Proctor & Gamble

Founded in 1837, Procter & Gamble is the #1 U.S. makers of household products and a recognized leader in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of a broad range of products including Crest toothpaste, Tide laundry detergent, Ivory soap, Pampers diapers, and Dawn liquid detergent. Procter & Gamble has operations in over 70 countries and employs over 100,000 people worldwide and markets to nearly five billion customers in over 140 countries.

Procter & Gamble's purpose or mission statement states exactly why Procter & Gamble is so driven in providing quality products and services to consumers all over the world. Procter & Gamble's purpose is as follows:

"We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world's consumers. As a result, consumers will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our people, our shareholders, and the communities in which we live and work to prosper www.pg.com/jobs/company_culture/purpose.jhtml."

Procter & Gamble's company culture, think globally, act globally, focuses on a variety of core values: leadership, ownership, integrity, passion for winning, and trust. Procter & Gamble works well with the national cultures of Italy and Japan because Procter & Gamble thrives on diversity. Everyone at Procter & Gamble is united through Procter & Gamble's values and goals. Procter & Gamble is such a giant in the household industry. The company sees diversity as advantage. Procter & Gamble's diversity covers a broad range of characteristics, such as race, sex, personal, religion, cultural heritage, etc. Within the company, Procter & Gamble creates an advantage from their differences. Outside Procter & Gamble, the company is very sensitive to other national cultures because of their unique culture found within.

Every company has its own unique culture. Most organizations don't deliberately try and create a culture. The culture of an organization is created unconsciously, based on the values of top management. Procter & Gamble's principles are derived from the company's Purpose and Values. The core principles of the company are:

* We Show Respect for All Individuals

* The Interests of the Company and the Individual are Inseparable

* We are Strategically Focused in Our Work

* Innovation is the Cornerstone of our Success

* We are Externally Focused

* We Value Personal Mastery

* We Seek to Be the Best

* Mutual Interdependency is a Way of Life

www.pg.com/jobs/company_culture/core-values.jhtml

Procter & Gamble encourages employees to value each of their own cultural differences while accepting and learning about the importance of the cultural diversity in throughout the company.

Dr. Geert Hofstede conducted a study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. He focuses on the five dimensions of cultural variability, commonly known as "Hofstede's Dimensions," or "Geert Hofstede Analysis." These dimensions include:

* "Uncertainty Avoidance

This dimension refers to how comfortable people feel towards ambiguity. Cultures which rank low, compared to other cultures, feel much more comfortable with the unknown. As a result, HIGH uncertainty avoidance cultures prefer formal rules and any uncertainty can express itself in higher anxiety than those form low uncertainty avoidance cultures.

* Power Distance

The extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more virus less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some are more unequal than others.

* Masculinity-Femininity

This dimension tends to draw unwarranted criticism for its name alone. It basically refers expected gender roles in a culture. The cultures that scored towards what Hofstede referred to as 'masculine' tend to have very distinct expectations of male and female roles in society. The more 'feminine' cultures have a greater ambiguity in what is expected of each gender.

* Individualism-Collectivism

Individualism on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, that is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after herself/him and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts, and grandparents) which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The word 'collectivism' in this sense has no political meaning: refers to the group, not to the state.

* Long term versus Short term

This fifth dimension was founded in a study among students in 23 countries around the world, using a questionnaire designed by Chinese scholars. It can be said to deal with Virtue regardless of Truth. Values associated with Long Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one's 'face.'"

www.uvt.nl/web/iric/hofstede.htm pages 1&2 www.cyborlink.com/besite/hofstede.htm page 2

The grouping of scores obtained shows some of the roots of cultural differences. There was a pattern among the common history countries that scores alike. For example, all Latin countries score relatively high on both power and uncertainty avoidance. "Latin countries (those today speaking a Romance language i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Italian) have inherited at least part of their civilization from the Roman empire. The Roman Empire in its days was characterized by the existence of a central authority in Rome, and a system of law applicable to citizens anywhere. This established in its citizens' the value complex which we still recognize today: centralization fostered large