Model of Socially Responsible Transfer of Parent Organization Culture to the Subsidiary Organization in a Foreign Cultural Environment Concerning Internal Communication, Stress, and Work Satisfaction

Abstract

The organizational culture is a significant construct in a time of change during the organizational transition, and it plays an important role in achieving goals of social responsibilities, which is an important part of sustainability. The literature shows the gap of socially responsible transfer of organizational culture with the impact on employee’s well-being. The cultural changes of the organization during the transition are particularly in connection with the impact on internal communication where organizational culture presents a part of values, norms, and ethics, which influences successfully implemented changes and in such a way has an influence on the stress and work satisfaction. The main purpose of the presented study is the development of the model of socially responsible transfer of organizational culture to the foreign subsidiaries on a basis of adjusted internal communication, which reduces stress and increases work satisfaction. Impacts of organizational culture on internal communication, stress, and work satisfaction are clearly presented, as well as inter-related impacts of the constructs concerning national culture, leadership, and organizational knowledge. Thus, the new holistic model of socially responsible transfer of the parent organization culture to foreign subsidiaries clearly defines steps of organizational culture, internal communication, stress management, and work satisfaction. Managerial implications are discussed.

1. Introduction

For organizations that operate on a multinational level and are forced by strategic reasons to spread their business to subsidiary organizations in foreign cultural environments, transfer of organizational know-how concerning the operation in the period of organizational change started to play an important role [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The organizations do not know which exact socially responsible impact is going to have the transfer of parent organization culture to the subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment—nor they know if the parent organization culture will be in line with organizational sustainability, which includes a group of actions taken to meet the needs of the present moment while committing to future capacity without any negative impact on the environment and social responsibility, which are elemental ingredients of the sustainability concept [8].

The organizational culture is a significant construct in a time of change during the organizational transition and plays an important role by achieving goals of social responsibilities, which is part of sustainability. The cultural changes of the organization during the transition are particularly in connection with the impact on internal communication where organizational culture presents a part of values, norms, and ethics, which influence successfully implemented changes in organization in such a way that consequences make an impact on the level of stress and work satisfaction [9,10,11,12,13,14]. Although studies frequently report organizational cultural changes, there are missing researches on the transition or sustaining organizational culture including individual impacts of organizational culture on various examined socially responsible constructs [15]. Within this, we still face an unexplored topic of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations [16,17]. If we look closely at as well the International Standards Organization (ISO) we see that the three basic attributes of social responsibility are the responsibility for one’s influences on society, interdependence, and holistic approach. They are supported by seven principles [18]. Thus, one blocks, or diminishes at least, the dangers of failures of successful implementation of cultural change, and this can usually be a result from the lack of these basic attributes and related seven principles [19]. The leaders need to be so trustworthy and socially responsible in any situation and process; they can be so if they practice social responsibility as individuals, organizations, and society. If we connect social responsibility with the organizational culture, we can see that these two go hand in hand, and “only those who are insightful about the human condition can understand the causes of complex problems and are in a position to find solutions which are sustainable” [20]. The literature clearly shows the gap of socially responsible transfer of organizational culture because only a handful of researchers partially considered a transfer of organizational culture through the prism of social responsibility, which also includes the impact of culture transfer on the well-being of employees through internal communication, level of work stress, and work satisfaction [21]. This statement we could attribute to the following two reasons:

The first reason why the transfer of organizational culture was not examined from this aspect lies in defining national and organizational culture, which is defined as a multifaceted concept by many authors [22,23,24,25,26]. Handy described organizational culture as the set of values, views, knowledge, norms, and habits or processes. He defined it as «Our Way of Performing in Organization». On the contrary, organizational culture was defined by Hofstede [27] as a scope of values and customs of people who belong to the same culture which is shaped on the basis of a comprehensive/holistic corporate system of values, norms, rules, views, beliefs, common traits, ways of performing processes and procedures in the organization. Therefore, it could oppose environment and national culture [28,29].

The second reason stems from different opinions about connection between transferred organizational culture and national culture [30]. The link between organizational and national culture is broadly described in the literature. Connection between both cultures was confirmed by Hofstede [31] and McSweeney [32], but they point out that there is no definition of to what extent national culture influences the organizational one. Therefore, it is possible to transfer organizational culture to different national cultures without long-term consequences for the well-being of employees, if this transfer is carefully planned [33]. The connection between national and organizational culture is still party opposed by Hofstede [27]. Namely, he states that national and organizational cultures are built on different foundations. Consequently, we could not define them in the same way; their mutual influence exists only in situations when they differ from each other. This partial connection between national and organizational culture was refused by House et al. [34] in one of the first broader studies on organizational culture known as the GLOBE, which pointed out strength of connection between national and organizational culture of countries in the environment where organizations operate. Furthermore, a national culture could influence an organizational one on different levels, which are classified as artefacts, values and presumptions [35]. Artefacts are clearly visible. This level includes, for example, organization’s products, logo, clothes of employees, physical appearance, which could be easily transferred from one organization to another. Values and presumptions are also included in the definition of organizational culture but could be a part of individual’s national culture and could have the opposite effect in comparison with organizational culture [36,37,38].

Consequently, we can see that the socially responsible connection between national and organizational culture regarding organizational cultures transfer is not examined exactly because of the reason that organizational culture is not linked as the socially responsible influence of national culture, and it is stated that it can be as set of processes transferred without long term consequences [27,33]. Within this scientific research, the exact impact of the transfer of parent organization culture to the subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment is not reported, but as we present further, they only reported individual impacts and connections between mentioned constructs.

We can see that for successful socially responsible organizational culture transfer in subsidiary companies, individual examined impacts are needed in several different constructs. As we already partially mentioned, national culture is so the key factor of successful transfer of multinational organizations culture to a foreign cultural environment because it influences the organizational behavior of employees through an organizational culture that is shaped based on national culture [39,40]. Thus, the transfer of the organizational culture can depend on the national culture; this process can lead to various organizational cultures, which impact the way of communication between employees [41]. Thus, communication is the next key factor of successful socially responsible transfer of organizational culture. Within this, not only internal communication gets an important role during the mentioned transfer, but the leadership as well. Namely, national culture designs the leadership style and the modus operandi of leaders [26] which are the most significant stakeholders in the transfer of organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment. Their knowledge (and values, emphasis added) about organizational culture and internal communication determine how successful an organization will be in adapting to a foreign cultural environment [42].

In the transfer and modifying of organizational culture, there is not only enough leadership knowledge about the importance of organizational culture itself; one also needs a deep understanding of organizational culture´s definition. Namely, clearly understood and defined values and beliefs which include ideals, goals, aspirations, and ideologies of the organization are prerequisites for the successful socially responsible transfer of organizational culture to a foreign environment [43,44]. When values of organizational culture concerning to foreign cultural environment become clear, they form a synergy with values of individuals concerning to national culture [45,46], summarized according to [47]. Therefore, leadership should take into account the above-mentioned values, norms, ideals and other elements of organizational culture concerning to a foreign cultural environment, and choose appropriate employees with values and working attitude which would increase a rate of loyalty to organization [48], which would facilitate implementation of change in the transfer process of organizational culture [49].

When organization has clearly defined its vision of desired organizational culture and suitably selected employees, leadership will be able to inform workers through adjusted internal communication about reasons for organizational change and the direction they should keep to reach common goals concerning to defined values [44].

When transfer to a foreign subsidiary organization is accompanied by differences in values between parent organizational culture and employees, especially leaders, such a situation in a foreign subsidiary organization is reflected in inappropriate internal communication, what can strengthen the intensity of stressors as psychosocial risk factors [50]. Increased level of stress causes lower work satisfaction with long-term negative consequences at both the individual and socially responsible organizational level [51]. If the organization is socially responsible, then they manage stress on both levels effectively [52,53].

Employees face stress at the working place, which is a result of too fast changing of organizational operation, which cannot be followed by internal communication and adaptation replacing the given routine liked by employees. This is particularly delicate in the context of transfer of organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment, irrespective of whether we consider establishing new foreign organization or take-over of already existing foreign organization [54]. Internal communication is successful when it enables organizations to achieve their set goals as consequence of values shared by employees and organizational leaders [55].

Based on the description as a qualitative research method, the first goal of this study was to define theoretical starting points on organizational culture, internal communication, stress, and employee job satisfaction. Within this, we collected definitions, facts, various theories of diverse authors based on realism, system, and interdependence of definitions of individual parts, based on which we researched a completely new construct of socially responsible transfer of organizational culture of the parent organization to a foreign subsidiary organization. The main goal of the theoretical research was to design a model of holistic and also socially responsible transfer of the parent organizational culture to a subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment concerning internal communication, stress, and work satisfaction. Furthermore, with the methods of comparison and deduction, we developed the research question and the induction method with which we then answered the research question of whether it is possible to design a model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to the subsidiary organization. The proposed holistic model is thus the base for empirical research and well-planned methods through which the impact of the socially responsible transfer of the parent organizational culture to a subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment should be researched concerning internal communication, stress, and work satisfaction.

A new holistic model is a basic socially responsible framework, which could be adjusted to the external and internal environment, as well as the type of organization, and as such used in a period of implementing organizational change, for example, in the context of expanding organizational activities in a foreign cultural environment. Within these research efforts, we will significantly contribute to a better understanding of human, social, organizational, technological, and the most important sustainable aspects of society and their interdependences. Thus, the examined topic stimulates consideration about numerous theories, methodologies and approaches, as well as their transdisciplinary connections.

We will present theoretical framework and then will follow overview of research findings about impacts of organizational culture on internal communication, stress and work satisfaction during the organizational change. On the basis of theoretical framework, we will establish research constructs and their interrelations. The next chapter will be focused on creation of a model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment; we will include factors of internal communication, stress, and work satisfaction. The last chapters are dedicated to contributions to theory and practice.

2. Theoretical Framework and Propositions

2.1. Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is not a homogenous concept with only one definition. Namely, in a theory of organizational culture includes many definitions of organizational culture, which distinguish different aspects of organizational culture [35,56,57,58,59,60,61,62]. Hofstede [63] defined organizational culture as a way used by members of organization to learn from each other, and compare their work with other organizations. However, this can offer benefits or hinder organizational strategies. Schein [64,65] considers organizational culture as a pattern of common basic presumptions, which the individual or group has learnt during collecting perceptions, thoughts and feelings in a process of adapting to problems in the environment. Thus, Schein was the first author who defined organizational culture as a three-level construct. The first level of definition of organizational culture includes a visible organizational structure and behavior, such as style of dressing, rules and working environment. The second level of definition encompasses values and manifestations of a public image of organization, such as strategy, goals and philosophy of organization. The third level consists of perceptions, emotions, thinking and faith. Therefore, organizational values are the most frequent element of organizational culture definitions. Those values point out the strength of organizational culture and unity of employees in organizational operations [66]. Basically, behavioral norms of individuals should suit to values of the organizational culture that offer employees a possibility of easier adjusting to organizational change, for example, in case of transfer of original parent organizational culture [67]. Values as a part of the personality traits influence massively also on the individual innovations and personal satisfaction, which points out the necessity of organizational training for encouraging personal values to reach successful organizational adaptation [49,68].

Impacts of organizational culture on potential research constructs could be explained by characteristics and functions of organizational culture [69,70,71]. One of the major functions of organizational culture is successful organizational adapting, which is achieved based on organizational knowledge and understanding shown by employees in the period of change [70]. This shows once again the importance of personal organizational cultural fit in order to provide personal adaption to reach organizational and personal innovation [49].

However, successfulness of the top management in identifying needed transformations of organization concerning to environment in a period of change depends on the top management knowledge in fields of organizational culture and internal communication because one of their main functions is, precisely, integration and identification of employees with organization [72]. This also shows the importance of the role of organizational learning in transitioning through which the key role of cultural elements is emphasized as identifying the most critical sources in the most positive possibilities [73].

With the help of organizational learning organizational culture can be continuously subject to shaping, such as the response of the environment. This can be achieved with the essential knowledge management processes as induction and transition that ensure the leadership develops employees in the right way in a matter of organizational cultural change [74]. Those changes also depend on a phase of organizational life cycle [75]. In the early phase organization strives for competitiveness, which should be nourished, what is followed also by organizational values; situation in the mature phase is different because organizational culture could present an obstacle, for example, in case of implementing innovativeness in organizational processes. The biggest changes are possible in the middle phase because organization already possess experiences, which force convincing about the need for changes in the mature phase [60]. Consequently, organizational culture values should be aligned with a phase of organizational life cycle by use of internal communication. Additionally, newly set goals and vision of organization in a period of change should be aligned with information about business achievements of the organization [64,76].

2.2. Internal Communication

The most frequently used definition of internal communication is that of Frank and Brownell [77]. They suggest, that internal communication consists of communication transactions between individuals or groups on different levels and in different fields, which are intended for shaping and restructuring of organizations, realization of models and aligning everyday activities. Defining internal communication was a task dealt with by several authors [78,79,80,81,82,83,84]. Moreover, in his model of integrated corporative communication, he put internal communication as the most important element of adjusting to organizational change. However, aforementioned definitions of internal communication lack the aspect of internal communication as a part of strategic management, where interactions take place among all employees, irrespective of their job position [85]. In an ideal concept of internal organizational communication, a central role is attributed to the management, which is responsible for defining goals, process and way of internal communication [63,86,87,88]. Therefore, managing working processes and regulations, instructions, and tasks could be performed only by internal communication [55]. Essentially, internal communication with employees in organizations does not suffer from a deficit of media, tools, and ways of communication, but a deficit of strategically well-considered choice of ways of internal communication, which would stimulate positive interpersonal relations among employees [85,88,89,90,91]. Strategically well-considered choice also misses the clear effect of internal communication technology in the sense of use regarding productivity and innovation. Unfortunately, neither the results of empirical research nor the theoretical explanations for the paradox provide a convincing answer to whether investments in information and communication technology affect the productivity of an organization [92].

Namely, positive interpersonal relations are among the most important goals of internal communication [93]. When organization is in a period of change, for example, in case of expansion of parent organization or its acquisition of a foreign subsidiary organization, the most important role played by internal communication is encouraging loyalty of employees to organization [83]. The most difficult and vital aspect of a process of organizational change concerning to internal communication is convincing employees to change their way of operation, something that is subject to deeply rooted complexes, values, presumptions and behavioral patterns [81,94,95]. Urgency of change and strengthening loyalty to the organization was also argued by Meyer and Allen [96], as well as Mowday et al. [97].

Thus, employees are so the most important capital of an organization. Not surprisingly, companies that do not face human capital constraints via internal communication also have higher productivity in terms of drivers of product and process innovation [92]. Logically so, when employees are informed and educated, they will be more motivated for a productive work than those employees who will cope with changes without necessary information [98]. Impact of internal communication on motivation was studied by many researchers [59,99,100]. The task of management in a process of adjusting values and goals of organization to organizational culture adapted to a new environment is provision of efficient formal internal communication and taking care that nonformal internal communication does not create confusion and fear in organization [101,102,103,104]. Namely, nonformal internal communication is not aligned with a planned and prescribed vertical and horizontal process of internal communication, respectively [105,106]. It does not include clearly planned information and as such could cause big confusion in a period of change [107] that would lead to uncertainty concerning to safety and increase work stress [108,109].

2.3. Stress

Stress is not what happens to a person but an effect of his or her reaction to this happening [110]. Consequently, the stress is known as a disease of adjusting to changes that triggered researching human body reactions to stressful stimuli and development of human adjustments in general. Stress is defined as external forces and a load caused by a certain action that persons are not able to cope with [111,112,113]. In defining we can distinguish between “positive” and “negative” stress Levi 1971, summarized according to [114], where a positive stress is called »eustress«, while a negative one is known as »distress« [110]. A positive stress is characterized by positive effects, such as increased motivation, focused energy, enthusiasm and improved performance, but at the same time we have to say, that a positive stress can also cause anxiety, decreased performance, mental or physical problems [115,116]. On the contrary, a negative stress reflects in physical, psychological and behavioral consequences, which negatively affect many aspects of organizational operations [117]. We can also introduce the notion of stress at the working place, which means a physiological and emotional excitement, which is experienced by employees when they are exposed to conflictual interpersonal situations [118]. Stress presents a response when it appears when employees in the working place are exposed to requests and pressure that are not aligned with their skills and knowledge and therefore ruin their ability to manage changes [119].

On the individual level, reactions to stress are visible as psychological, behavioral, emotional and cognitive disorders of employees [120]. On the organizational level, consequences of stress reflect in low performance of organization [121,122], which is a result of low work satisfaction, shifts in leadership, absenteeism, higher number of occupational accidents, decreased motivation at work and lower quality of fulfilled tasks [103,119,123].

The term “stressor” was introduced by Selye [112] to define external force or impact on the individual. Classifications of stressors are made concerning to origin, clarity, duration, choice, rate of induced stress and emergence [124]. Stressors in the working environment are most frequently divided by origin into external and internal ones [124,125,126]. The most common external stressors are, for example, financial stability, family, health, marital status, etc. (ibid.). Internal stressors can be divided into four categories, as follow: demands of working tasks (occupation, career, working load, uncertainty of employment); demands of roles (role conflict and ambiguity); physical working demands (temperature, lighting, design of working place); and interpersonal demands of working environment (personality conflicts, leadership style, group pressure, mobbing, etc.) [127]. In this modern time, we cannot forget as well on the interaction of humans and robots which belong to the modern stressors and pose many ethical and behavioral challenges. The impact of robotization on the internal environment such as the well-being of the employees is a bit complex, and although that robot deployment assures a positive impact on the firms, it does create insecurity in the form of low skilled job loss and financial insecurity in the society what potentially leads to the stress at work [73].

Among the most stressful demands of the working environment, there is the transfer of paternal organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment [128]. Basically, in a period of change employees are exposed to demands and pressure that which are not aligned with their skills and knowledge and result in stress on the working place [119]. Adjusting to working environment and organizational change, as well as consequences of its processes on the individual and organizational level trigger increased interest in the knowledge on the stress on the working place [126,129,130].

2.4. Work Satisfaction

Work satisfaction is a pleasant or positive emotional state of the employee, which is a consequence of work evaluation or working experiences [131,132,133,134]. Lock [131] pointed out that this definition of work satisfaction is not precise enough because we should also include the factors of emotional state of the individual and evaluation procedure for work satisfaction. Irrespective of the fact that a unified definition of work satisfaction does not exist, we can define work satisfaction as feelings or state of mind connected with work [134], or as a positive attitude of employees to organization, colleagues and final results of their work [135,136]. Thus, work satisfaction can be defined as employees’ estimation of the level of fulfilling their wishes and needs on job [137] or as a general attitude of employees about their jobs [138].

Factors of work satisfaction are complex, and in the literature, we can find different classifications [139,140,141,142]. Work satisfaction is commonly depicted by seven fundamental factors, including leadership, colleagues, content of work, promotion and working environment [139]. Working environment as a factor of work satisfaction is divided into changes in working environment, working conditions, opportunities for personal development, rewards, control and internal communication [143]. Working environment as a factor of work satisfaction gains increased importance, when organizational environment changes, e.g., when the organization expands internationally [131,139,143]. In this context Houtman [144] examined organizational change and impact of organizational culture on work satisfaction, whereby he discovered that organizations with certain typologies of organizational culture are not immune to organizational change of environment, which consequently contributes to very low work satisfaction.

Within the typology of organizational culture, it is important that this has the learning characteristic based on which job satisfaction will be predicted regarding two outcome variables, such as motivation to transfer learning and turnover intention [145].

Extensive meta-analysis, which included 485 smaller studies and 267.995 participants examined impact of work satisfaction on well-being of individuals [146]. Results showed, that higher level of work satisfaction also means better health of employees, and positively influences mental health of individuals due to lower anxiety, decreased burnout and depression, higher level of self-esteem, increased personal happiness, etc. Another study examined the other way around, which means the influence of personality traits on individual innovativeness and satisfaction. The study found a positive influence of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience on individual innovativeness and satisfaction with life perceptions and within this satisfaction at work [49].

On the organizational level, work satisfaction reflects in efforts of employees for achieving better working results and successful fulfilling their working tasks, which finally leads to higher organizational performance [147,148,149,150,151,152,153].

3. Interactions between Research Constructs

The aim of our study was to design a model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment concerning to internal communication, stress and work satisfaction. Basically, transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations depends on knowledge of managers [75] on organizational change, which includes also change of organizational culture, adjusting of internal communication and increasing work satisfaction [73,74,154,155]. Consequently, we formed research constructs and connections which are valid for both parent organization and foreign subsidiary organization and enable us to answer our main research question:

R1: 

Does organizational culture influence internal communication?

Organizational culture takes an important part in successful implementation of change, particularly in cases of changing organizational environment [156,157,158,159,160]. The key role of the cultural elements in changing process is highlighted as the identification of the most critical barrier and the most positive enabler of internal communication, especially through innovative communication technology [73,92].

Strong organizational culture is intrinsically connected with internal communication because the latter is a part of organizational culture, which is used for open and transparent implementation of change and rising motivation of employees [43,161]. Conversely, Gillis [105] argued that organizational culture contributes a part of internal communication. Irrespectively of definition of concepts exists a synergy between organizational culture and internal communication. Namely, understanding of organizational culture is crucial for evolving efficient internal communication [76]. Indifference to this connection undermines realization of all goals of internal communication. Therefore, internal communication is linked to many organizational changes [96]. Sinergy between internal communication and organizational culture was also considered by Ahmed et al. [161] who found that organizational culture can strengthen successfulness of internal communication if values and norms of organizational culture are adapted to environment and enough clearly spread by internal communication in the period of change.

Open internal communication in the organization increases loyalty of employees, and consequently contributes to more successful transfer of parent organization culture to a foreign cultural environment [162]. In a period of organizational change, it is not enough to take into account only general synergy between organizational culture and internal communication, but one must focus on analysis of typology or dimensions of organizational culture [163]. An appropriate analysis of organizational culture provides the unified strategy in fields of organizational operation which are subject to change. After a suitable typology or dimension of organizational culture has been determined, what follows is shaping of appropriate vision about future of organization, which is a source of motivation and a starting point to build an adequate internal communication [105].

R2: 

Does organizational culture influence work stress?

People are the most valuable resource of the organization, and the first thing that the organization should do is to invest in people because people create the culture. Investing in people means providing them organizational culture through which they have space to develop, to make mistakes and to learn from them and thus exit their comfort zone, especially in the time of the change [145]. The impact of organizational culture on stress was studied by Schuler [164], who defined factors of stressors in the workplace, which include also changes or a transfer of unknown organizational culture. Wrongly selected typology or dimension of organizational culture with indistinctly defined values, norms or customs, directly causes work stress [165]. Thus, parent organizational culture which is not adjusted to a foreign cultural environment triggers work stress with its indistinctive or inappropriate values or norms. Studies of connection between organizational culture and stress were performed, for example, by Slate et al. [166] and Stevens et al. [167], who examined type of stress which has the most negative consequences for, e.g., policemen in Finland; they concluded that policemen suffer the most due to organizational stress, while the stress linked to nature of performed work and stress on the personal level have lesser negative impact. Importantly, subjects of the study connected organizational stress directly with inappropriate organizational culture. The opinion that wrongly selected typology or dimension of organizational culture influences work stress is shared by several authors [166,168,169].

R3: 

Does organizational culture influence work satisfaction?

In the time of globalization exists an interest in intercultural differences between organizations, and ways changes in organizational operation impact work satisfaction [155]. Employees with high extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness experience higher work satisfaction, which leads to the conclusion that organizational culture can lead to work dissatisfaction if the workers do not possess any of those personal characteristics which suit the changing process of organizational culture [49].

If we look at the connection between organizational culture (or typologies and dimensions of organizational culture) and work satisfaction closely, this is, in the literature, often confirmed [27,170,171,172,173,174]. Although findings of the authors are similar, it is also possible to observe differences, particularly between studies performed in developed and developing countries [27]. Some of those differences can be attributed to different use of research methodology, different methods of measuring satisfaction and different sets of considered work satisfaction factors, among which there is also transfer of organizational culture. Hofstede [27,31] argued that transfer of organizational culture is based on the strength of organizational culture of parent organization and noted that work satisfaction depends on typology or dimensions of organizational culture concerning to national culture. The author provides an example of hierarchy, i.e., dimension of organizational culture which is very popular and welcome in Arab countries, but highly debatable in the context of European national cultures which emphasize values of equality.

R4: 

Does stress mediate the relationship between internal communication and work satisfaction?

Koteswara et al. [175] carried out a study about organizational culture and its relationship with work satisfaction in both production and IT organizations all over India. They discovered that employees who are subjects of organizational culture based on open internal communication express higher work satisfaction than employees in production organizations, where what prevails is hierarchical organization culture, which is accompanied by closed internal communication. Leadership uses two-way vertical communication to inform employees about desired changes and achievements of organization, and this leads to deeper integration and increased loyalty of employees to organization, and consequently means less stress and higher work satisfaction [176]. Initially, a type and quality of internal communication are strongly connected with well-being of employees, what forces managers on different hierarchical levels to give instructions to employees, as well as inform them about tasks, organizational processes, and regulations, what employees even more actively expect in a period of change [177]. However, difficulties in internal communication appear not only in cases when norms, values, rules, customs are not transparently defined by organizational culture concerning to environment, but also in situations when differences appear in a working language as consequences of a changed environment; then meaning of the words and consequently also meaning of organizational culture shifts in comparison with use of a native language [178]. All those elements lead to stress and lower work satisfaction. Interconnection between organizational culture, stress and work satisfaction was recognized by Gillis [105]. Dimensions of organizational culture should get particularly intense attention when organizations operate in different environments. These dimensions should be consciously measured and modified because they can cause dissatisfaction among employees; for this purpose, we will present a model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations.

R5: 

Do socially responsible organizations have the ability to attain more successful transfer of original parent organizational culture to subsidiary organizations?

According to ISO 26000 [18], i.e., a globally recognized document which suggests how humanity should find solutions for a crisis—which is caused by neoliberal abuse of democracy and free market—the essence of social responsibility of organizations lies in three attributes of influential stakeholders, as follow: responsibility for impacts on society, i.e., people and nature; consideration of co-dependence; and making efforts for as comprehensive operation as possible (i.e., requisitely holistic). Social responsibility is supported by seven principles, which include accountability, transparency, ethics, respect for stakeholders’ interests, respect for rule of law, respect for international norms and respect for human rights. It means replacing organizational culture, which caused the current socio-economic crisis, but also both world wars and other crises of 20th and 21st century [19]; and in proceedings of conferences on social responsibility available at www.irdo.si (accessed on 15 March 2021). These efforts, which upgrade legal basis, present conditions for business success, and are also accompanied by questions raised in a process of transferring prevailing culture of parent organization to foreign subsidiary organizations, including attitude toward employees.

4. A Holistic Model of Socially Responsible Transfer of Parent Organizational Culture to Subsidiary Organization in a Foreign Cultural Environment Concerning to Internal Communication, Stress and Work Satisfaction

Unchanged parent organizational culture is transferred by those organizations, which have persistently high cultural intensity and strong organizational culture. The latter is defined as maintaining dedication, faith and loyalty of employees to organization [179]. Despite the fact that the topic of organizational culture is examined in many recent research articles, the literature does not include any flexible models of socially responsible transfer of a parent organizational culture to subsidiary organization, which would consider impacts of organizational culture regarding internal communication, stress and work satisfaction, and in such a way as to socially, responsibly serve the well-being of employees in the workplace. Findings in the literature have revealed that organizations need a socially responsible tool which would enable them to transfer their organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment. Consequently, it is possible to design a model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment concerning to adjusted internal communication, stress and work satisfaction. A model of this kind is presented in Figure 1.

A basic distinguishment between strategies or ways of transferring organizations to a foreign market can be made if we know whether parent organizations expand by acquisitions which include contractual or direct existing investments, or by completely new direct investments which are used in cases of entirely new transfer of organizational business operations [180,181].

Success of organizational transfer to a foreign cultural environment mostly depends on deliberate project planning, where the top management team is focused on the fourth step of designing transfer of organizational culture. In this step, management should be concentrated on impacts of organizational culture on internal communication, stress and work satisfaction, which will decisively influence transfer of organizational business to a new cultural environment [43,44,48,182]. The first stage of designing organizational culture transfer begins with planning transfer or preserving parent organizational culture. In this process it is crucial to appropriately chose top management teams, in both organizations, who will execute, manage and monitor international transfer of parent organization through contractual or existent direct investments, or by means of entirely new direct investments. Adjusting to organizational change should be started from upside down [177,183,184]. Therefore, top management team plays a deciding role in organizational transfer. Namely, it makes business decisions and determines desired values and goals of organization during organizational change. Moreover, it also makes strategic decisions regarding ways of implementing organizational change by means of precisely selected procedures, techniques and methods of internal communication (ibid). Transfer of organizational culture is influenced by numerous factors, among which is also leadership style of the top management team because it has direct impacts on behavior of employees and formation of organizational culture [185]. Thus, the top management team particularly strongly influences establishing the organizational culture. In fact, this points out the importance of a correct choice of members of the top management team, which should possess knowledge on organizational culture and its transfer [49,186].

The second stage of designing organizational culture transfer includes analyzing organizational culture. Analysis of both parent and subsidiary organizational cultures can be performed on the basis of typologies and dimensions, which serve their purpose of identifying desired organizational values. Effectiveness of parent organizational culture transfer to a foreign cultural environment depends on adaptation of organizational culture of subsidiary organization to the external environment [128]. Initially, parent organization should analyze existent parent organizational culture. On the basis of those findings is performed an analysis of existent organizational culture in a foreign subsidiary organization—in case of acquisition of a foreign organization or contractual transfer—and it is determined whether parent organizational culture is suitable concerning to a foreign cultural environment. However, if parent organization establishes entirely new international subsidiary organization—in case of direct new investment—it should adjust values of parent organizational culture to the environment. Correctly selected typologies or dimensions of organizational culture on the basis of organizational values and goals adapted to a national environment can facilitate receptiveness to organizational change in employees from that environment. In this way those typologies or dimensions reduce potential stress and increase work satisfaction [21].

The third stage of designing organizational culture transfer top management team should include a way of parent organizational culture transfer to a newly established foreign subsidiary organization [105,144,163,166,168,169]. As mentioned before in relation to the second stage, top management team should determine whether a certain typology or dimension of parent organizational culture intended for transfer to foreign subsidiary organization suits the foreign cultural environment or not. If needed, parent organization should make adequate modifications. Of course, it is also important when the organization already operates in a foreign cultural environment and faces consequences of organizational change due to transfer of its existent parent organizational culture.

The fourth stage of designing organizational culture transfer is establishment of internal communication plan. When transfer and modifications of parent organizational culture take place, a foreign subsidiary organization should establish or select a suitable internal communicational model of changes which consists of critical stages of planning changes by means of internal communication. Crucial stages of a model of implementing organizational change encompass the following components: generating a feeling of urgency of the changes; formation of a leading communication team, creating and delivering vision; issuing authorizations for decision making; planning and reaching short-term achievements; as well as motivating employees and encouraging their persistence. In formation of the stages of internal communication model should be considered a fact that internal communication will not bring success if certain stages will be avoided or only partly taken into account [187]. In cases of direct transfer, modification or just keeping parent organizational culture in subsidiary organization, the latter should parallel establish a process of socialization. Namely, socialization is the key to adopting organizational change, which includes also keeping, modifying and transferring organizational culture [188,189,190,191]. The initial generator of socialization during the organizational change is the top management team, which contribute to socializing employees through selective employment intended to exclude profiles of individuals who are not deemed suitable in a context of a new organizational culture [160,192,193,194]. In the process of improving socialization of employees, the top management team can also use specialization concerning working tasks; measurement of performance and stress; stimulation of loyalty; system of employee promotion; as well as strengthening of organizational legacy and issuing of acknowledgements. In cases of direct transfer, modification and sustaining organizational culture socialization is achieved by selection of an appropriate communicational model of change, which would be applied by organization to trigger feelings of urgency of changes; establish a suitable communication team; create and deliver a new vision of organization; issue authorizations for decision making, planning and reaching short-term achievements; as well as motivate employees for persistence in a process of implementing changes. In achieving successful transfer or keeping of organizational culture, a significant role can be played also by the level of loyalty of employees which depends on appropriate selection of communication channels, tools and ways of internal communication that would contribute to informing and sharing knowledge with employees that would encourage employees to follow guidance and instructions of the top management team [185,186].

The topic of successful transfer and sustaining of organizational culture is analytically divided into several fields, but this division rarely promotes progress in one field without creating obstacles which could restrict other fields [195]. If one puts this in the context of top management team and its understanding of knowledge on transfer and sustaining organizational culture, one can realize that top management team possess social responsibility. Namely, inappropriate knowledge or inconvenient leadership can lead to incorrect selection of typology or dimension of organizational culture, which can decrease performance of internal communication, and contribute to a higher level of stress and decreased work satisfaction in organization during international expansion.

The fifth stage of designing organizational culture transfer involves stress management, which means efforts for its control on the individual and organizational level. Initially, stress should be analyzed, and then managed if necessary. Ways of managing stress differ. Namely, one can focus on short-term individual or long-term organizational techniques for restricting stress [144]. Solving stress related problems on the organizational level can become a hardly manageable process because stress management in organizations usually involves individual techniques for stress prevention, which have faster, but short-term impact on employees [196]. Problems in relation to selection of those strategies and techniques on the organizational level were pointed out by Richardson and Rothstein [197]. A model of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture offers most commonly used individual as well as organizational techniques. As we can see, one of the major techniques to prevent or tackle work stress is modification of organizational culture.

In the sixth stage of designing organizational culture transfer, which is also the last step of project planning, one put emphases increasing work satisfaction. Initially, one must analyze situation, then follow measures for improving work satisfaction. On the organizational level, increasing of work satisfaction is performed through organizational techniques for achieving higher satisfaction. Those techniques encompass involvement of employees in planning of their work; transparent communication of organizational goals and strategies; introducing project management; involvement of employees in the teamwork; education for more effective job performance; accentuating transparent values and ethical principles; fair and honest rewarding; as well as establishing appropriate conditions for development of trust.

With the sixth stage of designing organizational culture transfer the project planning of organizational transfer to a foreign culture is concluded. Therefore, the top management team can start the project execution. This means that follows the transfer of organizational culture as the seventh, final stage of designing organizational culture transfer. This is the final step of presented model of socially responsible and within this as well sustainable transfer of organization and its modified parent organizational culture to subsidiary organization.

5. Conclusions

In the last decades, management of organizations recognized benefits particularly in innovativeness and development of employees, as well as adjusting to organizational change [105,144,163,166,168,169]. Unfortunately, the literature does not offer any reports about socially responsible and sustainable organizational transfer of a parent organizational culture to a subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment concerning internal communication, stress, and work satisfaction. If we look at the essence of sustainability, we can see that organizational changes should be an important part of corporate sustainability for organizational success. Essential findings point out that the long-term continuum of organizational success depends on how corporations can successfully fulfill the needs of a broad range of stakeholders. Thus, the vision of corporate sustainability is the set of different contents and attributes among which there is one of the most important attributes of stakeholders, “employee’s” satisfaction, in our case [198]. Within this, we can see that our researched model offers great upgraded knowledge on organizational change and essential constructs of organizational operation which contribute to increasing social responsibility and fulfilling organizational sustainability through suitable internal communication, stress management, and work satisfaction during organizational change. Thus, sustainability is reached through the challenging organizational vision, which suits the values of the organizational culture, which empowers and motivates employees to carry on, particularly in a time of great difficulties, such as the transition of parent organizational culture in foreign subsidiaries in our case [199].

However, we can realize that interest in the transfer of organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment grows and the literature offers numerous studies concerning the impact of national culture on organizational culture [22,23,24,27], as well as the vision and goals of organization [200,201,202,203,204] in such a change. Within this, we realized that the literature does not offer any research about the socially responsible and sustainable impact of organizational culture on employees during the transition of parent organizations in subsidiaries.

The biggest empirical findings show that it is contradictory in need of socially responsible transfer of the pattern of organizational culture research because researchers, such as Handy and Hofstede [27], described organizational culture as the set of values, views, knowledge, norms, and habits which can happen through processed transfer in foreign subsidiaries without long term consequences and are as well opposite to the definition of national culture [28,29] and, thus, are independent of each other. Our theoretical findings from this article show that automatic transfer of organizational culture between different national cultures is only partially possible without negative long-term consequences for the well-being of employees if this transfer is carefully planned [29]. The presented findings of studies show that planned transfer is successful only when values and goals of the organizational culture of the parent organization suit to values and goals of employees and leaders of a subsidiary organization in a foreign cultural environment [27,28,29]. Thus, we share the opinion of Schein [43] about the connection between national and organizational culture. Namely, the author classifies values and presumptions of organizational culture into a group of values of an individual national culture. Additionally, we upgrade the scope of national culture’s impact on organizational culture concerning the well-being of employees through the presented construct, which also supports social responsibility and sustainability.

In the short-term, the provided model provides good theoretical insides and upgrades of the knowledge on organizational management, such as leadership knowledge on socially responsible foreign organizational cultural transfer. In the long-term, the knowledge orientation for the inter-relation between culture and leadership which helps to obtain sustainable competitive advantages [20] should be as well empirically researched and proven. After that, theoretical and empirical upgrade of the mentioned social responsibility should follow and with this, sustainable model of transition in a foreign environment and within this not only in foreign countries but also through a regional cultural transfer for bigger countries, such as China, which has different cultural provinces which can basically apply as different national cultures.

The main value of this study which is as well short-term knowledge orientation is theoretical research, possibly impacted by socially responsible constructs, such as internal communication, stress, and satisfaction at work by transferring of organizational culture in a foreign country. In long-term orientation, this study should be extended theoretically and empirically with the research of wider scope of socially responsible constructs which can be influenced by organizational cultural transfer of pattern organization on their subsidiaries.

At the end of this research, we can affirmatively answer the main research question of whether it is possible to design a model of social and sustainable responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to the subsidiary organization. The literature showed a clear gap of socially responsible transfer of organizational culture with the impact on employee’s well-being which we filled up with the research on the cultural changes of the organization during the transition in the connection with the impact on internal communication where organizational culture presents a part of values, norms, and ethics, which influences the successfully implemented changes and in such a way has an influence on the stress and work satisfaction. Thus, researched concepts are positive according to the main research question.

5.1. Contributions to Theory

We know studies about connection between national and organizational culture [22,23,24,27,28,32], as well as transfer of organizational culture concerning to models of organizational entry [27,28]. Many studies were performed about impacts of organizational culture on particular considered constructs, such as internal communication [81,83,94,96,97,205], stress [118,119,124,126,128,129,130] and work satisfaction [128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,138,139,140,153,154,155,156]. However, we cannot find studies about social responsibility and with this sustainable and holistic transfer of parent organizational culture to a foreign subsidiary organization concerning impact of organizational culture on internal communication, stress and work satisfaction.

Socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture is modeled on the basis of research findings. It serves organizations in occasions of transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations, whereby they are focused on successful establishment of internal communication, diminishing or prevention of stress, to lead to higher work satisfaction. Furthermore, socially responsible transfer of original parent organizational culture is a basic framework which could be with adjustments to external and internal environment used in any type of organization in a period of implementing organizational change. This provides a part of theoretical foundation for all studies on the topic of socially responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations in the future.

5.2. Contributions to Practice

Certainly, organizations which operate on the multinational level or expand their business through subsidiary organizations in a foreign cultural environment cope with big challenges [28]. Therefore, it is a significant contribution to management, if we are able to inform organizations about results of the study on social and on sustainable, responsible impacts of organizational culture on internal communication, stress and work satisfaction in different environments. Results of our research can help management teams to realize which are the fields of organizational operation which are critical for successful transfer or acquisition of a foreign subsidiary organization.

The essential contributions of the presented conceptual model are its steps which are based on research findings and could help organizations to make a careful socially responsible consideration—maybe even together with external counselors—of the fields which are critical for success of parent organizational culture transfer, and create a clearly defined transfer plan which would rely on a suitable organizational culture, improved internal communication, stress management and increasing work satisfaction. Results of analyzing constructs or steps of the presented model could lead to a more successful transfer of organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment. The mentioned successful transfer would not only lead to a socially responsible and sustainable organization but can contribute to the prevention of work fluctuation, loss of interest in work, absence of employees from work, deterioration of the organizational climate, etc. in a broader sense.

Finally, the presented model could also help organizations to realize importance of careful selection of stakeholders, who would participate in the process of transferring original parent organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment. It is essential that selected stakeholders have enough knowledge [206] on organizational operation, particularly organizational culture, internal communication, stress and work satisfaction; they should also practice social responsibility.

5.3. Limitations and Further Research

The examined literature does not offer research constructs concerning to organizational operation, which should be taken into account in cases of transferring parent organizational culture to a foreign environment. Consequently, we limited ourselves to constructs of socially and sustainable responsible organizational operation, such as internal communication, stress and work satisfaction in a context of correctly selected typology or dimension of organizational culture. The presented research efforts are a foundation of further studies which would explain the most important constructs of organizational operation in the field of transferring parent organizational culture to a foreign cultural environment. However, we did not examine national culture because we applied findings of previously performed studies that national environment influences organizational culture. Thus, we only studied how organizational culture affects internal communication, stress and work satisfaction in periods of organizational change, which can also include transfer of organizational culture to a foreign environment. Moreover, examination did not encompass the role of age, gender and education of employees in the time of transferring organizational culture to a foreign environment concerning to internal communication, stress and work satisfaction.

The research of impacts of organizational culture on above mentioned constructs had a preliminary theoretical character, and therefore it can serve for a purpose of further empirical examinations of multinational organizations in periods of transferring parent organizational culture to foreign environments in a socially responsible way.

The research has included only the aspect of economy through business sciences, sociology and psychology. Consequently, it offers a good starting point for socially and sustainable responsible transfer of parent organizational culture to foreign subsidiary organizations with intentions to diminish the level of stress and increase the level of work satisfaction from the psychological point of view concerning the psychological characteristics of different nations. The research topic also opens possibilities of further studying the aspect of psychology concerning to impacts of transferring organizational culture internationally in connection with different types of personalities.