consumption. Therefore, this new index demonstrated that cultural values can

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN change over time. Thus, there is a need for updating and re-measuring many cultural theories. According to (hofstede, et al., 2010; Hofstede, et al., 2002) language, geographical latitude, population, religion and wealth usually points out differences in culture. Maybe that is why there are different scores for majority of dimensions. Kurds are one of the indigenous people of the Mesopotamian plains; they form a distinctive community, united through race, culture, and their own language, source (BBC.com/news). According to Washington Post, unlike other groups in Iraq Kurds live in mountains region of southwest Asia generally known as Kurdistan. The average latitude is 6000 feet with much of its land hard to reach, source (www.everyculture.com). Therefore, this author can conclude that there is a shift in the result of cultural values compared to the pervious study done by Hofstede. In summary, this work has updated and expanded Hofstede’s cultural studies in Iraq and Kurdistan region. It is hoped this new result can bring significant insights into the field of cross cultural research and international business management. Future and further research is needed in this complex chronological line of study REFERENCES Bernstein, M.J., 2011. Frequencies and Descriptive Statistics. [video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrfQfEwjZA4 [ accessed 27/12/2014].

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Prasongsukarn, K., (2009) .VALIDATING THE CULTURAL VALUE SCALE (CVSCALE): A CASE STUDY OF THAILAND. ABAC Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 1-13. Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A., 2013. Organizational Behavior. Fifteenth Edition. England: Pearson Education limited. Robertson, C.J., Al-Khatib, J.A., & Al-Habib, M., 2002. The Relationship between Arab Values and Work Beliefs: An Exploratory. Thunderbird International Business Review, Vol. 44(5) 583-601. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/tie.10036 Rugman, A.M., & Collinson, S., 2006. International Business. 4th Ed. England: Pearson Education Limited. Shackleton, V. J., and Ali, H. A., 1990. Work-Related Values of Managers: A test of the Hofstede Model. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 21(1), pp.109-18. Tara, V., & Steel, P., 2009. Beyond Hofstede: Challenging the Ten Comandments of Cross-Cultural Research. In: C. Nakata, ed., 2009. Beyond Hofstede: Cultural Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 40-60. Trompenaars, F., & Turner, C.H., 1997. RIDING THE WAVES OF CULTURE: Cultural Diversity in Business. 2nd ed. London: Nicoholas Brealey Publishing. Yoo, B., Donthu, N., & Lenartowicz, T., 2011. Measuring Hofstede’s Five Dimensions of Cultural Values at the Individual Level: Development and Validation of CVSCALE. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 23, pp. 193-210 Who are the Kurds? Washington Post Company. [online] srv/inatl/daily/feb99/kurdprofile.htm [accessed on 21 October 2015]

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Wu, M-Y., 2006. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions 30 years later: A study at Taiwan & United States*. Intercultural Communication Studies XV:1. Western Illinois University. Available at: http://www.uri.edu/iaics/content/2006v15n1/04%20Ming-Yi%20Wu.pdf Zulal, S., 2012. Cash only: Why the messy banking sector endangers Iraqi Development. The Kurdistan Tribune. [online] http://kurdistantribune.com/2012/cash-only-why-messy-banking-sector-endangers-iraqidevelopment/ [accessed 19/02/2015].

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Chapter 2

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON INTERNATIONAL MARKETING & CONSUMER BEHAVIORS IN IRAQI Kurdistan, USING HOFSTEDE’S MODEL AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL Sardar Hassan MSc International Business Management, Salahaddin University - College of Administration & Economics Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq *[email protected]–[email protected]

ABSTRACT There are growing interest in the consequences of culture for global marketing and advertising and many recent researches urged companies to consider the necessity of adapting their international marketing strategies to the culture of the consumer (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). In order to investigate the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior and answer the research questions in Iraqi Kurdistan, this paper tend to identify Hofstede cultural dimensions and explain how these dimensions may impact the global marketing management. This paper was divided into three main parts. The first part of this research concentrates on international marketing as well as national culture and tries to investigate the past research on how national culture as an independent variable may influence international marketing and consumer behavior as dependent variable. In the second part of this study, two main questions were raised and a quantitative selfrespond questionnaire was used to measure the cultural values at individual level. This research used convenience sample method and it is based on the sample of 272 professionals mostly managers at different levels and combined with the previous research sample of 441 students to bring consistency and reliability to the research and also reduce sample error. In the third part, data were measured and analyzed and at the end a discussion was developed to answer the questions. The findings explain the relationship between both variables and support the past works by De Mooij and Hofstede as concrete works that can be applied by international managers. Therefore, this author can conclude that this paper provide strong argument that there is positive relationship between national culture and international marketing and consumer behavior. There are some suggestions for more cross-cultural research in this part of the world. Keywords: Hofstde Model, culture, international marketing, consumer behavior, Kurds, context model.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN INTODUCTION One of the best ways to grow your business is to go global because now it is business without borders and if you do not challenge your competitors in their markets, the foreign competitors will inevitably come and compete with you in your home market (Kotler, 2003). What stop firms to invest abroad are tariffs, language differences, cultural differences, currency exchange control and bribery (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012). Schneiter (1982) believes the culture impact international marketing in a way that they want to enter into a market and marketing strategy. Fulford (2001) argued culture affects the effectiveness of formulating an effective marketing message in any cross-cultural context. Marketing managers need to understand how different cultural background impact communication and exchange (Varey, 2002). Marketplace interaction should not be summed up only in terms of economic transactions but also as a cultural form, thus, a cultural approach and methods to marketing and consumer behavior is needed to understand the complexity of culture across globalized market environments (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). There is an increasing interest in the consequences of culture for global marketing and advertising (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). Thanks to the internet as a means of spreading messages about products and service offering, lifestyle, and cultural image, consumers around the world are far more familiar with global brands than they were few decades ago and these resulted in forcing practitioners and researchers of global marketing and management to search for alternative paradigms of culture that will help them navigate the more dynamic environment of markets, consumers and organizations around the world (Nakata, 2009). The adaptation of branding and advertising strategies to the culture of consumers were the subject of recent researches and Hofstede cultural model is widely used to understand cultural differences (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). As the globalization of economy is happening, an accurate understanding of national culture and its impacts on buyer behavior in international marketing is very important. This research, tries to understand the role of national culture in international marketing and how it impacts consumers behavior. It is understood that these disciplines are still evolving, broadening the understanding on these changes requires us to involve in interdisciplinary study. This fragmented, plural, and fluid view of culture enables researchers to investigate culture at micro-level social formations, such as subcultures and brand communities (Nakata and Bilgin, 2009). Unlike Hofstede paradigm, this research, measure national culture at individual levels where behaviors are determined by each member in a group or society. The dynamic view of culture speculates those individuals’ actions and decisions are ruled by a complex collection of factors; including national culture ones (Nakata and Bilgin, 2009).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING Several scholars such as: Brassington and Pettitt (2006), Baines and Chansarkar (2002), Donaldson (1998), Kent and Omer (2003), Kotler (2003), Kotler and Armstrong (2012), Schneiter (1982), Terpstra and Sarathy, (1991), have looked at culture briefly as a part of macro-environment that may influence businesses. In contrast, other researchers such as: Arnould et al, (2009) Brannen (2009), De Mooij (1997; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2010; 2011; 2013), Fulford (2001), Nakata, and Bilgin (2009), Varey (2002), have looked at the influence of culture on international marketing and consumer behavior in more detail. It is over two decades that the culture construct has been considered seriously within marketing and consumer research; otherwise, it has mainly played the role of an externally given antecedent variable which explains the difference and similarity between national markets (Arnould, et al., 2009). International marketing can be explained by first looking at marketing in a domestic environment (Terpstra and Sarathy, 1991). According to Brassington and Pettitt (2006) definitions of marketing are moving away from the single exchange, seller-focused perspective towards more socially relevant and relationship-oriented. Kotler and Armstrong (2012, p.29) defined marketing as “The process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.” Additionally, international marketing is to find out what customers want around the world and then satisfy these wants better than other competitors, both domestic and international (Terpstra and Sarathy, 1991, p.5). Berry and Wilson (2000) suggested global marketing is different from international marketing in a way global marketing try to create a standardized marketing strategy regardless of different countries or regions. In addition, Belch and Belch (2003) defined consumer behavior as “the process and activities people engage in when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy their needs and desires.” Kotler and Armstrong (2012) stressed the complexity of buying behavior, especially when consumers are highly involved in a purchase decision making and perceive significant differences between brands. Kent and Omer (2003) also indicated the complexity of purchase behavior at the retail level. Donaldson (1998) have looked at personal factors in buying behavior to identify how marketers can market and sell effectively. Belch and Belch (2003) argued the broadest and most intangible of the external forces that impact consumer behavior is culture. Varey (2002) stated cultural influence of consumer behavior impacts on marketing management and it is the dominant values that explain which needs must be achieved. There is a huge interest in investigating the influence of culture on consumer behavior (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). Some scholars believe that global marketing worked as a force to push for a better, enhanced communication and other technologies so in return consumers around the world will have similar tastes and needs. Others feel that this level of commonality is overstated and consumer’ needs and wants should be examined in different market environments (Berry and Wilson, 2000). Moreover, Moisander and valtonen (2006) argued It is the marketers who Produce goods and services, give meaning to them and make them available SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN to consumers, thus, they have a significant role in providing what market wants but also function as significant shapers of tastes, including creating and recreating new wants, needs and lifestyles, exerting power and authority from their position within important cultural institutions. Therefore, they have assumed that products and brands as cultural artifacts that have meaning, produced and consumed in and through processes and practices of representation. DePalma (2002) pointed to internet for allowing companies and countries instantly promote their language, culture, and economic might anywhere in this world. Brannen (2009) referred to economic globalization and cultural integration as a superficial impression and stated these are only happening on the surface level because today, more than ever, international managers are realizing that they really lack in deep environmental understanding – specifically cultural context. In addition to the relation between culture and marketing, Arnould, et al. (2009) also raised the question of standardization-adaptation debate, and asked whether certain developed marketing strategies or tactics would be applicable in a different cultural context. Varey (2002) argued the ethnocentricity can lead business to failures when necessary standardization and adaptations are missed, what works at home market does not mean it will work elsewhere in every case and what makes standardization of advertising and other communication activities more attractive is cost. According to Arnould, et al. (2009) many of the world’s most brutal conflicts are waged in term of culture, from the Turkic-speaking Uighurs in China to the Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. By communicating to similar and ignoring the different groups marketer will harness the differences (Vary, 2002). Brannen (2009) raised the question of what would happen when global companies try to transfer core competencies to another country such as technology and what role culture plays? This is where the influence of culture on management more apparent and if these linkages are left unmanaged, unexpected outcomes occur. De Mooij (1997) blamed globalization and modernization for making international companies to come to conclusion that marketing, branding and advertising strategies should be standardized. She added this was reinforced by the success of a few global brands such as Coca-Cola and Levi’s (De Mooij, 2001). Varey (2002) indicated recently, Coca-Cola has fallen foul of local tastes for traditionally brewed beverages in Russia. De Mooij (2003) stated ignoring culture’s impact has led many companies with centralized way of operations and marketing in declining profitability. She criticized business schools for teaching and making graduates believe in global homogenization of consumer behavior which she sees it as one of the greatest myths taught in international marketing courses (2002). Arnould, et al. (2009) pointed to globalization as a great force that challenges the assumption of distinct national differences and the methodological foundation of Hofstede’s survey instrument. From another side, De Mooij (2002) argued the phenomena is not the convergence of consumer behavior but technology and national wealth in developed world and these are developments at macro-level not micro-level. Consumer needs are not different in different countries depending on culture, level of economic development and different product standards (Hill, 2007). Stone and McCall (2004) suggested that the distribution of income among a population can be a significant

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN factor in deciding what products and services international companies should offers. DePalma (2002) mentioned some of the reasons for why it is hard for a generic product to travel abroad without any modifications such as; redevelopment, reengineering, repackaging, total quality controls and he suggested building global requirements into the next version rather than trying to redoing it. In marketing literature, the product value is not about the material properties of the products but its symbolic properties which show signs of status, prestige, and social class (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). Thus, the product/brand has to be managed within restrictions and opportunities provided by the law of a country. In manufacturing, the success of international products is subject to economies of scale as well as accepted across cultures (Berry and Wilson, 2000). Mass customization brings the advantages of standardization and adaptation together, creating economies of scale and scope (Stone and McCall, 2004). Firms that try a policy of standardized pricing must know the same forces that inhibit the international standardization of other marketing mix components will influence them too (Ball, Geringer, McNett and Minor, 2012). They have added what makes price strategy more complex in international markets are two types of pricing: foreign national pricing, which is domestic pricing in another country, and international pricing for export. Incomes, cultural habits, and consumer preferences are not similar in different market and for the same price in two different markets; different amount may be demanded (Terpstra and Sarathy, 1991). Across cultures and markets, negotiation is a key feature of the pricing scene and must be supported by cross-cultural skills (Stone and McCall, 2004). National culture has a significant role in making the process of international promotion implementation more complex and difficult because different media has different usage across international markets and the type of promotion mix works in one country, say, France, is not necessarily will work for other countries says, Iraq for example (Stone and McCall, 2004). Media are part of countries’ culture and some of the differences are related to national income (De Mooij, 2003). Cultural values and norms provide a set of rules for how people need to communicate, behave and make decision about what to consume because language impact culture and culture influences language (Varey, 2002). Thus, marketers must communicate meaning through various forms of communicating media and international manager must pay attention to the cultural and media differences. Language has many facets that relate to the meaning of consumer products (Douglas and Craig, 2009). The objective of the promotion message and media selection may be the same but implementation and media usage and the details of the messages in each country could be different, particularly, when it comes to expenditure and the language used for portraying the same message (Stone and McCall, 2004). Varey (2002) suggested that family, work, politics, religion, and communication technologies provide reference points to people and any dissimilarity in them can explain the meaning of message. The Communication channel that was used between family and friends as traditional word of mouth, now, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are offering the possibility of electronic word of mouth (De Mooij and Goodrich, 2013).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Advertising constitutes a key system for producing sign values (Moisander and valtonen, 2006). In studying global advertising culture creates global-local dilemma because marketers has to decide whether to standardize for efficiency reasons or to adapt to be effective (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). It is more sensible and cheaper to create advert locally than to import it and then adapt it because sometime cultural differences make it very difficult to pull off a global campaign (Aakar and Erich, 2001). An Advert should mirrors consumer behavior and start by getting attention, create interest, build desire and stimulate action (Moore, 2005). The emphasis of advertising is different among Western and Eastern cultures, for example, in Western culture the focus is on individualism, comparison and competition, whereas, in Eastern culture the emphasis is on status, emotions, indirect expression, and the avoidance of comparisons (Varey, 2002). Moreover, brand cannot just be imposed on all market because it is a risky path to take and a brand’s image may means different things in different countries (Aakar and Erich, 2001). De Mooij (2004) found that both consumer behavior and the way they communicate are strongly dependent on their cultural values and as for advertising, one important distinction is between low and high context communication. International marketers may find it very difficult to create distribution strategies whether it is in home market or in host because they must deal with two functions: getting the products to foreign markets (exporting) and distributing the products within each foreign market (Ball, et al., 2012).There are some cases that the distribution channels that marketers accustomed may not be available. Stone and McCall (2004) warns about the use of family and friendship ties in some parts of Latin America, Black Africa, part of Asia and in the Arab countries, as being a necessary and important means of doing business. Meanwhile, the use of agents and distributors raises the question of commission and bribery. Differences in the international marketing environment across countries will dictate the way in which data is collected, the type of question to ask, who will answer, and how to interpret the answers (Baines and Chansarkar, 2002, p. 210). Similar to home market research, international marketing research uses the same quantitative research methods, with measurements as a base for assessment (Stone and McCall, 2004). Differences in socio-cultural environment are viewed as the most important aspect of the international environment as it relates to differences in language, culture, literacy and numeracy. Baines and Chansarkar (2002) see these socio-cultural differences as challenge because it makes international marketing research and design more complex. Nakata and Bilgin (2009) suggested that as the body of international marketing research expands, marketer has to review these researches periodically to be able to measure the state of knowledge and identify what need to be done in the future. They have recommended that there is a set of theories garnering current attention centers on culture but it is the Hofstede’s model that most widely used and referred in this field. De Mooij (2000) found significant correlation between Hofstede cultural dimensions and patterns of consumer behavior which shows the impact of culture on consumer behavior. She discovered variation in all aspects of consumer behavior: in consumption of

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN packaged goods, in usage and ownership of durable goods and in media behavior (2003). Similarly, the results of Antunes, et al. (2013) research shows that the cultural differences have big impact on marketing strategy of subsidiaries they were studying that forced these subsidiaries to change their products, design and brand name in order to meet the needs of the host countries. DeMooij (2004) have found that there is a strong correlation between product ownership and related behavior with Hofstede’s Dimensions. In their recent research, Spiers, et al. (2014) found that there is relationship between family structure, language, values and beliefs on consumer behavior in both Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. Moreover, Leng and Botelho (2010) have used Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and tried to investigate the relationship between national culture and consumer decisionmaking styles in the purchase of cell phone and found there is mixed evidence for the application of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to decision making. Hofstede’s work is highly functional for quantitative manipulation, and repeatedly supported through empirical testing which it responsible for more than two-thirds of culture studies (Nakata and Bilgin, 2009). With disappearance in dissimilarity of national incomes and differences in GNP per capita, culture is a powerful explaining variable and Cultural models are increasingly applied in international business, marketing and advertising research (De Mooij, 2013). According to Hofstede’s logic, globalization will lead to decreasing differences in at least some of the indexed value profiles of the different countries. But will not diminish the value of the index as such (Arnould, et al., 2009). CULTURE There are too many different definitions of culture and because it impacts on several dimensions of human behavior. Different disciplines tried to define it in their own understanding and for that reason culture is not universally accepted notion (Hofstede, et al., 2002). According to Hofstede, et al. (2010) sociologists and anthropologists are more comfortable with explaining culture than defining it. Schein (2004, p. 17) has defined culture of a group as “a Pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. Also culture was viewed by Schneiter (1982) a marketing guru as “That complex whole which include knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” this complex whole acquired by man has a profound influence on buyers behavior and perception in buying decision making which is often overlooked by many marketing managers assuming “one size fits all” (Fulford, 2001). Culture is the main cause of someone’s needs, wants and behavior and this behavior is largely learned (Kotler, et al., 1999). De Mooij and Hofstede (2010) argued the cultural values define the self and personality of consumers and for marketers to communicate effectively, the consumer need to be central. Hofstede and his associate assume that values and attitudes of people are stable over time. Societies old values become manifest in consumption and consumer behavior (De Mooij, 2001).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN People learn culture from childhood as they live in a society and a kid learn the basic values, perceptions, wants and behaviors as s/he lives with family, go to school, mix with other kids in the area (Hofstede, et al., 2010; Kotler, et al., 1999). Thus, marketers should be aware of cultural shifts in order to satisfy needs by providing a new product or services. Douglas and Craig (2009) stress the importance of understanding that culture’s influence does not happen in a vacuum but there are several other variables (macro-microenvironment) coexist with and impact culture and consumer behavior directly and indirectly. Kotler, et al. (2002) argued that each culture contains smaller subcultures that each group has its own shared value system based on the way they live, experience and situation. Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial groups and geographic region which they can be significant sources of income. Additionally, Kotler and Armstrong (2012) admitted that marketers have to look for social classes because some class systems have a greater impact on buying behavior than others. They have added in most western countries ‘lower’ classes are more culture-bound and may behave and shop like ‘upper’ classes. Douglas and Craig (2009) admitted that subcultures are surrounded by the dominant culture as well as the micro-environment (e.g., neighborhood, living conditions, and urban vs. rural) in which they live. De Mooij and Hofstede (2010) viewed cultural values as an integrated part of the consumer’s self, not as an environmental factor. Moreover, buying behavior can also be influenced by personal characteristics such as: age, life-cycle stage, occupation, incomes, lifestyle, and personality (Kotler, et al., 1999). Hall’s high and low context model offers a classification of cultures based on communication styles and look at the role that context plays in the communication patterns such as body language, place in the room and who speaks before and after (Ball, et al., 2012, p. 98). They have added that in high context, the communication tends to be implicit, indirect and poly-chronic, while, in low context cultures, the communication is explicit, direct, clear and mono-chronic. In high context cultures such as China and Middle Eastern countries, people depend strongly on nonverbal sign of communication and a person official status, place in society and reputation carry considerable weight (Robbins and Judge, 2013, p. 391). Thus, what is not said maybe more important than what is said. In contrast, in low context cultures such as European and North Americans, people depend on spoken and written words to pass the meaning, status, and reputation are secondary (Robbins and Judge, 2011). In marketing, several models have been implemented to explain the influence of sociocultural values on consumer behavior such as: individualism-collectivism dimensions (Hofstede, 1980; 2001; and Triandis, 1995) and Schwartz’s (1992) framework of motivational values, derived from Rokeach’s (1973) Value Survey (Douglas and Craig, 2009). People’s wants and needs are determined by their values and the factors make the buying decision occur include the language spoken, beliefs of people, their attitudes toward time, wealth acquisition and risk-taking (Stone and McCall, 2004). Kotler (2002) stated, in marketing, value was defined as “ratio between what the customer gets and what he gives”,

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN in another word, customer should get benefits and assumes costs, as shown in the below equation: Value = benefit/cost = functional benefits+ emotional benefits/monetary cost+ time cost+ energy cost+ psychic cost Based on this equation, the marketer can increase the value of the customer offering by (1) raising benefits, (2) reducing costs, (3) raising benefits and reducing costs, (4) raising benefits by more than the raise in costs, or (5) lowering benefits by less than the reduction in costs (Kotler, 2002, p. 6). HOFSTEDE’S STUDY Hofstede’s framework is an interpretation of unstructured idea of culture that turned them into a tractable construct suitable to empirical research (Nakata, 2009). His study is one of the widely applied and referred to within the social sciences and business disciplines including marketing community (Fulford, 2001). For decades, management and marketing researchers are thankful to Geert Hofstede for providing them an empirical approach to study national culture as well as workplace culture (Adair, et al., 2009). In his second edition of ‘Culture’s Consequences’ Hofstede clearly explained the influence of national culture on international marketing, advertising and consumer behavior (Fulford, 2001). Fulford added Hofstede’s findings lead many professional marketing community and companies to come to realization of local preferences in term of marketing and the benefits of local approach instead of standardized global message. Over the last 30 years Hofstede surveyed more than116, 000 IBM employees in over 40 different countries (Robbins & Judge, 2013, p. 184). The questions were about participants’ values and perceptions of their work situation. From the collected data Hofstede discovered managers and employees are different on five value dimensions which try answering the questions of how and why people are affected by national cultural structures. The dimensions are: Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Power Distance (PDI), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), and Long term-Short term Orientation (LTO) (Hofstede, et al., 2010). These dimensions help researchers to explain and predict a range of markets and marketing behaviors a cross different cultures, including consumer innovativeness, brand credibility, and global advertising effectiveness (Alden et al., 1993; Erdem et al., 2006; Steenkamp et al., 1999 cited in Nakata and Bilgin, 2009). Since the initial publication over 30 years ago, hundreds of researchers have used his model to understand culture’s impact on managerial, consumer and organizational behavior (Adair, et al., 2009). Power Distance (PDI), related to the different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality (Hofstede, 2011). The focus is on power inequality, in house, in work place, and society and how members of different societies feels about having less power (large PDI) or they will reject this notion of inequality (small PDI) (Hofstede, et al., 2010). This dimension emphasizes how people appears, behave, communicate in both private and public places, do they try to show their status through brands, do they withhold

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN information, how they use electronic devices, credit cards, advertising and how they handle complaining behavior of consumers and personnel in retail (De Mooij, 2011). Douglas and Craig (2009) suggested that power distance can influence factors such as personal values like (achievement and success, equal reward systems) as well as impression management (i.e., focusing on sociability, kindness vs. self-competence and advertising appeals). In large (PDI) everyone has its place in societal hierarchy and this is where global brands serve this purpose of to exhibit one’s social status (De mooij and Hofstede, 2011). In small (PDI) societies, everyone work hard to look younger and powerful members try to hide their power and look more equal to others (De Mooij, 2002). Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), related to the level of stress in a society in the face of an unknown future (Hofstede, 2011). It reflects the level anxiety people take while faced with uncertainty, ambiguity and change. Hofstede, et al. (2010) argued people in strong (UAI) are paradoxical, this means, they are willing to take risk in order to reduce the risk and to cope with unknown they take refuge to rule of laws for prescribed behavior. This dimension looks at whether people of that society read books and newspaper, have personal computers, access to internet and how innovative they are. It also explains differences in whether sports, traveling, learning languages were taken seriously, the usage of medication and mineral water, the numbers of physicians per 1,000 individuals, and whether the advertising message conveys values such as details and precision or use of humor (De Mooij, 2011). In strong (UAI) culture people are less open to change and innovation, they tend to pay attention to rules and formality to structure life and competence is a strong value resulting in belief in experts while weak uncertainty avoidance cultures belief in the generalist and people tend to be more innovative and entrepreneurial and play more active sports (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011; De Mooij, 2002). In low (UAI) cultures, people tend to use convenience products, buy secondhand cars, invest in stock and ‘do it yourself in home. In contrast, high UAI cultures, people try to eat organic food and fruits, read less books, buy new car and invest in precious metals and gems (Fulford, 2001). Individualism-collectivism (IDV), related to the integration of individuals into primary groups (Hofstede, 2011). It explains how individuals see themselves in the group and alone. Whether, individuals are free to decide for their future and primary interests or they are member of a group and group interest and success comes first in exchange for loyalty (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Individualistic cultures are universalistic; they think their values are valid for the whole world (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). In other word, they believe in standardization of marketing strategies and global branding than collectivistic countries like Japan which they believe in adaptation of their international marketing strategy. According to Hofstede (2001) individualistic people are ready to take more risk and innovate than collectivist, and also they are more willing to buy new and different products and brands (Leng and Botelho, 2010). People in collectivistic societies are more implicit, indirect and more poly-chronic in their communications, while, individualistic are more direct, explicit and more monochronic in their communication. Thus, sales people are more direct and into the point in individualistic cultures than collectivistic culture where it is important to build a good SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN relationship and trust between parties then sales (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). The same arguments will apply to advertising: persuasion versus creating trust. Moisander and Valtonen (2006) suggested that the marketing relationship in individualistic cultures aims to build and develop a positive relation between the companies, brands, and customers, while the tribal approach to this relationship is to rebuild and support the relation between customers. Douglas and Craig (2009) argued in marketing, cultural orientation has been studied primarily in relation to marketing communications and cognitive processes. De Mooij and Goodrich (2013) found collectivists trust heavily on word-of-mouth than advertising and this reflects their behavior while the use online to purchase a product as they rely more on information sources ‘electronic word of mouth’. Masculinity-Femininity (MAS), related to the division of emotional roles between women and men (Hofstede, 2011). The dominant values in masculine societies are performance, competition, achievement, control and focus on material success, whereas in feminine cultures the dominant values are equality, caring, helping and nurturing for others, and men and women are equal (Hofstede, et al., 2010). This dimension tries to explain the differences between men and women in household and how the responsibilities are divided. It explains how and the frequency of internet and hotels usage for personal or pleasure, and it looks at the differences in buying status brands, luxury goods, jewelry and coffee consumption (De Mooij, 2011). For example, in masculine societies achievement should be seen, so status products and brands such as jewelry are important to present your achievement, whereas in feminine societies small is beautiful, status is not an issue, and male and female roles overlap (De Mooij, 2002; 2004). Also in masculine cultures, works are not divided equally between husband and wife and men do less shopping than in feminine societies (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). Long Term-Short Term Orientation (LTO), related to the choice of focus for people’s effort: the future or the present and past (Hofstede, 2011). “Long-term orientation stand for the fostering of virtues oriented toward future rewards-in particular, perseverance and thrift. Its opposite pole, short-term orientation, stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present-in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of “face” and fulfilling social obligations” (Hofstede, et al., 2010, p. 239). How people feel about traditional values, the truth and perseverance. In the LTO cultures people are willing to sacrifice todays for a better tomorrow, whereas people in STO cultures, future is less important, now is powerful and they are committed to no change but routine (De Mooij, 2011). LTO suggests long term investment such as a long term investment between Broadband and other businesses or government (De Mooij, 2010; De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). Also variance in degrees of thrift has implication for the using credit cards: it is low in LTO cultures and high in STO cultures (De Mooij, 20002). Although, there are other cultural models such as Trompenaars (1993; 1997), Schwartz (1994;2006) and the most recent one GLOBE study (House et al. 2004) that can explain the similarity and differences among culture of nations and spot patterns of basic issues that can influence the way group and individual function, Hofstede’s paradigm has grown importance, dominating other culture theories and putting Hofstede into the ranks of the top SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN three referenced international business authors (Nakata, 2009). Some international marketing scholars tend to view Hofstede’s model as old and outdated and thus not valid anymore. For that reason, the new GLOBE model is used without understanding the basic difference (De Mooij, 2013). Hofstede’s model is similar to other models in finding basic value differences, it is different in respect to the numbers of countries measured, level of analysis, the dimension structure and number of dimensions, the subjects (Schwartz – teacher and students; GLOBE – middle managers; Hofstede – all levels of employees in a company) and conceptual and methodological differences (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). Nakata and Bilgin (2009) found that Hofstede’s work was used by marketing researchers more than any other culture concept. Fulford (2001) predict that Hofstde’s work will continue to grow and to be referred to as the competition for the global customer becomes more intense because he knows what his is doing, why, what theory had been used before and had access to necessary data. De Mooij (2011) argued that it is the simplicity and applicability of his dimensions that has been widely used by different academics. For managers and marketers, Hofstede’s model has proven fruitful (Adair, et al., 2009). His discovery was proved empirically (Fulford, 2001). De Mooij, one of the prominent supporters of Hofstede’s works continuously try to demonstrate his framework in a way it was used for intercultural management can also be incorporated to understand differences in consumption and consumer behavior. De Mooij, (1997; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2010; 2011; 2013) have tested Hofstede’s model in international marketing and discovered positive correlations between variables. Her work is now widely respected; Hofstede himself (2001) pays tribute to her work (Fulford, 2001).This author believes there is a need for new understandings of culture in Kurdistan region, and how national values can influence international marketing and consumer behavior. Therefore, he tries to undertake a research on discovering Iraqi Kurds national culture using Hofstede models but at individual levels to quantify cultural impact on international marketing and consumer behavior and incorporate De Mooij findings on international marketing and consumer behaviors to predict the relationship between both national culture and international marketing. De Mooij (1998; 2000; 2001) focused on the impact of advertising and tried to compare this between developed Western countries and also the Middle and Far East countries (Fulford, 2001). Adair, et al. (2009) argued that when researcher’s intention is to explain and predict the behavior of employees, managers, and consumers in an increasingly global workplace, it is wise to assess culture empirically at the individual level, in describing and categorizing individuals from different nationalities when shared values are apparent. Hofstede’s findings & Iraqi Kurdistan In his work Hofstede categorized Iraq with other Arab countries in Middle East. Hassan (2015) and Rarick, et al. (2014) in their recent research found that Iraqi Kurds gone through some major changes in their cultural values compared to Hofstede’s indexes. Hofstede’s results indicate that Iraq scored high on “Power distance” which means there is inequality in power distribution inside organizations and Iraqi people are accepting the fact. According to Caldwell (N.D.) during the conflict years, uninterrupted wars, followed by SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN international embargo, Iraqis were cut off from the rest of the world, and they have suffered very badly, whatever they have created, developed for three decades, and all the educated people either left Iraq or isolated from educational and economic opportunities, leaving it ill-prepared for the new opportunities opened by foreign invasion. The results of Rarick, et al. (2014) study shows that both ethnic groups of Iraqi Arab and Kurds possess a low power distance. Hassan (2015) also found in his recent research that Kurds are low power distance with a significant decrease in the score. The results are not in line with Hofstede’s finding and it reduced from .95 to .41. Hassan states, Participants were more towards low power distance and high power sharing, they do not expect only few individuals inside organization make all decisions, be responsible for all the resources and the rest obey these small group of elites. Previous literature confirms there is strong correlation between this dimension with data such as Education, age, economic situation, population and even geographical latitude (Morrison, 2002 & Hofstede, 2010). Perhaps, the reason for these results is due to the age of respondents because the samples in both studies were young university students, from mountainous region of Northern Iraq ‘Kurdistan’. Hofstede also categorized Iraq as a “Collectivistic” culture which indicate that Iraqi do well in team work but also can sacrifice their individual goals for the benefits of group. Hassan (2015) also came to the similar result that Iraqi Kurds are more toward collectivism. Kurds are born into extended family, family values and beliefs were respected and passed into the next generation and in exchange, family protects them for their loyalty (Meho, 1997; stansfield, 2003; O’shea, 2006 & Hofstede, 2011). Hofstede believes collectivist values are popular in tribal societies, where family has too many children, their education system is old fashion, and law system is built on traditions and religion (Fougere and Moulettes, 2007). Although, Iraqi Kurds value education highly and students are hungry to learn and develop themselves, concepts of quality and detail orientation were not valued or rewarded (Caldwell, N.D). Arguments in literature reviews support this statement and it is perfectly complement the current situation in Iraqi Kurdistan. The researcher can argue that in this dimension the third factor “wealth” does not have much influence on peoples’ behavior as much as religion since it encourages loyalty and surrounding to society. Hofstede’s findings on Iraq also suggest that Iraq is a masculine society favors masculine roles, achievement, and control. Rarick, et al. (2014) found that Iraqis are masculine in nature but Kurdish culture is less masculine, more feminine. Hassan (2015) explored there is a small decrease in original score from 70 to 65.When masculine society combine with collectivist society there is very low chance of success but when it is combine with individualism success is expected ( Mooij & Hofstede, 2010). (Hofstede, et al., 2010) have observed age and gender are two factors strongly associated with the nature of this dimension rather than wealth. From religious point of view, masculine society warship a tough god and since the majority of Kurds are Muslim, their religion has always maintained tough and masculine elements which for any bad behaviour there is a tough punishment (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Clearly in Islamic societies Islam has divided different roles for men and women and this reflected in power sharing, giving responsibilities to female and differences in earning between both genders. SARDAR HASSAN

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In Hofstede’s model Iraq like other Arab countries score high (85) on uncertainty avoidance which may mean Iraqi people have no interest in uncertainty, ambiguity and new ways of doing things. Similarly, Hassan (2015) found that Iraqi Kurds score 81 which are very close to the original index and it indicates that the results are in line. Another research by Rarick, et al. (2014) suggests that Iraqi culture is low uncertainty avoidance, while Kurdish culture is high. Societies score high on uncertainty avoidance are more anxious, expressive, and hot blooded people and to reduce ambiguity they seek refuge to technology, law and religion (Hofstede, 2010). Kurds are mountainous emotional people with risk adverse attitude, they strongly prefer standard ways of doing things, regulation and standard of procedures, and they also consider change, new ways of doing things inside organization as threat. In addition, majority of Iraqi Kurds work in public service sector and the Kurdish government use its oil revenue which is the only source of income to support and pay its huge public services. According to Hofstede, et al. (2010) there is a strong correlation between strong UAI and high level of corruption, and their explanation for the high level of corruption goes back to poor pay from government. Transparency International investigated the level of corruption in Iraq and found that Iraq scores 16/100 and ranks 170/175. In last dimension, Hofstede discovered that Iraqi scores very low on LTO which it reveals it has a normative culture. Rarick, et al. (2014) comes to similar conclusion that both Iraqi and Kurds are short term oriented. People have a strong concern with establishing the absolute truth; they are normative in their thinking, (source, Hofstede’s website). Hassan (2015) had very different results indicating that Iraqi Kurds unlike Iraqi counterparts are more toward long term orientation. People are ready to sacrifice today’s fun, and plan for a better future. According to Mooij and Hofstede (2010, p. 6) The values for long term orientate people are perseverance, ordering relationships by status, thrift, and having a sense of shame, long term society implies investment in the future. There is huge interest and well from Iraqi Kurds to take successful societies and organizations as their role models to learn from them. Kurdish students attribute success to hard effort and failure to lack of efforts. From early childhood kids are taught about future difficulty and saving. GRAPH 2.1: Hofstede’s findings 100 80 IDV

60

MAS PDI

40

UAI

20

LTO

0 Iraq

Iran

Turkey

SOURCE: Hofstede’s website SARDAR HASSAN

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Israel

Kurdistan

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

The above chart shows the ratings (difference and similarities) for the four countries in the region which data are available on Hofstede website. The new scores for Kurdistan which was explored by Hassan, (2015) were added. It shows Iraq is either scoring the highest or the lowest in compare to other three countries in the region. It was argued earlier that change in environment could cause changes in values and norms of particular culture and as result affect the scores of these dimensions over time. PROBLEMS & QUESTIONS After a deep review of literature related to the developments of this research, this author has spotted a gap in existing literatures. There is lack of research on the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior in this part of the world. Thus, research intends to close the gap by answering the questions and contributes to the current literature. It was argued by Robbins and Judge (2011, 2013) most of these theories and models were developed in Western countries and they have cultural implications. Although, these topics are investigated broadly in western societies, there is a lack of research in this part of the world. Several studies on international marketing have concluded that consumers follow different styles or rules in making decisions when confronted with choices in the market and suggested that external factors such as culture may influence the way consumers develop those styles. To determine how Kurds cultural values influence international marketing and consumer behavior in Iraqi Kurdistan, this author put two research questions: 1. Does the dimensions of national culture influence international marketing and consumer behavior? 2. How these dimensions can impact international marketing and consumer behavior and what companies need to consider before entering into the market? To answer the questions, a quantitative research was used by conducting questionnaire with the use of none-verbal observation. The main goal of quantitative survey research methods is to provide specific facts and estimates—from a large, representative sample of respondents— decision makers (Hair, et al., 2002). DATA COLLECTION & METHOD Multiple methods where used in this research to evaluate Iraqi Kurds culture and how culture can influence marketing and consumer behavior in this region. Thus, this author used a three-method approach to measure culture (Soares, 2005): regional affiliation, indirect values, and direct value inference (Soares, et al., 2007). They have suggested that for regional affiliation the use of nationality to reflect culture makes sense since there is empirical support. Hofstede’s study treat Iraq as homogenous country which in fact Iraq is a heterogeneous country made up of too many ethnic groups e.g. Arab, Kurds, Turkomans, Yezidi, and Assyrians, (cited in Iraqi constitution). The second method that Soares and his

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN associate recommended is the use of benchmarks, the indirect values approach which involves attributing characteristics of cultures based on other studies (Soares, et al., 2007). Researcher used non-verbal observation technique to analyze consumer behavior toward product usages, advertisements and the use of internet and mobile phones in Iraqi Kurdistan. Also used De Mooij findings as a secondary source in answering how culture can influence international marketing and consumer behavior to classify what each dimension means compare to the opposite sides in other countries. This helped researcher for this approach researcher to ascribe characteristics of cultural groupings without directly assessing members of the society. The third method used in this study is the direct value inference approach, which is based on measuring the values of cultural values in the sample to infer cultural characteristics. Although Hofstede’s classification of cultures helps researcher to understand and assess cultural values, the sample need to be more categorized on cultural dimensions in a way it is a satisfactory to their characteristics (Soares. et al., 2007). However, the accuracy and suitability of Hofstede’s metrics were criticized for not being able to measure values that are culturally sensitive (Dorfman and Havell., 1988; Yoo, et al., 2011). Hill (2007) pointed to western stereotype of model because it based on IBM only. Another widely held criticism of Hofstede’s work is generalizing the countries and assuming the whole population is homogenous (Yoo, et al., 2011). Hofstede tends to ignore the significant of community, and the variation of its influences (Smith 1998., p. 62). Dorfman and Hovell (1988) found that cultures are fragmented and they are not essentially limited by borders. Thus, there is not one-to-one correspondence between culture and nation. Therefore, this research intends to study Iraqi Kurds national cultural values at the individual level, using member’s perceptions of society. In the lights of these criticisms, many models were developed to measure cultural values at individual levels such as: Dorfman and Hovell (1988) framework and Yoo, et al. (1998; 2001; 2011) CVSCALE approach. The first model has 22 items and only measures four dimensions. In contrast, the CVSCALE by Yoo and his associate has 26 items and measure five dimensions. The CVSCALE is applicable to general consumer situations and has a good reliability and adequate psychometric properties (Donthu and Yoo, 1998; Lenartowicz and Roth, 2001 cited in Soares, et al., 2006, p. 283). It is possible to link individual behavior to individual attitudes when measuring culture at individual level because all the data are coming from the same primary sources instead of secondary (Yoo, et al., 2011). Therefore, for this research, the CVSCALE as a self-administered quantitative survey questionnaire has been used as the research instrument to assess the cultural dimensions at individual level. The problem with questionnaire is the subjects know they are being studied for that reason they may speculate about their answers (Andreasen, 2002).This author has used the translated (CVSCALE) that was implemented and translated by himself in his last research. Therefore, the translated questionnaire was already meeting all the criteria. At the beginning the questionnaire was not available in Kurdish. Thus, Hassan (2015) translated the questionnaire from English to Kurdish and Kurdish to English and then it was checked by two bilinguals’ assistance professors whose Mather language was Kurdish. There were some minor adjustments in the questionnaire such as entering the five-

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN likert-points for each item to ease the process of answering. The dimensions are measured on a scale from 0 to 100 and the results indicate the position of Iraqi Kurdistan on each index. These scores of the research can be used for statistical analysis of data on consumer attitudes and behavior. Sample In social survey research, sample constitutes a key step in the research and to generalize your sample to signify the whole population, the sample must be representative (Bryman and Bell, 2007). For this research convenience sampling method were used. This is a nonprobability sampling which researcher has the full authority to select the respondents (Baines and Chansarkar, 2002). They have added this method is subject to considerable sample errors due to the lack of representativeness of the population. To use this method the target population has to be homogeneous such as ‘Kurds’ and there should be similarity between participants to the overall population (Hair, et al., 2002). Bryman and Bell (2007) have stated that it is the absolute size of a sample that is important not its relative size, thus, as the size of the sample increase then it is likely the precision of the sample will increase too and sample error decreases. Additionally, in his last research this author took a sample of 441 students out of 743 in one of the largest university in Erbil Iraqi Kurdistan to analyze the national cultural values and it delivered good results. In this research the sample size is based on a diverse sample of 272 professional, mostly managers in all levels working in both private and public sectors. To increase the reliability and validity the results of both private and public sector managers for measuring cultural values will be presented, compared and then compared again with students sample results. Therefore, by doing this the size and the precision of sample can increase so it can represent the population and reduce the sample error. MEASUREMENT & RESULTS Data for Hofstede’s cultural values were collected via a self-report questionnaire using CVSCALE and participants indicate their answers using a 5-point-likert scale. Researcher aim was to measure cultural dimension by calculating and aggregating the results. Thus, SPSS (18) were used to calculate the standard deviations and means for every culture dimensions at the aggregate level (Bernstein, M.J., 2011 and Ebster, C., 2012). SPSS stands for “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” (Babraham, 2008). It was first designed by a psychologist and now used for social science purposes. Landau and Everitt (2004) described it as package of programs for manipulating, analysing, and presenting data. SPSS is a powerful program that allows researchers to examine data in many ways including producing basic descriptive statistics, advanced tests and high-quality graphs and tables (Flynn, N.D). 610 questionnaires were distributed between both private and public sector organizations in all size and only 277 were returned but 5 of the questionnaires were exempted due to the validity problem. Thus, only 272 (45%) valid questionnaires left. The frequencies are the summary of statistical measures for a given variable and it gives frequency distributions for all types of data (Komrys, N.D). The tables below will explain more:

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN TALBE 2.1: male-female

Valid

male female Total

Frequency 177 95 272

Percent 65.1 34.9 100.0

Valid Percent 65.1 34.9 100.0

Percent 69.1 30.9 100.0

Valid Percent 69.1 30.9 100.0

Cumulative Percent 65.1 100.0

TABLE 2.2: Sector

Valid

public Private Total

Frequency 188 84 272

Cumulative Percent 69.1 100.0

TABLE 2.3: Job title

Valid

Supervisor Department Manager General Manager CEO President others Total

Frequency 46 144 27 20 9 26 272

Percent 16.9 52.9 9.9 7.4 3.3 9.6 100.0

Valid Percent 16.9 52.9 9.9 7.4 3.3 9.6 100.0

Cumulative Percent 16.9 69.9 79.8 87.1 90.4 100.0

Note: Others include Governor, Mayor, locum, directorates’ committee members, lecturers, advisors, technicians, judges and lawyers, and so on. The reliability test of five Dimensions Reliability analysis provides researchers to study the properties of measurement indexes; it calculates the reliability of scales and provides information about the relationship among individual items in the scales (IBM, 2010). Alpha (Cronback) was used to explore the internal consistency, based on the average inter-item correlation (SPSS, 17.0, 2007). Taking the number of questions and poor inter-relatedness between items there are different arguments about what number would be acceptable for alpha, ranging from .7 to .95 (Tavakol and Dennick, 2011). Whatever the value between 00.0 and 1.00 is researcher can interpret as % percentage of reliability, for example .7 is 70% reliable (Brown, 2002). George and Mallery (2003) provide the following rules of thumb: “_> .9 – excellent, _> .8 – good, _> .7 – acceptable, _> .6 - questionable, _> .5 – poor and _> .4 – unacceptable” (p. 231 cited in Gliem and Gliem, 2003). They have admitted that while high value means good internal reliability of items, it does not mean the scale is un-dimensional. The Cronbach’s Alpha for 26 items in this survey is .686 which it can be considered adequate and to increase the internal consistency to above .7, and to strength the measurement tool two items with low correlation can be removed and then Cronbach’s Alpha will be .708. Considering table (4) only LTO has Alpha of .554. Probably this is due to measuring different construct (Biostatistics, 2012; Mueller, 2014). In case of combining both the

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN previous sample which was made up of 441 students with this new sample of mostly managers in both private and public sector organizations, the Cronbach’s Alpha would be .697 which it shows that the internal reliability is still very strong and adequate. Please check the below tables for further information: TABLE 2.4: Reliability Statistics N of Items

Cronbach's Alpha 272 Managers in (public- Private) sector organizations .686 26 Power Distance .717 5 Uncertainty Avoidance .767 5 Collectivism .784 6 Masculinity .660 4 Long Term Orientation .554 6

TABLE 2.5: Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Based on Standardized N of Cronbach's Alpha Items Items Public sector organizations .645 .673 26 Private sector organization .754 798 26 442 students & 272 managers .697 .707 26

TALBE 2.6: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient 95% Confidence Interval F Test with True Value 0 Intraclass a Correlation Lower Bound Upper Bound Value df1 df2 Sig Single Measures .077b .061 .097 3.181 271 6775 .000 Average .686c .629 .737 3.181 271 6775 .000 Measures Two-way mixed effects model where people effects are random and measures effects are fixed. a. Type C intraclass correlation coefficients using a consistency definition-the between-measure variance is excluded from the denominator variance. b. The estimator is the same, whether the interaction effect is present or not. c. This estimate is computed assuming the interaction effect is absent, because it is not estimable otherwise.

Factor Analysis Factor analysis tries to find the underlying variables which can explain the pattern of correlations within a set of searched factors (IBM, 2010). Also they have added that it can also be useful in data reduction to discover a smaller number of variables that can explain most of the factors. Moreover, it can be used to create hypotheses regarding causal mechanisms or to screen factors for subsequent analysis (SPSS. 2007). KMO measure of sampling adequacy tests to see whether the partial correlations among variables are small and Bartlett’S Test of Sphercity want to see whether the correlation matrix is an identity matrix, which would indicate that the factor model is inappropriate (IBM, 2010, 157). Thus, in factor analysis researcher can verify whether the data set is appropriate for factor analysis. Table (6) exhibits the results for both Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin which is .739 at the managerial levels and .824 if both samples of managers and students combined which in both cases the K-M-O is above .60. The Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity Sig is 0.00 for both samples which it is significant because it is below 0.05 (Biostatistics, 2013). Therefore, this author can conclude that the factor analyses are suitable for this research data in both cases. If both private and public sector organizations are treated separately then the KMO for public is .700 and for private sector is .660 with Sig of 0.00.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

TABLE 2.7: KMO and Bartlett's Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. Bartlett's Test of Approx. Chi-Square Sphericity df Sig.

.739 21553.722 9180 .000

According to Biostatistics (2013) Kaiser Criteria decide how many components need to be extracted and for this research, the component with Eigenvalue of 1 or more is the subject of interest. There were only 8 components having the Eigenvalues of 1 or above that represent for only 50.846% per cent which it just passed the cumulative percentage 50 per cent. This indicates that the majority were explained by these 8 components. The below Scree Plot 2.2 explains:

Descriptive Analysis Descriptive analysis produces summary statistics such as: mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum (IBM, 2011). The mean is based on all the data values, however because of this it is prone to being unduly affected by outlier in the data, most noticeably when the sample is small (Garth, 2008, p. 20). The table (2.8) presents all the means for the 26 items. TABLE2.8: Descriptive Statistics

Power Distance Power Distance Power Distance Power Distance

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N 272 272 272 272

Minimum 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

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Maximum 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00

Mean 1.7941 2.4596 1.7426 2.1765

Std. Deviation 1.00271 1.27067 1.00916 1.13893

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Power Distance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Uncertainty Avoidance Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Collectivism Masculinity Masculinity Masculinity Masculinity Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Confucian Dynamism Valid N (listwise)

272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272 272

1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 2.00 2.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00

2.7169 4.0772 4.2279 4.1949 4.1765 4.2904 3.8934 3.9228 4.3934 4.3824 4.1471 3.9743 2.5993 3.0919 3.0515 3.8750 4.1985 3.5588 4.0515 4.3934 4.1324 4.4154

1.34082 .81358 .63672 .69440 .62403 .60152 .97176 1.04401 .67345 .78791 .81977 .85222 1.21994 1.10801 1.23790 1.00873 .87457 .95093 .84014 .78007 1.01144 .75397

After a deep review of new results and comparing them with the old measurements, this study explored some significant new and reliable results. Table (2.9), recap the old and new statistical results of both studies and create a discussion to explain the relationship between Kurds cultural value dimensions and international marketing and consumer behavior. These statistical results of national culture as well as its influence on international marketing are explained in the following sections. Please note, in my past research there were some discrepancy in calculations of the means and for that reason there are some minor correction in some dimensions numbers. TABLE 2.9: Iraqi Kurds national cultural dimensions on Different Sample Population (%) Country (IRAQ - Kurdistan) PDI UAI IDV MAS LTO Hofstede’s findings .95 Hassan’s old findings on: .41 (441 students) Hassan’s new finding on: (272 managers in both private & .44 public sector organizations) Public sector alone .46

.85 .81

.30 .38

.70 .65

.25 .76

.84

.41

.63

.83

.84

.41

.64

.82

Private sector alone .42 Combining both samples .42 (441 students +272 managers)= 713

.84 .82

.41 .39

.63 .65

.83 .78

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Power Distance (PDI) For the five items, the total mean for 272 managers was 2.17794/5= .44 compared with 2.10364/5= .42 for both samples of students and managers. It indicates that both research produced almost the same results which it tell us there is a consistency with these results. These scores suggest there is a change and huge decrease in Hofstede’s old score (95) to the new score (42). It explains that the Kurdish culture is more toward low power distance ‘equality’ and high power sharing. Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) The total mean for the 5 items in this dimension was 4.19338/5= .84, similarly, for both students and managers were .82 which both scores are also very close to the original Hofstede’s score of .85. This indicates that Kurdish cultural values avoid uncertainty, change, and ambiguity but prefers rules and regulations and standard ways of doing things. Collectivism (IDV-COL) The total means of the 6 items for managers was 4.1189/5= .82 or in the reverse order .41IDV and for a combination of both samples of 713 students and managers 3.912933333/5= .78 or .39 IDV which it shows that there is an increase in the final score but still it indicates that Kurds are collectivistic people. These results are in line with Hofstede’s finding. It suggests that Iraqi Kurds like other Arab countries in the region are more toward collectivism. Masculinity (MAS) The overall mean of the 4 items in masculinity dimension for managers was 3.154425/5= .63 and for both students and managers was 3.26015/5= .65 compared with Hofstede’s score of .70. Both results indicate that there is little decrease in this dimension but still the new results suggest that masculine side have more weight than feminine side in this study. Long Term Orientation (LTO) The total mean of the 6 items for this dimension was 4.125/5= .83 for managers and for both students and managers was 3.915716667/5= .78 compared with Hofstede’s index of .25. These new results tend to be not in line with Hofstede’s finding and it indicates that there is significant change in this dimension which could have caused international firms huge inefficiency in implementing their plans. It suggest that Kurds are more toward long term orientation that people are planning for their future, and are willing to give up todays fun for tomorrow. DISCUSSION According to the above results Iraqi Kurds are collectivistic people. They prefer to choose group over individualism and rely and dependent on group for help in return of their loyalty. Kurdish society is divided into subgroups of different clans and dialects, different districts and sub-districts, different political parties and other ideologies. Everyone has a place in social hierarchy and they tend to respect the norm. Collectivists are also high context in communication (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010, 2011). High context people are

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN less verbally explicit communicators and understandings are more internalized of what is communicated (Geringer and Minor, 2012). In addition, there is an old Kurish saying “say it to the wall so you will understand it”. Thus, Kurds are high context in communications and this style of poly-chronic, implicit communication is reflected in management, communication strategies and politics. Most of the professional and non-professional taks are done over the phone through a connection or links. Without knowing someone in government or work place, it would be impossible to do something. Brands are amplified products that are used by people to establish their status and often individuals are judged by the brands they were or the football club they support (Brassington and Pettitt, 2006). The image, identity and personalities were added through communication strategies (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012). Kurds score indicates masculinity and in masculine culture status brands demonstrates one’s success (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). Masculine culture value achievement and when combined with collectivism success is less likely (Hofstede, et al., 2010). In addition, Kurds are masculine and collectivists and to show their power and social status, they tend to less rely on brands and products but more on implicit poly-chronic style of communication for example; an individual holding a PhD must be respected to the extent that s/he needs to be called by three different titles such as “Excellency Mr. Doctor i.e., John”. This does not mean that Kurds do not like gadgets, they need electronic products to show their accomplishments that give them confidence to protect face. According to De Mooij and Hofstede, (2010) For understanding the global brands the rightful place concept plays an important rule and global brands serve as showing one’s social status in large power distance, collectivistic and masculine cultures. In the sales process people in collectivistic cultures are less direct to the point but more concern about relationship and trust building (De Mooij, 2010). In individualistic societies, there is a consistency between people’s attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. Thus, in this kind of environment the behavior of consumers can be predicted from their attitudes toward brands and products and if they have a positive attitude toward a particular brand they are more likely to purchase from that brand. In contrast, there is no consistency among attitude and future behavior of collectivists and there is a chance of reverse relationship between behavior (product usage) and then attitude (Chang and Chieng, 2006 cited in De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). Robbins and Judge (2013) argued not necessary all the time behavior follows attitude, sometime it can be both ways around depend on the important of the task/s one’s does. The purpose of advertising in collectivistic cultures is to create strong relationships and trust between seller and buyer (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). They referred to how Japanese try to induce positive feelings in their advertising instead of providing information like European. Although, advertising is not well developed in here and technically their messages are not very mature, like Japanese culture they tend to focus on the positive side of products with adding little bit of humors. Almost 60% of TV adverts are focused on the food products, restaurants and real states. Brand characteristic such as “trustworthy” is

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN mostly attributed to strong brand in this culture (high UAI). Advert messages convey “Safety” and similar to Chinese culture brand name was mention at the end of advertising. De Mooij and Hofstede (2011) argued that Researchers need to consider different measurements of attitude toward the advertisement in collectivistic societies as they need in individualistic cultures. They have stated the motives and emotions of consumers are fundamental in determining the standardization decisions not universal emotions. Hofstede categorized less developed countries as collectivist societies (Hofstede, 2011). Thus, what motivate people in less developed countries could be different from developed countries. De Mooij (2004) suggested many motives are category bounded, such as purity as a motive for food and status motives for luxury products and brands. Each culture has its influence on these motives (De Mooij, 2010). In collectivistic cultures, people are interested in concrete product features than in abstract brands because they are less used to conceptual thinking (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2011). What is not explained in their work is why they are more interested in concrete product features than abstract brands. Due to his work related experience as a university lecturer, this author try to speculate an answer for this question by looking at the socio-economic of people as well as the poor establishment of marketing infrastructure. Companies want to invest in similar markets due to cultural similarity and market infrastructures (Hill, 2007). Thus, less-developing countries tend to be targeted less as perfect destination for international companies and for that reason people are less familiar with international brands and more with local brands or those were imported to these countries through local investors. Moreover, the level of trust between consumers and businesses are at all the time low due to bad investment and short term money motivation. Those brands and branded products are sold in here are either fake brands selling copied products or they are brands from neighboring countries selling poor quality products and design expensively through their persuasive marketing communication strategies. Because of that People in general and Students in particular tend to not trust advertising and international brands. As they put it ‘nobody says my yogurt is sour’ and this will take us back to the high context style of communication which they tend to not trust people from outer-group. In here, brand is replaced by price and if they want to show their status and power they mention how much they have paid for a product. Also ‘made in’ western countries represent quality of the products. Therefore, in a market in this situation clearly standardization of Brands and communication strategy will make more sense than adapting communication strategies and rebranding. De Mooij (2002; 2010) argued in strong uncertainty avoidance cultures consumers have a passive attitude to health by focusing on purity in food and drink and use more medication than fitness and sports. In term of product usage, people in here are more motivated in adaptation of purity such as food because they tend to have different tastes but also the negative image attached to neighboring countries products for assuming that it is deliberately made unhealthy. Everyone in here is a doctor and has a pharmacy at home. There is more medication in the fridge than food. Electronic products such as laptop is used for facebooking, ipad is mostly used by kids for games and mobile phone for selfie. Thus, everyone has a brand-new mobile phones especially I-phone first and Samsung second

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN regardless of their income. Nevertheless, the older generations are more interested in up to date electronic products such as I-phone to improve their appearance. Personal appearance is very important in cultures scores high on uncertainty avoidance and high on power distance such as Japanese culture but not so much with Chinese (high PDI/low UAI). Although, Kurds score (high UAI/low PDI) personal appearance is still important and a professional person will be judged by appearance more than skills and knowledge. De Mooij and Hofstede (2010) stated that in high uncertainty avoidance cultures people are not very innovative and they tend to reject change. Cultures with individualism, low power distance and low uncertainty avoidance value dimensions are verbal oriented which mean they read more books and newspapers and they receive information from media to prepare for purchase (De Mooij, 2010) whereas in collectivistic, high power distance and strong uncertainty avoidance cultures, members depend on implicit, interpersonal communication to acquire information and their buying decisions is based on their got-feelings and trust in the company. Additionally, this author identified people in here including professionals tend to not read books at all even if it is related to their profession such as university lecturers. Consumer buying decision mostly is based on personal experience, word of mouth and price. Facebook is over used, even ten years old kid has an account. Its popularity is growing with politicians as they use it as electronic version of word of mouth to reach their target audience and pass their message. In individualistic cultures, youth are more independent than collectivistic cultures because in early life they develop an identity that give them power to move more freely and function more independently apart from the family and if they fail it can cause identity crisis. Whereas, in collectivistic cultures, youth are more dependent on complex familial hierarchy and the group ideal is being like others not being different (Triandis, 1995 cited in De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). Youth in Kurdish culture as a collectivistic and strong UAI culture are blamed for almost all crises happening. Children are brainwashed in early childhood for what the parents want them to become including what to study while they do not have any proper plans for their future. First year university students were approached by this author for why they choose this course, this university and what they want to achieve at the end? Majority of their answers were this is the only chance they have because the government system will allocate students according to their GPA. They also mention the role family has in what they want to be and when they graduate they want to get permanent job in public sector even if the salary is very little but instead they will have job security. In large masculine societies, roles are not distributed equally; women do more house work and shopping for the house. In here shopping is like a day out for family as whole and everyone has a say in buying decisions. Outside shopping is mostly done by both man and women and if both of them work then the house work is shared by everyone. This could be explained by Kurds national cultural indexes Since, Kurds score 65% masculine and 41% in power distance. De Mooij (2010) argued that long term orientation implies investment in the future and the example (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010) provided in their study is the relationship between this dimension and broadband penetration. Although, personal

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN steadiness and tradition are valued by short term oriented cultures, they also respected by Kurds even though 78% per cent they are long term oriented people. For centuries they have dreamed and worked on a country of their own and they sacrifice too much for that dream. Saving is taught to children from early age and keeping hard cash at home means they do not trust banks and also can use it (mostly business) whenever they need it. Because of that most of big purchases such as house and cars are done in hard cash and paid in once. LIMITATION Even though this author believes this research provides some good results to the study of cultural values influence on international marketing and consumer behavior, it is not without limitations. One of the key limitations of this research was not being able to study the relationship between variable directly. Thereafter, make a direct comparison between the new research and other research around the world according to the dimensions. Due to the difficulty of reaching to our target sample as well as cost and time researcher was forced to use convenient sampling that is subject to considerable sample errors. The analysis and explanations of this work are speculative at its best, yet it does not stop us to not being able to distinguish and spot any relations between culture of nation and international marketing. While, the sample size of this study was large enough to meet the requirements, a bigger sample would have increase the validity of research. CONCLUSION The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between national culture and international marketing and consumer behavior. The number of cross-cultural consumer behavior studies has been increasing over the years (Hofstede and De Mooij, 2010). Although, there is a growing body of knowledge and data available to researchers around the world to explain the influence of national culture on international marketing, there is very few or none study neither available nor done in this field in this part of the world. The idea of universal consumer behavior and international communities with similar values were view by De Mooij (2003) as the myths that international marketing and global advertising are surrounded with and taught in universities around the world. This research has demonstrated that international marketing and consumer behavior have been significantly influenced by national cultural values. As the time passes these cultural values effects are becoming more apparent and more important. Globalization and modernization will not only give a chance to nations and societies to celebrate their cultural differences and but also proved to international firms that standardization will not work unless the culture of markets were investigated. As the economy of a country improves the convergence may happen at income level but not at values of national culture (De Mooij, 1997). Through this descriptive research, this author was able to answer both questions. By reviewing a number of studies of basic cross-cultural differences and how each cultural dimension would influence marketing strategies, these past analysis at country level exhibits that when nations come together in some points, it is the cultural variables that

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN explain the differences in consumer behavior at country level. Therefore, this author can conclude that national culture can influence international marketing and how consumers behave toward a product, brand and communication strategies. Each cultural dimension has impacted global marketing in its own unique way that marketers need to be aware of them. Unfortunately, most of the companies try to view culture at a macro-level and study it as an external force that they cannot do anything about it. Therefore, it is very important for marketing managers and global firms to design their international marketing in a way that can predict and respond to these cultural differences in each market. Although there are many different cultural models available that can explain cultural differences and help develop marketing strategies and predict consumer behavior across cultures, Hofstede’ model was used for this study. Hofstede approach is a useful tool for understanding consumer behavior differences across cultures (Hofstede and Demooij, 2010). Hofstede model explains most of the variation of consumption and consumer behavior across countries that help international marketing managers to quantify the effect of culture (De Mooij, 2003). At the end, this study has updated and extended the current knowledge on national culture effect on international marketing. It is hoped that this new information can give some significant insights to the field of cross-cultural research as well as global marketing management. Extra work is absolutely necessary in less developed countries especially in this complex chronological line of study.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN REFERENCES Aakar, A. D., & Erich, J., 2001. The Lure of Global Branding. In Harvard Business Review on Marketing. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Ch. 5. Adair, L. W., Buchan, R. N., & Chen X. P., 2009. Conceptualizing Culture as Communication in Management and Marketing Research. In: Nakata, C, ed. 2009. Beyond Hofstede: Cultural Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.Ch. 8. Andreasen, R. A., 2002. Marketing Research That Won’t Break the Bank, A Practical Guide to Getting the Information You Need. USA: Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint. Antunes, I., Karl, B. H., & Martins, V. F., 2013. The Impact Of National Cultures On International Marketing Strategy And Subsidiary Performance Of Portuguese Sme’s. The International Journal of Management. Vol 2 Issue 3, pp. 38-45. Arnould, J. E., Kjeldgaard, D., & Askegaard, S., 2009. Reflexive Culture’s Consequences. In: Nakata, C, ed. 2009. Beyond Hofstede: Cultural Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.Ch. 6. Ball, A. D., Geringer, M. J., McNett. M. J., & Minor, S. M., 2012. International business. 13th Edition. UK: McGraw-Hill Irwin. British Liberary Cataloguing in Publication Data. Baines, P., & Chansarkar, B., 2002. Introducing Marketing Research. England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Belch, E. G., & Belch, A. M., 2003. Advertising & Promotion, an Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. Sixth Edition. England: The McGraw-Hill Companies. Bernstein, M.J., 2011. Frequencies and Descriptive Statistics. [video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrfQfEwjZA4 [ accessed 27/12/2014].

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Nakata, C. ed., 2009. Reflexive Considerations of Culture Theories in Global Marketing. Beyond Hofstede: Cultural Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan. Ch.12. Nakata, C., & Bilgin, I. E., 2009. Culture Theories in Global Marketing: A Literature-Based Assessment In: Nakata, C, ed. 2009. Beyond Hofstede: Cultural Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.Ch.4. O’shea, T. M., 2006. Trapped Between the Map & Reality, Geography and Perception of Kurdistan. England: Routledge, Taylor & Francis group. Rarick, C., Winter, G., Barczyk, C., & Merkt, E., 2014. Iraqi & Kurdish Cultural Values in the SemiAutonomous State of Kurdistan. Global Journal of Management & Business Research: Administration & Management. VOl; 14, Issue 3. Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A., 2013. Organizational Behavior. Fifteenth Edition. England: Pearson Education limited. Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A., 2011. Organizational Behavior. Fourth Edition. England: Pearson Education limited. Rugman, A.M., & Collinson, S., 2006. International Business. 4th Ed. England: Pearson Education Limited. Schein, H. E., 2004. Organizational Culture & Leadership. Third Edition. USA. Jossey-Bass. Schneiter, F., 1992. International Marketing, Getting along with Chinese for fun & Profit. Hong Kong: Asia 2000, Ltd. Soares, M. A., Farhangmehr, M., & Shoham, A., 2007. Hofstede’s Dimensions of Culture in International Marketing Studies. Journal of Business Research. Pp. 277-284. Spiers, S., Gundala, R. R., & Singh, M., 2014. Culture and Consumer Behavior—A Study of Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. International Journal of Marketing Studies; Vol. 6, No. 4. Stone, A. Marilyn., & McCall, B. J., 2004. International Strategic Marketing, A European perspective. London: Routledge publishing. Terpstra, V., & Sarathy, R., 1991. International Marketing. Fifth Edition. United States: The Dryden Press. Trompenaars, F., & Turner, C.H., 1997. RIDING THE WAVES OF CULTURE: Cultural Diversity in Business. 2nd ed. London: Nicoholas Brealey Publishing. Varey, J. R., 2002. Marketing Communication Principles & Practice. London: Routledge. Yoo, B., Donthu, N., & Lenartowicz, T., 2011. Measuring Hofstede’s Five Dimensions of Cultural Values at the Individual Level: Development and Validation of CVSCALE. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 23, pp. 193-210

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Chapter 3

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN, A CROSS – SECTORIAL COMPARISON

Sardar Hassan The College of Economic and Administration, Salahaddin University Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq [email protected] – [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between national culture and organizational culture in the context of private and public sector organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan. To understand the influence of national culture on organizational culture a cross-sectorial comparison has been made between both sector organizations. A discussion was built on past research and theoretical framework and it highlights some of the cultural approaches and typologies. This study also explains who are the Kurds, Kurdistan, their national culture and organizational culture perspectives. Through self-response survey questionnaires the national culture and organizational culture dimensions of some major organizations in private and public sectors in Iraqi Kurdistan were discovered. Multi-regression analyses as well as correlation coefficient tests were conducted to determine whether variables have any statistically significant relationship. Thus, national culture variable was regressed on organizational culture variable in both sectors independently. The results from analyses indicated that there is a significant relationship between national culture and organizational culture in Iraqi Kurdistan. The analysis also showed that national culture impacts organizational culture in private sector whereas, no effect or weak correlation were seen in public sector organizations. Organizations in general and public sector in particular were dominated by hierarchy culture followed by clan culture. But the dominated culture in private sector organizations was hierarchy culture followed by market culture. The findings also demonstrated that there is a negative relationship between demographic variable and organizational culture. A conceptual figure was proposed and some recommendations were suggested. KEYWORDS: national culture, organizational culture, Kurds and Kurdistan, cultural approaches and typologies, private and public sectors organizations.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN INTRODUCTION It is undeniable that we are living in a globalized world, nations are turning into small village, employees, teams, and organizations in all size and sectors are increasingly operating in multinational, multicultural environments. Whether it is a survival or growth strategies outsourcing is becoming a norm, physical distance and time differences are no longer obstacles to international investment (Tsui, et al., 2007). In these situations international as well as domestic companies are forced to face tough competition and to survive and stay competitive, they rely heavily on international knowledge. Therefore, cross-cultural researches in cross-national contexts are extremely vital for future success of companies. Culture is a notoriously difficult concept to describe and understand because it is a multifaceted concept (Mullins, 2005). It is easy to assume that societies are different but no strong argument to explain the reasons for differences. Schein (2010) stated, culture is “here and now” dynamic phenomenon and has coercive background structure that influences people in many ways. People interactions with each other led to re-enact and recreation of culture and shaped by peoples ‘behaviour. Hofstede, et al. (2010) considered culture as ‘software of mind’ within a society. Sun (2008) argued culture works as ‘software’ within an organization too and so, managers are responsible to study it carefully and understand how each element of ‘software’ works on the basis of ‘hardware’ (organization). Alvesson (2002) stated culture is very important in comprehending behaviour, social events, institutions and processes, because these phenomena become understandable and meaningful. Schwartz (2006) suggested it is cultural value emphases that shape and justify individual and group beliefs, actions, and goals. Different institutional arrangement and policies and the way they work are explanations of cultural values in different societies. For example, a society value achievement may promote competitive economic systems, confrontational legal systems, and educational systems that push kids to be successful and competitive, in contrast, in a society whose cultural value orientations stress collective responsibility, may face criticism if a company or institutes issue a policy against the collective goals. It is understood that organizations like societies have their own culture and personalities and how customers, employees and visitors are treated are part of its organizational culture. Similar to national culture organizational culture is extremely complex to define due to the centrality of cultural dimensions in all aspects of organizational life cycle. Smerek (2010) stressed how significant cultural analysis is because it can guide researchers to good understanding of organizations, management, and working life. According to Gray (1998) to explore organizational cultures, scholars need to look at peoples’ behaviour inside a corporate; investigate the assumptions controlling their behaviour; and what glue them together. McShane (2000) stated each organization has different cultural content; which is the belief, values and assumptions. Smerek (2010) argues, an understanding of culture offers managers a strong ways to learn deep-level (assumption and values), partly non-

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN conscious sets of meanings, ideas, and symbols. Although, culture cannot be directly observed, yet it influences everywhere (McShane, 2000). Schein (2004) also pointed to the unconscious part of groups as hidden side of culture and argued that understanding these deeper and more solid layers of culture is very important if researchers and academics want to understand the complex aspects of peoples’ life in both societies and corporations. Only in this situation scholars can interpret cultural dimensions correctly without any projection of their own cultural biases onto the observed phenomena. Not surprisingly, many professional and academics are in constant search to establish a universal ‘right’ culture that have the right values which can increase efficiency and effectiveness of organization and contribute to overall organizational performance (Pfister, 2009). Moreover, Gray (1998) believes organizational cultures are reflection of themes and patterns of wider culture and it can be changed according to managers and founder’s plans. However, this author believes, the effect of national culture on organizational culture did not get the right research attention. Thus, national culture and organizational culture cannot be treated as two independent variables that do not influence each other. This author tries to warn of the negative consequences if this relationship was ignored. Therefore, this study tries to investigate this relationship between national culture and organizational culture in Iraqi Kurdistan and identifies whether national culture can influence both sector organizations the same way. NATIONAL CULTURE Culture refers to the pattern of development reflected in a society system of knowledge, ideology, values, law, social norms and day-to-day rituals; consequently culture varies from one society to another (Aquinas, 2007, p. 84). The term culture is derived from the same stem as the verb “cultivate”, in anthropology, the way of life that people grow up in it called culture (C.Pheysey, 2003). Culture is a complex term; universally it has too many definitions and it’s not accepted notion. (hofstede, et al., 2002). Probably, this is due to the influence of culture on many different dimensions of human behavior. Schein (2010) argued there is a need to go beyond the surface levels of artifacts and dig deeper into the values and beliefs that build the pattern of cognitions, perceptions, and feelings shown by the members of group. (Trompenaars, Hofstede, House, and Schwarts) proposed different approaches to understand and to digest the complexity and diversity of national culture. Their investigations produced some cultural variables to ease the understanding of cultural differences and similarities in different societies which were discussed below. Trompenaars Model According to Trompenaars and Turner (1997) for a society, culture is as important as water for a fish and as long as there is culture there will be civilization. People and organizations only realize the importance of culture when there is no or weak culture. Trompenaars and Turner (1997) thought of culture as “the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas”. They view culture as an onion with too many layers. Values are at its core, they are invisible and members are semi-aware of them. What is observable such as language, food, and art are the explicit part of a culture that were translated as the SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN symbols of a deeper level of culture such as norms and values. What an individual need to do and not to do in different situations such as performance are norms (Robbins and Judge, 2011; 2013). Thus, norm can influence behaviour with very little external controls. What is right or wrong, bad or good are seen as values, individual relation to a group and group members is primarily related to values (Morrison, 2002, p.119). For example in western societies individualism valued compared to Middle Eastern countries collectivism, living in together in group. Trompenaars and Turner (1997) believe culture is anything but nature which directs our daily actions. Therefore it is very hard for someone to understand someone else’s culture. They have argued different societies may deal with the same problem differently and what one culture may regard important i.e. power and money may not be so vital to other cultures. Thus this can also be applied to management techniques and philosophy too. They stated that the assumption that believes internationalization will make international manager job easier will only make sense on surface level of culture, for example Coca Cola maybe known by everyone but what the product means to people is the essence of argument. Therefore, if manager want to understand their corporate goals, policies, product and service in international context, they must understand these aspect of management in different cultures. The seven cultural dimensions proposed by Trompenaars and Turner (1997) are: as below: 1. Universal vs. Particular cultures – these are two type of judgements, in universalism focus is on rules rather than relationship versus particularist which focus is more on relationships than on rules. 2. Individual vs. Group cultures– the conflict between what someone wants as an individual and the interest of the group s/he belong to. 3. Neutral vs. Affective cultures – these values are related to controlling the emotions versus how the feelings were expressed in some culture openly and honestly. 4. Specific vs. Diffuse cultures – people in specificity culture are direct, to the point, they are precise, definitive and transparent. In contrast, people in diffuseness culture are more indirect, aimless, and ambiguous. 5. Achieving vs. Ascription culture – these are people statuses according to what they have achieved versus ones ascription according to their age, or gender. 6. Sequential vs. Synchronic values/orientations – how ones perceive time based on sequences or series of events happening orderly versus simultaneous synchronic events at the same time. 7. Internal vs. external Control culture – how one culture put control over individuals versus culture gives freedom to its people to control their environment. It is important to notice, there is no right or wrong values in any culture, the authors did not try to make one sort of culture cool and perfect while the other one uncool and imperfect. It is probably more acceptable to say these dimensions are more complementary,

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN not opposing each other. Also they can be reconciled by an integrative process. Trompenaars’ study is based on a long academic and field research which it is very beneficial in linking the dimensions of culture to aspects of organizational behaviour which are of direct relevance, especially to people approaching a new culture for the first time (Mullins, 2005). National culture were seen by Trompenaars and Turner (1997) as the highest level where one country can be differentiated from others, and also how employees express their attitudes in an organization were thought as corporate culture. House Study (GLOBE) GLOBE is a multi-phase, multi-methods project which investigates the inter-relationships between societal culture, organizational culture, and organizational leadership (House, et al., 2002, p.4). For GLOBE research program, culture theoretically defined as “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from the common experiences of members of collectives and are transmitted across age generations” (House, et al., 2004, p.15). They have established nine cultural dimensions that make it easy for researchers to discover the similarities and differences in norms, values, and beliefs among societies. The descriptions of the nine cultural dimensions study by GLOBE are as following (Center for Creative leadership 2014; House, et al., 2006; House, et al., 2002): 1. Power Distance – the degree to which members of that society or organization agree with the way power is distributed. 2. Uncertainty Avoidance – the extent to which a society, organization, or group depends on rules and procedures to reduce the ambiguity of any event in the future. 3. Human Orientation – the degree to which a society or an organization encourage and rewards its members for being fair, generous, helpful and kind to others. 4. Collectivism I – societal collectivism reflects the degree to which how much of organization or institutional practice in a society encourages and reward individuals and groups for fair distribution of resources and actions. 5. Collectivism II – in group collectivism reflects the degree members of a society or organization express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families. 6. Assertiveness – the degree to which individuals are assertive, challenging, competitive, and aggressive in their relationships with others in an organization or social relations. 7. Gender Egalitarianism – the emphases is on the gender inequality in organization and whether individuals are willing to minimize this gender role-difference and promote gender equality. 8. Future Orientation – the extent to which members of organization are involved in future-oriented behaviors such as planning, and investing in the future.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN 9. Performance Orientation – the extent to which organizations or societies encourage and rewards their members for improving the performance, and productivity. The GLOBE theory suggests the attributes and entities of different national cultures can reflect in their organizational practices and inside organization leader’s behaviour and values are most effective in influencing culture (House et al, 2006). GLOBE was developed on the works of Hofstede (1980), Schwartz (1994), Smilth (1995), Inglehart (1997), and others (Center for Creative Leadership, 2014). Hofstede’s Model Hofstede and his associate believe countries and regions are different in identity, values, and institutions which they have roots in history. Identity and institution are visible part of culture while the values are deep rooted and invisibles (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Clearly, Hofstede and other scholars in this research agree on culture has both visible and invisible sides or conscious and unconscious parts. The “conscious” side of culture is visible, employees and managers see and talk about them but the deeper “unconscious” part is hard to feel and express it which is values. Hofstede, et al. (2010) presents culture as a mental programing which each person carries a lifestyle that is learnt throughout the person’s lifetime starting from early childhood. Because people learn Societal, national and gender cultures from early childhood, they are much deeper rooted in their mind than occupational or organizational cultures (Hofstede, 2011). He stated the occupational or organizational culture can be changed as people change their work or take a new task. Hofstede, et al. (2002) summarized his argument in that all human are alike biologically and also different individually, to survive we need to cope with five value dimension issues and the way each society resolves this issues is called culture. TABLE 3.1. Hofstede’ Value Dimensions Dimension

One Extreme

Other Extreme

Identity

Collectivism

Individualism

Hierarchy

Large Power Distance

Small Power Distance

Gender

Femininity

Masculinity

Truth

Strong Uncertainty Avoidance

Weak Uncertainty Avoidance

Virtue

Long-Term Orientation

Short-Term Orientation

(Hofstede, et al., 2002, p. 40) From the collected data Hofstede discovered managers and employees are different on five value dimensions which try to answer to the questions of how and why people are affected by national cultural structures. The dimensions are: Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Power Distance (PDI), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), and Long term-Short term Orientation (LTO) (Hofstede, 2011, p. 8).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN 1. Power Distance, related to the different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality; 2. Uncertainty Avoidance, related to the level of stress in a society in the face of uncertainty; 3. Individualism vs. Collectivism, related to the integration of individuals into primary groups; 4. Masculinity vs Femininity, related to the division of emotional roles between women and men; 5. Confucian Dynamism, related to the choice of focus for people's efforts: the future or the present and past. Hofstede (2011) found a strong correlation between individualism and small Power Distance with national wealth. In another word, change in economy tends to correlate with both dimensions. The list of scores for 76 nations indicates that individualism tends to prevail in developed and western countries, while, collectivism prevails in less developed and Eastern countries; interestingly, Japan takes a middle position on this dimension (Hofstede et al., 2010). This means, individualism is related to modernity and better education. The degree of uncertainty avoidance of a country can change with environmental factors such as wars and natural disasters (Mooij, 2011). Mooij added younger people are more masculine than older people because of maturation effect, their values shift as they get older. De Mooij and Hofstede and De Mooij (1997; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2010; 2011; 2013) have tested Hofstede’s model in international marketing and consumer behavior, product usage, packaging, brand and advertising and discovered positive correlations between variables. Some key differences between models These models are designed and developed to help researchers differentiate between different cultures and each deliver different results. These approaches by Trampenaars, Hofstede, Schwartz, and GLOBE are major large-scales researches used worldwide to measure societal cultures. There are some similarities such as aggregating self-descriptive responses by participants that are taken from too many national samples as well as differences such as sample and types of questions used. As it was mentioned earlier, all of four scholars’ emphasis that cultures has obvious and tangible sides. They agreed that cultures are made up of shared believes and values. These approaches can be applied for different purposes argued (Mooij, 2011). Schwartz model is perfect for those researchers who want to study both individual-level values and cultural-level values. The Hofstede model is more useful in predicting behaviour and the GLOBE model can be useful in investigating aspects of intergroup and international relations. Ros, et al. (1999) suggested that the Hofstede approach is best explained by macro-economic variables. In contrast to Schwartz model which is best described by macro-social variables. Perhaps this is due to the use different concepts and different measurement (Mullins, 2005). Maybe Hofstede’s study was not the first systematic research to investigate culture dimensions but his model tends to be useful in predicting national culture values regardless of criticisms. In contrast, The GLOBE model is considered to be one of the most recent SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN studies to explain national culture and organizational values (House, et al., 2006). Moreover, due to the newness of the model GLOBE was less subject to criticism. Hofstede (2011) argued that most of GLOBE’s jointly correlated dimensions can be viewed useful as facets of his individualism/collectivism; some have enhanced understandings into his power distance dimension and GLOBLE’s Assertiveness should be presents new elements. Hofstede adds, GLOBE’s Human Orientation and Performance Orientation, both “as is” and “should be” cannot be meaningfully validated. TABLE 2.2. The key differences between Hofstede’s Model, GLOBE Model, Schwartz Model, and Trampenaars Model The difference

GLOBE Model

Time period 1994 - 2004 Numbers of 170 researchers involved Respondents Managers

Organizations Type organizations Industries

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1994- 2004 1

Trampenaars Model 1997-8 1

School teachers Managers & & college administers students 195 30 School & Multinational Colleges

951 of Non-multinational (local organizations) Food processing, Education financial & telecommunication services

Number of societies surveyed Analysis Project design Number of cultural dimensions Questions types

Scales Model purpose

Schwartz Model

Hofstede’s Model 1980 - 2001 1 Non-managers & managers 1 IBM & its subsidiaries

62

74

Food, oil, Information airlines, technology various of technological corporations 50 72

Team effort US-based Nine

Single effort Israel-Based Seven

Single effort Dutch-based Seven

Leadership issues, peoples’ perceptions of organizations or societies Bipolar Intergroup and international relations

Guiding principles in people’s lives (abstract values)

Cross-cultural Individual communication behavioral (People’s preferences preferences)

Unipolar Individual-level & cultural-level

Bipolar Bipolar culture Predict differences in behavior organizations

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Single effort Dutch-based six

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN The KURDS AND KURDISTAN According to the Books of Kings, Kurds are the most ancient people and were descendent of the Medes or, less commonly, the Gutis, living in the region known as Medea, where they integrated themselves into the population. According to Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century BC, “These Medes were called anciently by all people Arian [Aryan]. Medea corresponds with todays’ northern Iraq or Kurdistan (O’shea, 2006 & Livingstone, 2007). Kurdistan is not a recognized state. Most writers have taken an anthropological method and described Kurds as ethnic group and Kurdistan as being the land populated by the Kurds (Stansfield, 2003; Zaken, 2007). According to the theory of nationalism by Anthony Smith, for a group to be identified as an Ethnic group requires myths, memories, values, and symbols. He defined ethnic as “a group possessing a collective name, a common myth of descent, a shared history, a distinctive shared culture, association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity” (O’shea, 2006). Therefore, Kurds are seen as one of the largest ethnic group without a country of their own. Geographically, Kurds live in mountains area, where the Taurus and Zagros Mountains circle the Mesopotamian region. Kurds were seen as people who are in harmony with nature and see mountains as home and safeguard (Stansfield, 2003 & O’shea 2006). Kurdistan, or the land of Kurds, is in the heart of Middle East and it is a strategic area divided between four neighboring countries of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria (Human Rights Watch, 2010; Meho, 1997). During the course of the 20th century, different Kurdish groups have fought against the occupied regimes of central governments in Turkey, Iraq and Iran (Human Rights Watch, 2010). In these four countries, Kurds were seen as minority or denied their presence in the region with very little influence on political development of these countries. Although, there are very few reliable ethnographic censuses in these regions to know Kurdistan population, Stansfiel (2003) and O’shea (2006) have estimated that there are around 30 to 34million Kurds living in this region. According to Stansfield (2003) there are several inter-related reasons for this ignorance of denial or seeing them as tiny minority including: being a region full of vital resources, particularly Oil and water. The Iraqi Kurdistan encompasses the three governorates of Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Dohuk, with a population of nearly five millions is a federated region with three official institutions: the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Kurdistan Region Presidency, and the Kurdistan National assembly (KNA), or parliament (Human Rights Watch, 2010). These three institutions have the legislative and executive powers which they can allocate the regional budget, control borders and take care of their citizens through regional police and security, also they decide for they system of education, and health. The necessary infrastructure and management of the natural resources are done through the ministry of natural resources and endowment. And whether Kurds can capitalize on its mineral wealth depends on the relationship they maintain with the local people and greater Iraqi populations. According to the article 121 of Iraq’s constitution, adopted in October 2005, allows Iraqi Kurdistan to have its own judicial powers and can act in accordance with the Iraqi Constitution (Rarick, et al., 2014; Human Rights Watch, 2010). Furthermore, the Iraqi

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Constitution recognizes the KRG, The KNA, and the security forces such as “Peshmerga” as legitimate bodies and recognizes Arabic and Kurdish as Iraq’s joint official languages. Pervious Finding on Iraqi & Iraqi Kurds’ Cultural Dimensions Although Hofstede have branded Iraq as an Arab country and its cultural dimensions were considered with other Arabic speaking societies, Hassan in his recent researches (2015a; 2015b) have found some major differences in the scores of these dimensions when he concentrated his research only on Iraqi Kurds. These changes in the index of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions were supported by another research done by Rarick and his associate in (2014). In their recent investigations both authors have discovered that Iraqi Kurds score differently from other Iraqi counterparts. Hofstede funding show that Iraqis are high power distance, while Hassan (2015a; 2015b) and Rarick, et al. (2014) found in their studies that Iraqi Kurds are low power distance. This means, Iraqi Kurds reject inequality and monopoly of power in organizations. Hofstede classified Iraqis as a collectivist society valuing group work, group loyalty and take pleasure in group success. Hassan (2015a; 2015b) also discovered that Iraqi Kurds culture as collectivistic but with lower score than actual result. In Hofstede study Iraqis are masculine people with masculine values favoring performance, achievement and control. This is true for Iraqi Kurds too where Hassan (2015a; 2015b) found that there is small departure in the actual score from 70% to 65%. Both Hofstede and Hassan results showed that both Iraqi and Iraqi Kurds are societies scoring high on uncertainty avoidance dimension. Quite opposite to Hofstede finding, Rarick, et al. (2014) research indicated that Iraqi people are low in uncertainty avoidance while Iraqi Kurds scored high in uncertainty avoidance. Interestingly, Iraqi Kurds scored high on Confucian dynamism which means they are long term orientated people valuing long term investment, future plan and saving. This is quite opposite to Hofstede funding which indicated that Iraqi scores very low on this dimension which it reveals they have a normative culture. To compare the old scores with multiple new scores from different segments please note the table 3.3: TABLE 3.3. The Hofstede Scores & Iraqi Kurds Scores in Multiple Samples Country (IRAQ - Kurdistan) PDI UAI IDV MAS LTO Hofstede’s findings Hassan’s old findings on: (441 students) Hassan’s new finding on: (272 managers in both private & public sector organizations) Combining both samples (441 students +272 managers)= 713 Source: Hassan (2015b)

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.95 .41

.85 .81

.30 .38

.70 .65

.25 .76

.44

.84

.41

.63

.83

.42

.82

.39

.65

.78

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE It is only few decades that studying organizational culture comes to the attention of scholars and researcher and whether it is at micro or macro level of organization; reasons for this appearance are manifold (Aaltio and Mills, 2004). In old days, organizational culture was adopted as fast solution for every organizational problems by senior executives and management consultant, later, organizational culture were used by academics as an explanatory framework to understand behaviour in organizations (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007). Organizational culture still remains as controversial concept. Some argue that different organizations in different size have different culture, even those in the same size and same business may possess different culture and structures. Although organizational culture is deep rooted and the members of organizations may not be aware of it, it influences on employees’ behaviour and the way they do work (Mullins, 2005). Due to its complexity Pfister (2009) many other academics tried to provide a more holistic interpretation of culture and this caused to have variety of different explanations. Hofstede (1980), Schein (1990), and Trompenaars and Turner (1997) have all tried to offer a definition for “organizational culture” that is accepted and recognized by all and yet none of them have achieved such an attempt. Therefore, there is no agreement on its meaning or its applications to the analysis of work organizations (Mullins, 2005). Deal and Kennedy, (1982) defined organizational culture as “ the way we do things around here”, (Alvesson, 2002; Rollinson, et al., 1998) while Pfister (2009,p.36) combined Schein, (1990) and O’Reilly and Chatman (1996) definitions as “ a pattern of basic assumptions – invented, discovered by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal integration , which is represented in a system of shared values defining what is important, and norms, defining appropriate attitudes and behaviour that guide each individual’s attitudes and behaviours”. Hofstede defines organizational culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one organization from others” (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Schein, (2010) believes all organizations face two archetypical problems: (1) survival in and adaptation to the external environment, and (2) integrating the internal processes to make sure the capacity to continue to survive and adopt. After all, these definitions agree on many things such as: first – what keep the organization and employee together is the culture of organization which it has share values, beliefs and norms, second – it has both written and untold policy and procedures which employees should be aware of them to give them direction, third – it create organizational citizenship, a sense of belonging and ownership which employees can identify themselves with, fourth – it can be passed to future generation of new recruits and fifth – we can differentiate one organization from another. Schein pointed to some of the forces that may influence culture studies include:  

Increasing technological/scientific complexity of all functions Global networking through informational technology

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN  

More multicultural organizations through mergers and joint ventures More organizational concern about global warming and sustainability

Schein argued, although culture is an abstraction, yet the forces deriving from culture created in social and organizational contexts are powerful because they help scholars to explain many difficult experiences in social and organizational life as we are not aware of them (2010, p.4). Kondalkar (2007) suggested six positive functions fulfilled by organizational culture, such as (a) it provides an organizational identity to its members (b) it facilitates collective commitment (c) indorses systems stability (d) it forms behaviour of members by assisting them make sense of their environments (e) it offers a boundary (f) it encourage members to conform to expected mode of behaviour. Therefore, culture is seen as a means of control and improved management. Perspectives on Organizational Culture Although there are more than 150 definitions of culture (Kluckhohn, Kroeber, and Meyer, 1952), there are two main disciplinary foundations of organizational culture; (1) managerial prospective (Organization has culture) and (2) social science perspective (organization is culture) (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). They have argued it is the functional, sociological perspective that has come to predominate. Many scholars who wrote on organization culture accepted the fact that cultures are socially constructed attribute of organizations and work as social glue that bind employees together (Cameron and Quinn, 2006). Social science writers believe the term organizational culture is overused, but under-defined. Managerial academics see culture as a variable while the social science academics define culture as a metaphor (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). The table (4.4) help to understand both perspectives more: TABLE 3.4: Managerial Perspective and Social Science Perspective Managerial perspective Social science perspective Culture has Culture is Integration culture Differentiation culture Consensual culture Fragmentation culture Culture managed Culture tolerated Symbolic leadership Management control Source: (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007, p. 634) The managerial perspective believes organization has culture just as it has strategy, goals, structure, and the academics can measure culture, and also it can be passed on to its new recruits. The social science academics believe, culture is, it constitutes rituals and meaning, and do not believe it has any objective to impose itself on members. The opposing view believes that culture cannot be quantified; they argue culture is produced and reproduced through the interactions between firm employees (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007). Additionally, it is clear that these two views are not universally accepted and believing that culture can be easily managed, modified and changed is a naive and simplistic view. Change is not a straight forward substance, culture has rooted deeply in

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN people but it can be easily manipulated. This reminds us the five century old comment from Niccolo Machiavelli about human nature on change and says "People are by nature changeable. It is easy to persuade them about some particular matter, but it is hard to hold them to that persuasion" (Bondanella and Musa, 1979). Hofstede, et al. (2010) argued values are learnt in early stage of life, and as they work in an organization they will be influenced by their own cultural values as well as organization culture. Therefore, both employees and organization have influenced each other values and integrated. Consequently, some scholars believe having the right culture in organization will have profound effects on outputs such as loyalty, productivity, and perceived quality of service (Alvesson, 2002). Integration approach to culture believes organization hold a single unified culture and if the values, norms and beliefs are clear and understood by majority then they will guide their behaviours, and brings consistency to work which make employees more committed to work. In contrast, the differentiation approach believes, each organization has too many hierarchical levels, too many departments and each has its culture and subcultures, and again, each possesses its own characteristics, with diverse interest differ from its neighbouring departments, or management and staff, which all this bring ambiguity (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007). Consider table (3.5) for more information: TABLE 3.5: Martin’s contrasting perspectives on organizational culture Features Integration Differentiation Fragmentation No consensus – Orientation to Organization-wide Subcultural consensus consensus multiplicity of consensus views inconsistent Complex Relations between Consistent different culture elements Channel it outside Focus upon it Orientation to Exclude subculture ambiguity Source: adopted from D. Maximini, (2015, p. 10) The managerial perspective argued culture can be created, modified, and managed by organizational founders and its senior managers. This means if the culture is favoured then it can be passed into the later, it will bring efficiency which culture can innovate, adjust rapidly and correctly to changes in the strategic direction of the firm (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007; Kondalkar, 2007). Organizational Climate Although the concept of organizational climate is linked to culture, Literature on organizational climate can be traced back to the work of Kurt Lewin (1951) which it was around in a developed form for much longer time (Rollinson, et al., 1998). It was in the 1960s when English-language literature attributes culture to organization and organizational culture became a synonym for organizational climate (Hofstede, et al.,

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN 2010). It is also important to note that both concept of organizational culture and climate are different (Cameron and Quinn, 2006). Organizational climate is how the organization employees feels and perceived their organization and work environment, it is like a team spirit and everyone has the same collective feeling about what’s important and what is not significant ( Robbins and Judge, 2013). Isaksen and Tidd, (2006) defined climate as “the recurring patterns of behaviour, attitudes and feelings that characterize life in the organization”. Mullins (2005) stated it is the management job to create a motivating climate so employees will work willingly and effectively. Brun and Cooper (2009) stated that a healthy business should place employee well-being on the same level as other goals, and include it in its management criteria. Cameron and Quinn (2011) distinguished between both concepts and argued: culture is very slow to change because it is based on attitudes, while climate can be change very quickly and easily. Culture refers to implicit, unspoken, often invisible aspects of organizations; while climate refers to more overt, observable characteristics of organizations. Sparrow and West (2002) stated that values work as a fundamental starting points in the culture-climate-performance linkage process and they are important in determining of several factors that link the individual, team and organization to this eventual effectiveness. Thus, it is up to organizations to create a positive atmosphere within which creativity is either encouraged and blooms in innovation, or ignored. Both concepts of organizational culture and climate have similarity and differences. While organizational culture is a long term oriented, deal with deep rooted values of employees, organizational climate is short in life cycle, and deal with surface level of organizational environment, both deal with an intangible aspect of organizations and acknowledge this results in distinctive patterns of employee behaviour (Rollinson, et al., 1998). Different Organizational Culture Typologies In the field of organizational development, there are different models attempting to describe organizational culture. (Harrison, Hofstede, Deal and Kennedy, and Cameron and Quinn) are some of the scholars who describe organizational culture typologies. Cameron and Quinn approach will be adopted in this study for the purpose of diagnosing organizational culture. Roger Harrison Typology One of the most widely known typology is the Harrison (1972) typology that links culture with organizational structure (Cartwright and Baron, 2002). The very first typology tried to capture cultural essences in organizations were first introduced by Harrison and handy (Schein, 2010). Roger Harrison (1972) viewed organizational ideologies as central mechanism of the character of an organization (Boak, 2007). Handy developed the idea of Harrison, and described the four types of organizational culture (Mullins, 2005). C-Pheysey (2003) combined Hofstede’s cultural dimensions with Harrison (1987) four organizational cultures and introduced the four types of societal cultures:

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN A Role Culture: The role culture refers to the way each employees occupy a position within the firm and is expected to act according to job descriptions. In another word, it is a highly specialized culture. The rules and regulation of the company are to control employees’ behaviour, communication and principles for fixing compensation (Boak, 2007). the role cultures are still the most common form of large organizations, especially in the public sector, which it indicates the bureaucratic, mechanistic, with rigid structure and clear role boundaries (Boaks, 2007, Mullins, 2005; Cartwright and Baron, 2002). Achievement Culture: Achieving culture is task oriented, usually associated with project environments, get the job done is more important than prescribing of how it should be done. Team work, individual autonomy is encouraged (Schein, 2010; Cartwright and Baron, 2002). Achievement culture is more popular in individualistic culture where small business enterprises are encouraged such as research institutes or consulting firms (Mullins, 2005). A Power culture: Power culture is based on a central source of power (a key individual or individuals) with few procedures or regulations (Boak, 2007; Mullins, 2005). Organizations are dominated by charismatic/autocratic founders (Schein, 2004). According to C-Pheysey (2003) it is similar to Hofstede’s strong power distance dimension, and it is believed the power culture is popular among Mafia or family businesses. Support Culture: In this type of culture cares for peoples feeling, desires and their development. It is rare in commercial organizations but popular in community organizations (Mullins, 2005; Cartwright and Baron, 2002). According to C-Pheysey (2003) Support culture is popular in more feministic culture, where help and support is encouraged. Hofstede Typology Hofstede introduced to the literature two different versions of dimensions; one he defines national culture dimensions and later organizational culture dimensions. According to him, the distinction lies on national culture tries to investigate and measure peoples’ culture whereas organizational culture tries to understand the culture of different organizations in that particular country (Hofstede, 2011). He introduced six dimensions which can help researchers understand organization sociology and use as a framework to differentiate between organizational cultures (Hofstede, 2011). The six dimensions are described as below: 1. Process-Oriented versus Result-Oriented: similar to order culture by Harrison, process oriented culture are dominated by bureaucracy, attention to details and outcomes and technical routines. Whereas, result oriented cultures are concerned with organizational gaols, pay attention to employees satisfaction to maximise their effort and it is popular in organizations with strong culture. 2. Job-Oriented versus Employee-Oriented: job oriented culture is task oriented, the end result is important and it assumes responsibility for members’ job performance only. Employee orientated cultures assume a broad responsibility for the

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

3.

4.

5.

6.

employees’ welfare; they are concern for employees satisfaction, job security, with no pressure on employees. Professional VS. Parochial: attention is on how employees will recognise themselves. Do they identify themselves by profession or with their organization? Profession is related to the member’s education or job types (marketing). While, in parochial culture, employees identify themselves with organization they work for such as Apple.co and also organization has a strong impact on the way employees behave and work. Open-System VS. Close System: open system culture is open to any sort of internal and external communication and clarity of work individuals are open to each other in terms of sharing the knowledge and information. Close system, in contrast, only some employees can access to information, there is one way communication internally and externally and not everyone can fit into such system. Tightly-Controlled versus Loosely-Controlled: in tightly controlled culture, everything is formal, centralized, controlled; the structure is rigid with high hierarchy. While, loosely controlled culture is more informal, casual, and less central with flatter structure. Also the relationship between employees and management is very good and casual. Pragmatic versus Normative: in Pragmatic culture, attention is given to market forces and customers’ satisfaction, employees are flexible in their tasks management, decision making and working hours, sales people are example. In contrast, in normative culture, members have a very rigid ways and procedure to deal with their tasks, customers and decision making in the work place.

Deal and Kennedy Typology Deal and Kennedy examined hundreds of business companies with their environments and categorized organizational culture according to the two determining factors in the marketplace: (1) how much risk associated with the firms’ activities, and (2) how fast organizations and employees receive feedback on the success of decisions or strategies (Mullins, 2005). Deal and Kennedy (1982) proposed four kinds of organizational culture out of the two factors (Belias and Koustelios, 2014). 1. The Though-Guy, Macho culture: employees are encouraged to take risk and work under a lot of pressure in order to achieve their goals as well as organizational goals (Belias and Koustelios, 2014). It is more popular in individualistic culture where outlaw heroes are the norm, and examples of this sort of organizational culture can be found in, management consulting, advertising and even police department. 2. The Work Hard/Play Hard culture: this type of culture is described as a “world of small risks and quick, often intensive feedback. Activity in this world is everything. Success comes with persistence” (ibid., p.113, cited in D.Maximini, 2015).

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN According to (Belias and Koustelios, 2014) the culture of these organizations is customer oriented, it is about high speed action in order to have a fast results. 3. The Bet-Your-Company culture: the emphasis is on the characteristic of organization, which future investments and risks were considered and planed carefully (Belias and Koustelios, 2014). The culture has to tolerate high risk but slow feedback with high pressure on individuals, where organization senior managers often risk the future of the entire company (D.Maximini, 2015). 4. The Process culture: As it appears from its name, the culture is all about process to take place in accuracy, detail and technical perfection, with minimum risk of investments and minimum levels of anxiety among members (Belias and Koustelios, 2014). Protecting the system’s integration is more valued than their own by peoples in this culture, and the examples of this culture was seen in banks, large chunks of government. Deal and Kennedy (2000a) reject the idea that culture of the organization is shaped by individuals inside the firm, but it is the external forces that influence and shape the organizational culture which organization has to adopt into the new environment they are operating in (D.Maximini, 2015). Cameron and Quinn Typology To diagnose organizational culture, Cameron and Quinn presented one of the most popular statistically validated instruments called “Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument” or “OCAI”. The original idea is based on the Competing Values Framework “CVF” discovered by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983), who stated this framework allows researchers to find a diverse set of performance indicators which needs to be used based on the main emphasis of organizational culture (Cameron and Quinn, 2006; 2011; D.Maximini, 2015). They have argued that OCAI currently is used by 10,000 companies worldwide. It is important to notice that these four core values are opposite of each other’s, for example flexibility is in one side of continuum and Stability in opposite side and the same with internal versus external (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). These dimensions produce quadrants that are opposite or competing on the diagonal which they named them in way that goes well with other researchers alike. Therefore, these dimension names (Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy) were not chosen randomly but resulted from other scholars’ works (Cameron and Quinn, 2006; Schein, 2004). The Hierarchy Culture: Max Weber, the German Sociologist, studied government organizations in Europe and in (1947) Weber offered seven characteristics which are today’s bureaucracy attributes: rules, specialization, meritocracy, and hierarchy, separate ownership, impersonality, accountability (Cameron and Quinn, 2006). A firm with such a culture is controlled and governed through the formal rules and policy, the long term concerns of the company are stability, predictability and efficiency. Thus, this kind of environment views effective leaders as a good coordinators and organizers, someone who

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN can run organization smoothly and efficiently. Large multinational, government agencies are the examples of hierarchy culture (Cameron and Quinn, 2006, p. 38). The Market Culture: During the late 1960 competition intensified and another form of organizing becomes popular. It was referred to as market forms of organization that functions as market itself (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). It is more oriented toward external environment and its main focus is to create sustainable competitive advantage. The market culture consider the external environment as hostile, competitive, fragmented, customers are choosy and they want more than they pay, the firm is in the business to gain profit and market shares, and managers tasks are to bring productivity, results and profits to the organization. Therefore, aggressive strategies, stretch goals and stretching the company power are favored. “Leaders are hard-driving producers and competitors who are tough and demanding. The glue that holds the organization together is an emphasis on wining. The long term concern is on competitive actions and achieving stretch goals and targets. Success is defined in term of market share and penetration while outpacing the competition and market leadership are important (Cameron and Quinn, 2011, p. 45-46). The Clan Culture: The third form of organizational culture is named a clan culture due to the similarity to a family-type organization rather than economic entities. Inside this type of organization, employees have shared values and goals, participation, team work and strong cohesion exist in this kind of culture which is very important in a dynamic and turbulent environment. The basic assumptions in clan culture are teamwork, employee’s involvement and development (Cameron and Quinn, 2006).They view customers as partners and companies duties are developing organization as well as human work environment. Thus, the manager’s job is to share the power with others, encourage participation and loyalty to organization. It is like an extended family and leaders are as family figure. Therefore, leadership in this type of culture is more concentrated on loyalty and tradition resulted in a high commitment. It is a very enjoyable place to work, where employees share a lot with each other. Leadership type is viewed as facilitator, mentor, and team builder, and effectiveness as human development and participation (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). The Adhocracy Culture: As the world economy is moving from the industrial age to the information age that is typify of today organizational, the fourth form of organization which is the most responsive to this highly turbulent environment emerged and called adhocracy culture. The root of the word adhocracy is ad hoc – implying something temporary, specialized, and dynamic (Cameron and Quinn, 2011, p. 49). The assumptions are the only way to be successful is through innovation, developing new products, services, and be ready for the future uncertainty. Thus, the management tasks are encourages entrepreneurship, creativity, and invention. Due to the uncertainty and dynamic environment, adaptation and constantly innovation would head organization to new resources and profitability. The work place is characterized as being a dynamic and creative place and people are encouraged to do things in new way, take risk. Effective leaders are seen as visionary, innovative, and risk oriented. What glues the organization together is commitment to experimentation and innovation. Success is interpreted as creating unique and original products and services. They have found that “new or small organizations tend

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN to progress through a predictable pattern of organization culture change, starting in the adhocracy quadrant, evolving into a clan, and then hierarchy culture until it finally settles into a market form of organizational culture” (Cameron and Quinn, 2011, pp. 64-65). These cultural typologies explain different aspects of organizational culture. Due to its complexity, broadness, inter-relatedness and comprehensiveness of the subject too many models were developed by different scholars to explain organizational culture. Horrison emphasized the centralization and formalization of decision makings and focused on how processes are conducted within an organizational culture. While, Deal and Kennedy focused on quality of decision in different times and contexts and how fast do the managers will find out whether the decision was made was right or wrong. From other side, Hofstede organizational culture dimensions based mostly on national cultural dimension which was criticized over practicality of the model when it need to be applied. Moreover, the characteristics of these models are detectable in OCAI. Cameron and Quinn present the different components of cultural evolution and they have focused on organizational values. Furthermore, Schein (2010) criticized these approaches and argued, the problem with culture typologies is they try to oversimplify these complexities of organizational culture, consequently they may provide researchers categories that are irrelevance to what they intend to discover, and by focusing prematurely on few dimensions they limit our understanding and ability to find complex patterns between different dimensions, therefore, they tend to not reveal what a given group feels intensely about. Due to popularity, validity, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of the tool this researcher tend to choose Cameron and Quinn model for this research and adopts the organizational culture assessment instrument (OCAI) as method of organizational cultural analysis. This instrument delivers a broad and deep perspective to scholars who want to explore organizational culture because it is grounded on multiple constituencies’ theory. Organizational Culture in Iraqi Kurdistan Despite the fact that Kurdistan is rich in natural resources and Iraqi Kurdistan in particular is a wealthy region with oil, water and other natural endowments, their economy traditionally has been based on agriculture. There are no modern industries in Kurdistan except some local oil refinery and Telecommunication companies. Nevertheless, most of the skilled works are done by non-Kurds, non-local and the Kurdish citizens establish the main unskilled workers (Meho, 1997). O’shea (2006) discovered, in Iraq, the industrial sector has been very much neglected with major industrial projects have concentrated at Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. According to Caldwell (N.D), after the change of Ba’ath regime in 2003, the Iraqi Kurdistan has transformed significantly and it has proven to the world that it can improve the ability of its service delivery and infrastructure, which led to better economic landscape and increased the numbers of investment projects. She adds there are more than 2,000 foreign firms operating in KRG. She recommended, because of this stability and good security, Kurdish region has to be viewed by business people as a completely different business environment from the rest of Iraq. During the financial crisis caused by Iraqi government and the unexpected war with ISIS terrorist group in 2014, 100 thousand foreign and local workers have lost their jobs (Shafaq News, 2014). Thereafter,

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN according to NRT.TV sources, more than 75% of businesses in Kurdistan either bankrupt and closed or pulled their investment back to home countries (2015). Caldwell (N.D) warns international corporations want to invest in Iraq over lack of qualified professionals and suggested that they need to invest heavily in all forms of hard and soft skill development. She added, when it comes to hiring, Iraqis try to secure positions for their family members and friends. Whereas, good qualification comes as secondary important and some times, expertise in an area may means two-day training course rather getting a master’s degree (Caldwell, N.D). ICS survey (2011) suggested that more than half of civil servants got help in their recruitment from friends and family, while political parties comes second (UNODC, 2013). In addition, the below graph 3.1 shows the percentage of civil servants who received help in recruitment, by those who facilitated recruitment and by region, Iraq (2011):

Source: adopted from (UNODC, 2013) According to Rudaw.TV channel, there are more than 1.3 million civil servants and retirees and each month $870 million goes to this huge segment. Additionally, $250 million of this amount goes to unanimous employees and those who get more than one salary. In another word, every year $3 billion is wasted on the fake employees or those who has illegal extra salary (01/09/2015). It is important to notice, although, the regime has changed, but its values and the way they used to work are still in use and becomes part of cultural norms. Thus, this old style of managing government becomes part of today’s governing style and corruption and nepotism viewed as social cultural values. Therefore, management and leadership style are traditional; the focus is on control, efficiency, hierarchy, creation of strong networks and nepotism. With more than a decade still many people in Iraq live in difficult social and economic situations. In addition to physical insecurity, low incomes and huge SARDAR HASSAN

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN unemployment, most of the citizens in here still do not access to good and reliable public services. Other problems which people are still confronted in here are frequent power cuts, lack of clean drinking water, poor health care facilities and an inefficient sanitation system (UNODC, 2013). Aquinas, (2007) stated that organizational culture works as a framework that direct members behaviour to achieve organizational goals and guide them in daily decision making. It must be aligned with managerial functions. In organization employees’ subjective perception of the organization based on seven dimensions and this overall perception will become the personality of the organization, the organizational culture which will result in employees’ performance and levels of satisfaction. There is a lack of research on organizational culture in Iraqi Kurdistan and whether national culture has any influence in shaping organizational culture needs to be answered. Unfortunately, in Iraq and particularly in Kurdistan, studies concentrating on organizational culture in general and on the competing values framework in particular among both private and public sectors are very limited to none. Therefore, based on the literature review this research tries to suggest two questions and these hypotheses: 6.4 What is the level of hierarchy, clan, market and adhocracy culture in organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan? 6.5 What type of organizational culture does dominant the organizations in here? Hypothesis (3.1): there is a positive relationship between national culture dimensions and organizational culture types in Iraqi Kurdistan. Hypothesis (3.2): national culture influences both private and public sector organizations cultures equally. Hypothesis (3.3): there is a positive correlation between demographic variables “Gender, sector, experience, title, age, education and span of control” and organizational culture in both sectors. METHODOLOGY (Sample, Data collection, & Measurement) For testing the hypotheses a quantitative research technique is used to project the quantitative data in number form such as statistic and percentages. The aim is to produce specific facts and estimates from a large representative sample of participants (Hair, et al., 2002). In social survey research, the sample should be representative (Bryman and Bell, 2007). This study adopted convenient sampling method which is a non-probability sampling. Because the researcher has the full authority to choose the participants it is subject to significant sample errors (Baines and Chansarkar, 2002).To make the sample population more representative and reduce the sampling errors the sample was drawn on some of the main ministries, directorates, universities, hospitals, NGO, telecommunication company and other local companies in Iraqi Kurdistan. The sample population was based on managers and other participants currently working for public and private sector organizations. All the managers were holding low, middle or senior management positions

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN and other non-manager participants were holding high ranking positions. Additionally, the target population is homogeneous “Kurd” and they are all either managers or holding high ranks in both sector organizations which increase the representativeness of population and allow researcher to use this methods (Hair, et al., 2002). The first section was concentrated on demographic information. The second section was based on Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions using CVSCALE (Yoo, et al., 2011) to measure national culture at individual level. The CVSCALE has 26 items and has a good reliability and adequate psychometric properties (Soares, et al., 2006). The third section consisted of organizational culture questions. For this research, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) by Quinn and Cameron (2006; 2011) was used. The (OCAI) was originally based on Competing Values Framework (CVF) and it has 24 items that assess organizational culture at individual level. Although the participants were assured about the confidentiality and anonymous of their details, and it was entirely voluntary, the respondent rate was not high as it was expected. The questionnaires were distributed in both sector organizations by the researcher himself and they were given 10 to 14 days to answer. It took almost three month to collect all the questionnaires and only those answered all the questions were collected by researcher at the end of the given time. Data Analyses SPSS statistical computer package, version 17.0 was used for statistical analysis (Babraham, 2008). Landau and Everitt (2004) described it as package of programs for manipulating, analysing, and presenting data. Thus, SPSS (17) was used to calculate the standard deviations and means for both national and organizational cultural dimensions at the aggregate level (Bernstein, M.J., 2011 and Ebster, C., 2012). Four different results were produced from the data analyses. The first result was based on demographic data collection. The second result was Cronbach Alpha to check the reliability of the items. The third result produced was descriptive statistics to measure national culture as well as organizational culture at individual levels. The last results were related to correlation coefficients as well as regression analysis. The correlation coefficient explains the level of association between both variables. Correlations coefficients between both variables of this research were calculated and serious of T-tests were used to compare the private and public sector samples on factor indexes obtained from the factor analyses. By using the Regression method, all the responses to the items assessing national culture and organizational culture were factor analyzed. Moreover, through Direct Oblimin procedure for factor extraction with oblique rotation to simple structure, factor scores established were used for subsequent data analysis. Regression analyses were used first to examine the extent organizational culture as a dependent variable can be predicted by national culture as independent variable. Second Regression analysis was conducted to investigate the extent to which national culture as independent variables can influence and predict organizational culture in both private and public sectors separately. Lastly, regression analysis was also used to predict the influence of demographic variables on organizational culture in both sector organizations.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN

RESULTS Frequency Out of 610 questionnaires only 277 were returned. After a thorough evaluation of questionnaires 7 were exempted due to the reliability problem and only 272 – 45% of them were valid for this research. Public sector sample consisted of 188 – 69% managers, 123 – 65% of them were male and 65 – 35% of them were female. Private sector sample involved of 84 – 31% of managers, and out of these 84 managers, 54 -64% of them were male and 30 – 36% of them were female. The below graphs (graph3.2 from left, 3.3 middle and 3.4 right hands) will explain more:

The second graph results indicate that the age range from 20 years old to above 51 years old. Female has higher chances to start as a manager in early age than male and as they get older they percentages increase too. The third graph explains the span of control for both male and female. Although women have higher chance to begin as manager at early age, there are fewer women with more span of control than men. Majority of participants were department managers 144- 53% and 46 -17% supervisors, 27 -10% general managers, 20 7% CEO, 9 – 3% of them were presidents and 26 – 10% were non-manager which include professional from different backgrounds such as (Governor, Mayor, locum, directorates’ committee members, advisors, technicians, judges and lawyers). Thus the accessible population of this research constitutes managers and professionals from some major KRG ministries, municipalities, directorates, universities, hospitals, NGO, and local companies such as telecom in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Reliability Tests of Constructs Before analyzing data, the reliability should exist because it helps to understand the properties of measurement scores (IBM, 2010). Additionally, Cronback Alpha was used to discover the internal consistency, based on the average inter-item correlation (SPSS, 17.0, 2007). Tavakol and Dennick (2011) suggested there are different opinion about the quality of inter-relation and the numbers of questions and what would be an acceptable numbers for alpha, ranging from .7 to .95. Each number represents the percentage of the reliability

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN i.e. 8 = 80% (Brown, 2002). The results indicate that the reliability for the 26 items of national culture in this research is 0.69 and it is considered adequate. The Cronback Alpha for the 24 items of organizational culture in the same survey is 0.875 which is considered excellent. The reliabilities of both sectors for both variables were above .7 thresholds. Table (3.6) explains the intraclass correlation coefficient: TABLE 3.6: Intraclass Correlation Coefficient 95% Confidence Interval F Test with True Value 0 Intraclass Correlationa Lower Bound Upper Bound Value df1 df2 Sig Single Measures .212b .181 .248 7.983 271 6233 .000 Average Measures .866c .841 .888 7.983 271 6233 .000 Two-way mixed effects model where people effects are random and measures effects are fixed. a. Type A intraclass correlation coefficients using an absolute agreement definition. b. The estimator is the same, whether the interaction effect is present or not. c. This estimate is computed assuming the interaction effect is absent, because it is not estimable otherwise.

Factor analysis Factor analyses are useful to discover whether there are correlations within a set of searched factors or to reduce data to a smaller number of variables that can explain most of the factors (IBM, 2010). Furthermore, it helps researchers to create hypotheses to screen factors of subsequent analyses (SPSS, 2007). KMO measure of sampling adequacy tests to see whether the partial correlations among variables are small and Bartlett’S Test of Sphercity want to see whether the correlation matrix is an identity matrix, which would indicate that the factor model is inappropriate (IBM, 2010, p. 157). The result indicates that the national culture Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin is .739 and .830 for organizational culture. The Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity Sig is 0.00 for both national culture as well as organizational culture which they are significant because it is below 0.05 (Biostatistics, 2013). Therefore, this author can conclude that the factor analyses are suitable for this research in both cases. If both private and public sector organizations are treated separately then the KMO for public and private sector is still above .7 with Sig of 0.00. TALBE 3.7: KMO and (Organizational Culture)

Bartlett's

Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling .830 Adequacy. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 2113.934 df 276 Sig. .000

TABLE 3.8: KMO and Bartlett's Test (National Culture) Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling .739 Adequacy. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 21553.722 df 9180 Sig. .000

It is the KMO that determine how many components need to be extracted for national and organizational culture and the components with Eigenvalues of above 1 is the subject of interest (Biostatistics, 2013). Inspections of eigenvalue and scree plot suggested for national culture there are 8 components with eigenvalues of 1 and above which represent the majority of cumulative percentage. But only the first five-factors were adopted due to their representativeness and interpretability of the factors. Thus, research can labeled these factor scores as collectivism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Confucian dynamism. As for organizational culture, only 7 components had eigenvalues of 1 or above and it represent above 60% of cumulative percentage. Moreover, only fourfactors were adopted because they could interpret the four organizational culture dimensions. Therefore, the results of this factor scores labeled as clan culture, adhocracy culture, market culture and bureaucracy culture. The below scree plots 3.5 from left and 3.6 to the right can explain more:

Descriptive Analysis Descriptive analyses are beneficial in producing summary statistics such as: mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum (IBM, 2011). The mean is based on all the data values, however because of this it is prone to being unduly affected by outlier in the data, most noticeably when the sample is small (Garth, 2008, p. 20). After a deep review of these results, for the first time this study explore organizational culture dimensions in Iraqi Kurdistan. The score of this research produce some significant new and reliable results. Table (9) recaps the results of all organizational culture dimensions including private and public sectors separately. TABLE 3.9: Organizational culture Dimensions in Iraqi Kurdistan Clan Adhocracy Market culture culture culture Private sector organizations 3.38/5= .68 3.15/5= .63 3.48/5= .70 3.22/5= .64 Public sector organizations 3.44/5= .69 3.1/5= .62 3.4/5= .68 3.12/5= .62 3.3/5= .66 Both sectors organizations

Hierarchy culture 3.63/5= .73 3.7/5= .74 3.7/5= .74

The results in table (3.9) indicate that the culture of organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan is hierarchy culture followed by clan culture. Adhocracy culture score the lowest (62%) in Iraqi Kurdistan which means it is least luckily culture to have in organizations in here followed by market culture. Treating both sector organizations separately, the scores exhibit that the culture of private sector organizations is more hierarchy first and market culture compared with hierarchy and clan culture in public sector organizational.

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Interestingly, in both sectors hierarchy culture scores the highest and adhocracy scores the lowest. HYPOTHESES TESTING Correlation Analysis Table (3.10) demonstrates the correlations between the national culture dimensions and organizational culture dimensions in Iraqi Kurdistan. It also shows the results for both private and public sectors separately to discover whether there is also a positive relation between national culture and both sector organizations equally. Pearson correlation (RValue) demonstrates strength and direction () of the correlations between variables and the bigger the R-Value the better. While, the “*” star/s means the null hypothesis can be rejected (Sinn, N.D). Thus, the results in table (3.10) show that there is positive relationship between national culture and organizational culture. It also can indicate there is a possibility that national culture can influences organizational culture in Iraqi Kurdistan. From the five national culture dimensions the strongest correlations can be seen between collectivism first, Confucian dynamism (LTO) second and uncertainty avoidance third with almost all the organization culture dimensions. The weakest correlations can be viewed between power distance first and masculinity second. Furthermore, the table above shows that there is positive correlation between national culture and organizational culture in private sector organizations but there is almost negative correlation between national culture and organizational culture in public sector. In another word, national culture dimensions can positively influence most of organizational culture dimensions in private sector while a negative or weak effect was predicted in public sector dimensions except collectivism and Confucian dynamism relation with market culture. It worth to note, that both Pearson correlation and sig numbers were changed as they were tested through multiple linear regressions correlation. The changes in numbers were not so significant. TABLE 3.10: The Results for Correlation Coefficients Tests between Variables Collectivism Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N: number Clan culture

(Pearson Correlation) Sig. (2-tailed)

Uncertainty avoidance (Pearson Correlation) Sig. (2-tailed)

Power distance (Pearson Correlation) Sig. (2-tailed)

Masculinity

LTO

(Pearson Correlation) Sig. (2-tailed)

(Pearson Correlation) Sig. (2-tailed)

Both sectors (N 272) Public (N 188) Private (N 84)

.146* .016 .118 .106 .251* .021

.225**.000 .125 .087 .327**.002

.010 .863 .071 .331 .007 .951

.057 .352 -.040- .583 .164 .136

.170**.005 .119 .104 .047 .672

.176** .004 .086 .238 .340** .002

.141* .020 .035 .631 .230*.035

.080 .189 .023 .752 .128 .244

.100 .100 .034 .648 .288**.008

.146* .016 .070 .339 .178 .106

Adhocracy culture Both sectors (N 272) Public (N 188) Private (N 84)

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ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Market culture Both sectors (N 272) Public (N 188) Private (N 84) Hierarchy culture

.202** .001 .143* .050 .386** .000

.105 .085 .038 .607 .156 .158

.139* .022 .125 .088 .026 .812

.136* .025 .041 .581 .358**.001

.126* .038 .156* .033 .067 .544

Both sectors (N 272) Public (N 188) Private (N 84)

.132* .029 .138 .059 .293**.007

.082 .180 .042 .568 .286** .008

.113 .063 .109 .135 -.031- .780

.021 .727 -.011- .876 .199 .069

.140* .021 .085 .245 .321**.003

Multiple Regression Analysis In order to bring reliability and consistency to the results and add strength to the analyses, hypotheses were also tested through the use of multiple regression analysis. According to Hair, et al., (2002) multiple regression analysis is very popular in studying the relationships among several independent variables and single dependent variable. Thus, linear regression analysis estimates the coefficients of a linear equation, involving one or more independent variables that best predict the value of the dependent variable (SPSS, N.D). In multiple regression analysis, the primarily interest are R-square values, B-value and P-values (IBMSPSS, N.D). Coefficents table (3.11) gives the beta coefficients so researcher can construct the regression equation and it gives us the Sig or P-values for each predictor. The beta coefficient describes how strongly the independent variables associated with the dependent variable. ANOVA table (3.12) produces an F-test to decide whether model is a good fit for the data and what is the P-value. Model summery table (3.13) provides R-square which explain what % of variability in the dependent variable is accounted for by all of the independent variables or it tells researcher the “goodness of fit” of the model (F.Cook, 2010). The values of R range from -1 to 1. The sign of R indicates the direction of the relationship (+positive or -negative). The overall results are presented in table 3.11: Coefficients tests for Organizational Culture types as Dependent variables and National Culture Dimensions as Independent Variables. Table 3.12: ANOVA results for Organizational Culture types and National culture dimensions as predictors. Table 3.13: show the Model Summery for Organizational Culture and National Culture Dimensions as predictor. Please see the below tables: TABLE 3.11: Coefficients Standardized Unstandardized Coefficients Coefficients Model Clan culture

B

Std. Error

1 (Constant)

1.679E-17

.059

collectivism

.102

.059

uncertainty avoidance

.202

power distance

t

Sig.

.000

1.000

.102

1.736

.084

.059

.202

3.416

.001

.034

.059

.034

.572

.568

masculinity

.048

.059

.048

.819

.414

Confucian dynamism

.141

.059

.141

2.384

.018

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Beta

ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES IN KURDISTAN Adhocracy Culture

1 (Constant) collectivism uncertainty avoidance power distance masculinity Confucian dynamism

-1.091E-16 .125 .101 .080 .101 .101

.059 .062 .060 .060 .063 .061

.125 .101 .080 .101 .101

.000 2.011 1.679 1.345 1.600 1.661

1.000 .045 .094 .180 .111 .098

Market culture

1 (Constant) collectivism power distance masculinity uncertainty avoidance Confucian dynamism

2.875E-17 .162 .154 .114 .067 .081

.058 .062 .059 .059 .063 .060

.162 .154 .114 .067 .081

.000 2.630 2.592 1.936 1.077 1.338

1.000 .009 .010 .054 .282 .182

Hierarchy culture

1 (Constant) collectivism power distance masculinity uncertainty avoidance Confucian dynamism

2.066E-16 .100 .126 .004 .052 .114

.060 .063 .061 .060 .064 .062

.100 .126 .004 .052 .114

.000 1.595 2.074 .067 .814 1.842

1.000 .112 .039 .946 .416 .067

c. d. e. f.

Dependent Variable: CLAN CULTURE Dependent Variable: ADHOCRACY CULTURE Dependent Variable: MARKET CULTURE Dependent Variable: HIERARCHY CULTURE

TABLE 3.12: ANOVAb Organizational culture Clan culture

Adhocracy culture

Market culture

Hierarchy culture

Model

Sum Squares

Regression

of df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

20.443

5

4.089

4.341

.001a

Residual

250.557

266

.942

Total

271.000

271

Regression Residual Total

18.222 252.778 271.000

5 266 271

3.835

.002a

Regression Residual Total

23.545 247.455 271.000

5 266 271

4.709 .930

5.062

.000a

Regression Residual Total

12.936 258.064 271.000

5 266 271

2.587 .970

2.667

.023a

3.644 .950

a. Predictors: (Constant), confusion dynamism, power distance, masculinity, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance b. Dependent Variable: clan culture c. Dependent Variable: ADHOCRACY CULTURE d. Dependent Variable: MARKET CULTURE e. Dependent Variable: HIERARCHY CULTURE

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TABLE 3.13: Model Summary Both sectors Model

R

R Square

Adjusted R Square

Std. Error of the Estimate

Clan culture

1

.275a

.075

.058

.97053775

Adhocracy culture

1

259a

.067

.050

.97482989

Market culture

1

.295a

.087

.070

.96451186

Hierarchy culture

1

.218a

.048

.030

.98496965

Predictors: (Constant), confusion collectivism, uncertainty avoidance

dynamism,

power

distance,

masculinity,

Hypothesis (3.1): There is a positive relationship between national culture dimensions and organizational culture types in Iraqi Kurdistan In order to test whether there is a positive relationship between national culture and organizational culture the results indicates that uncertainty avoidance (B=.202, P< .01), Confucian dynamism (B= .141, P< .018) are strong predictors of clan culture, whereas masculinity, power distance and collectivism show no significant relationship with clan culture. Moreover, uncertainty avoidance received the strongest weight in influencing clan culture followed by Confucian dynamism. Additionally, the computed results show an Rsquare value of .075 also suggests national culture particularly these two dimensions are good predictor of clan culture. In contrast, in correlation coefficient test clan culture was predicted by collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and Confucian dynamism. Moreover, the ANOVA F-value of 4.341 suggests that there is a linear relationship between variables and the P-value is .001 is below the conventional level of .01 and .05 levels of significance. In addition, the results show that collectivism (B=.125, P