1) PAY FOR PERFORMANCE SYSTEM
Situation with the children
The situation with the children is probably a problem of the first dimension – Universalism vs. Particularism. Universalists believe that the same rules should be applied to everyone, no matter what the situation is, no exceptions are possible and contracts are not changeable. For extreme universalists rules are more important than relationships. On the opposite, particularists really believe in friendship – they evaluate each situation based on moral or ethical criteria, they can possibly change the contracts when the circumstances change and they usually have different views about what is right and what is wrong.
For example – is it right to testify that your friend was driving too fast when he hit a pedestrian? Universalists will probably testify it, but the particularists in most cases wouldn’t. Another example from the business area is that when companies from universalistic cultures would negotiate with a company from e.g. China (very particularistic), they must know that they have to focus on relationship and take time and effort to develop it. And still – the contract in particularistic country would be only a rough guideline, so it is really important to have a good relationship. Also particularists and universalists think about each other that they are corrupt because universalists think that particularists will always help their friends and particularists think that universalist will not even help a friend.
Americans and British people are very universalistic (USA is an extreme), whereas the other countries in the meeting are more particularistic – for them loyalty is more important than efficiency. That is the reason why the southern and middle-eastern countries ...