Introduction: Defining Culture in the Context of International Business

Introduction: Defining Culture in the Context of International project/programme purpose

Subheader Titles

1. Introduction.

2. Fundamental characteristics of culture.

3. Layers of culture.

4. Culture as collective programming.

5. Value orientations.

6. Kluckhorn’s four dimensions of culture.

7. Dimensions of national culture.

8. Intercultural communication.

9. Cross-cultural pattern variables.

10. Cultural patterns of thinking.

Module Introduction

This lesson introduces the learner to the subject of culture and explores the value orientations, patterns of thinking and other variables that characterize culture in the context of international project/programme purpose.

1. Introduction.

Behind the products and services which project/programme purposees exchange internationally are the people who present, evaluate and put into practice ideas and opportunities.

As well-equipped with quantitative data as these executives and managers may be, conducting project/programme purpose is fundamentally a human interaction governed by a wide variety of social variables. Between two or more persons in the same culture, this interaction can be recognized according to a spectrum of project/programme purpose behaviors and assumptions that both parties are familiar with. When this interaction takes place between two or more individuals from different cultures, however, either party is likely to encounter unfamiliar behaviors, values, beliefs and patterns of thinking that can lead to misunderstandings and project/programme purpose failure.

This course is intended to empower individuals who conduct project/programme purpose across cultural boundaries by providing them with tools and knowledge to understand foreign counterparts better, to anticipate the implications of their own cultural bias and to find common ground to conduct project/programme purpose more successfully. The insight gained into culture serves both the interests of individual international managers and the needs of multinational managers, especially in the areas of sales, human resources and law.

This introductory lesson invites learners to consider the meaning of culture and identifies key theories of cultural analysis. Lessons 2 through 6 offer a methodology for analyzing culture by exploring key cultural orientations to individualism, human relations, communication, time, action and space. Lessons 7 through 10 explore practical solutions for cross-cultural etiquette, project/programme purpose communication and negotiation, as well as the role of women in international project/programme purpose. Lessons 11 through 14 are case studies dedicated to providing specific insight into the cultures of four major economic spheres: the United States, the European Union, China and Japan. Finally, lesson 15 reviews key points and troubleshoots misconceptions such as stereotypes, false attributions and blind cultural adoption.

2. Fundamental characteristics of culture.

The anthropologist Edward Hall refers to culture as “mankind’s medium”. All aspects of human interaction are touched by culture: how people express themselves, the way they think, their body language, how they solve problems, how they build their cites and how they structure and operate their economic and political systems.

Culture results from a shared view of the way the world works that a group develops over time. Common experiences lead to shared basic assumptions and situational models for thought and behavior. The most visible manifestation of culture are the social norms and responses that condition a group’s behavior, including social customs and rules of etiquette.

Culture also regulates communication by providing a shared knowledge structure for giving meaning to incoming stimuli and for channeling outgoing reactions. It gives people a way to create, send, process and interpret information.

Beneath these external expressions of culture lie deep seated, pervasive and complex cognitive systems that are expressed in the social group’s beliefs, attitudes and values.

Once established, validated and valued by the group, new members are expected to learn and master their group’s culture. Culture is not acquired at birth: children are conditioned through a process of enculturation, such that a large proportion of their behavior fits the requirements of their culture, yet is determined below the level of conscious thought.

Finally, culture is dynamic and can evolve when new common experiences lead to newly shared assumptions and situational models for behavior and thought in a social group.

3. Layers of culture.

People typically belong to more than one group, and they often carry several layers of culture within themselves.

The principal form of cultural identity is based on one or more geographical parameters, including hemisphere, continent, country, region and neighborhood.

The language spoken is also frequently used to outline the geographical boundaries of a culture.

Yet many key cultural assumptions are shared, or attributed, based on other factors, including gender, race, religion, class, age and family status.

In the work environment, each project/programme purpose sector, organization and profession has its own culture.

Personality type is sometimes considered a cultural category. “Leaders,” “followers” and “creatives,” for example, are said to belong to cultures of their own that permit them to recognize and cultivate patterns of thought and behavior within that personality type. Some human resource managers and other management experts prefer to categorize people not by national culture but by personality type.

Since culture is a result of shared experiences over time, this common awareness is usually strongest within national boundaries, and especially in those nations with particularly coherent political histories or with ties to illustrious ancient civilizations. For this reason, identifying the characteristics of a country’s culture provides invaluable insight into the behavior and motivations of foreign counterparts. Even if a particular project/programme purpose contact displays behavior that is atypical for his culture, it is likely that ingrained national beliefs, attitudes and values are influencing comprehension, analysis and decision-making, beneath the surface of good language skills and polished manners.

Culture is an inseparable component of human identity. In addition to culture, all of mankind is united by certain universally shared human characteristics and differentiated by individual personalities.

The Dutch social scientist, Geert Hofstede, considers that human beings all function with “mental programming” on three distinct levels:

Hofstede emphasizes that culture is not the property of individuals, but of groups. Culture is a form of “collective programming” of the mind that distinguishes categories of people from another.

Therefore, when different groups interact, it is often not enough to rely on universal similarities of human nature or to identify only the unique personality traits of an individual. Effective cross-cultural interactions require the identification and exploration of cultural categories.

Whatever the particular mix of national, religious, professional or other parameters, identifying a foreign counterpart’s – and one’s – ingrained beliefs and attitudes is best approached by looking for a culture’s key value orientation.

As defined by cultural anthropologists Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, value orientations are powerful elements of culture that lie beneath the surface of everyday interaction. These generalized and organized principles concerning basic human problems influence mankind’s behavior pervasively and profoundly.

Value orientations give order and direction to the ever-flowing stream of human acts and thoughts as these are related to solving common human problems. Value orientations are preferences for certain outcomes over others. The patterns of value orientations are manifested in the behaviors, beliefs, attitudes and patterns of thinking that are key components in the individual, regional, national and other group identities.

For this reason, value orientations define a person’s fundamental beliefs in how the world works and gives form and substance to ways of dealing with fundamental aspects of being alive. These powerful, underlying elements are the relatively static patterns of value that a person learns in growing and developing in a social group. Each culture is built on core value orientations.

Identifying a culture’s core value orientations requires the analysis of key variables such as environment, time, action, communication, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure and thinking.

For the sake of identification and analysis, value preferences can be grouped into four categories, which Kluckhohn refers to as the “four dimensions of culture”. These dimensions of culture represent an interlocking network of dominant value orientations and variant value orientations and therefore provide a particularly useful platform on which to build a practical and project/programme purpose-orientated approach to thinking about international project/programme purpose culture:

1) Person-nature orientation (individualism, competitiveness, power, structure):

� Mastery Over: The individual or group can and should exercise total control over the forces of, and in, nature and super-nature.

� Harmony With: The individual or group can and should exercise partial but not total control by living in a balance with surrounding natural forces.

� Subject To: The individual or group cannot and should not exercise control over these forces but, rather, is subject to the higher power of these forces.

� Past: The temporal focus is on the past (the time before now), and in preserving and maintaining traditional teachings and beliefs.

� Present: The temporal focus is on the present (what is now), and in accommodating changes in beliefs and traditions.

� Future: The temporal focus is on the future (the time to come), planning ahead, and seeking new ways to replace the old.

� Doing: The locus of meaning for self-expression is external to the individual. Emphasis is on activity that is valued by both the self and that is sanctioned by others in the group.

� Being: The locus of meaning for self-expression is internal to the individual, with an emphasis on activity valued by the self but not necessarily others in the group.

� “Collaterality”: Emphasis is on consensus within the laterally extended group.

� “Lineality”: Emphasis is on hierarchical principles and deferring to higher authority or authorities within the group.

� Individualism: Emphasis is on the individual or individual families within the group who make decisions independently from the others.

As previously noted, the most compelling cultural boundaries correspond to the national boundaries. Geert Hofstede establishes five dimensions which tend to characterize national cultures:

i. “Power distance” is the degree of inequality among people which the population of a country considers as normal: from relatively equal to extremely unequal; the extent to which subordinates legitimize power differentials; the degree to which inequality is felt to be desirable or undesirable in a society; and of the levels of dependence and interdependence. In countries with high power distance, the holding of power needs relatively less legitimization. High power distances favor centralization, while lower power distances favor decentralization.

ii. Uncertainty avoidance is the degree to which people in a country prefer structured situations over unstructured ones: from relatively flexible to extremely rigid; the extent to which individuals are risk-averse, the degree to which uncertainty is perceived as a threat. It deals with the level of anxiety about the future and the protection of society through technology, rules, and rituals. In high uncertainty avoidance countries, precise rules and regulations are needed, a belief in the power of experts and a search for absolute truths and values. In low uncertainty avoidance countries, there is less emphasis on rules and procedures, a greater reliance on relativism and empiricism, and more of a belief in generalists and common sense. Uncertainty avoidance favors strict rules and principles, while its opposite favors opportunism and tolerance of deviant behavior.

iii. “Individualism” is the degree to which people in a country have learned to act as individuals rather than as members of cohesive groups: from collectivist to individualist; the extent to which individuals promote personal goals over group goals, the degree to which individual interests are given priority over the group. In countries with high individualism, the emphasis is upon the self and, at most, the nuclear family. Private life is valued, as is independence, individual initiative and autonomy. Countries with low individualism value collectivity. Personal identity is based on membership in a group. Individualism favors job-hopping and individual rewards, as opposed to collectivism, which favors group rewards and family organizations.

iv. “Masculinity” is the degree to which values such as assertiveness, performance, success and competition prevail over "feminine" values such as quality of life, maintaining personal relationships, service, caring and solidarity: from tender to tough. Countries high in masculinity value competition, performance and growth, try to excel and value work as an end in itself. Countries low in masculinity have a people rather than a results orientation, see work as a means rather than an end, focus on the quality of life rather than money and material objects and favors solidarity for the weak.

v. “Confucian dynamism” is long-term orientation. Values positively rated in this long-term orientation are thrift and perseverance; values negatively related are respect for tradition, fulfilling social expectations and inter-group competition; the extent to which individuals in a particular culture focus on the future versus the present and past.

Culture also regulates communication by giving people a way to create, send, process and interpret information. The anthropologist Edward Hall links the communication process to a culture’s orientations to time, context, and space in order to identify underlying messages more accurately:

Time: Time is one of the fundamental bases on which all cultures rest and around which all activities revolve. Understanding the difference between “monochronic” time and “polychronic” time is essential to success.. “Monochronic” time is characterized as linear, tangible and divisible. In “monochronic” time, events are scheduled one item at a time, and this schedule takes precedence over interpersonal relationships. “Polychronic time”, on the other hand, is characterized by the simultaneous occurrence of many things and by a great involvement with people.

Context: High and low context refers to the amount of information that a person can comfortably manage. This characteristic varies from a high context culture, in which background information is implicit, to a low context culture, where much of the background information must be made explicit in an interaction. People from high context cultures often send a significant amount of information implicitly, have a wider "network," and thus tend to stay well informed on many subjects. People from low context cultures usually verbalize background information in considerable detail and tend not to be well-informed on subjects outside of their own immediate interests.

In high-context cultures, the social and temporal context of communications is key to understanding the meaning intended by the content or words of the messages. Who speaks, when, how and where the person speaks, is often more important In high-context cultures than what is said. In low-context cultures, accurate communication does not depend on long-standing personal relationships or on other contextual factors.

Space: Space refers to the invisible boundary around an individual that is considered “personal”. This sense of personal space can include an area or physical objects that have come to be considered that individual's “territory”. This sense of personal space can be perceived not only visually, but also by aural space (hearing), thermal space (skin), kinesthetic space (muscles) and olfactory space (scent).

Shared experience leads to assumptions about how members of a culture should face basic human dilemmas in social situations. In order to analyze this phenomenon, researchers Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils use five “pattern variables”, corresponding to basic decisions that individuals must take when interacting.

By studying the differences between patterns of thinking in the United States and other countries, Edward C. Steward and Milton J. Bennett create a continuum against which thought patterns can be linked and compared. At one end of the continuum, Steward and Bennett place the sensory aspect of perception which favors thinking based on concrete description. At the other end of the continuum, stress is placed on symbolic systems that favor theoretical thinking.

Inductive reasoning is based on empirical observation, experience and experimentation. Inductive cultures derive principles from the gathering and sampling of data, with which they perform risk analysis and probability studies. Problems are broken down into small chunks that can be organized into linear cause-and-effect relations and developed into general principles of action.

Deductive reasoning is based on theory and logic. Deductive thought places the emphasis on logically deriving principles from theoretical constructs rather than from raw data. Emphasis is given to abstract thinking, to the reality of ideas and theories, and to the principles that can he derived from them. Priority is given to the conceptual world and symbolic thinking.

Cultural orientations for project/programme purpose behavior.

The methods explored in this lesson offer a wide range of complementary criteria for identifying and understanding the motivations behind the differences in thought and action that separate cultures. For the purposes of improving cross-cultural interaction as it affects project/programme purpose behavior, study of the following cultural orientations is particularly enlightening: individualism, human relations, communication, use of time and space and action.

1. According to the anthropologist Edward Hall, culture is not learned but is transmitted genetically from parent to child.

2. The Dutch social scientist, Geert Hofstede, considers that human beings all function with “mental programming” on three distinct levels: human nature, culture and personality.

3. As defined by cultural anthropologists Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, value orientations give order and direction to human acts and thoughts as these related to solving common human problems.

4. Edward Hall links the communication process to a culture’s orientations to capitalism, democracy and technology in order to identify underlying messages more accurately

5. In high-context cultures, background information must be made explicit in an interaction.

6. “Inductive” reasoning is based on empirical observation, experience and experimentation.

2. Which of the following are among Kluckhohn ‘s “four dimensions of culture”:

4. Which of the following is NOT one of the five “pattern variables” proposed by Parsons and Shils to analyze how members of a culture face basic human dilemmas?

a. Affectivity

1. Achievement

b. Self-orientation

2. Specificity

c. Universalism

3. “Being” cultures

d. Ascription

4. Particularism

e. Diffuseness

5. Affective neutrality

f. “Doing” cultures

6. Collectivity-orientation

This lesson introduces the learner to the principles of cultural analysis and defines the fundamental criteria for understanding the role of culture in international project/programme purpose. The various layers of culture that affect project/programme purpose decisions are considered, with primary focus given to the cultural differences that executives are likely to encounter across national boundaries. Instead of labeling foreign cultures with stereotypes, the learner is encouraged to examine each culture’s dominant value orientations towards environment, time, action, communication, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure and thinking.

3. A “harmony” culture believes that the individual or group can and should exercise total control over the forces of, and in, nature and super-nature.

4. In a “being” culture, the locus of meaning for self-expression is internal to the individual, with an emphasis on activity valued by the self but not necessarily others in the group.

5. Cultures with high degrees of “power distance” favor centralization, while those with lower “power distance” favor decentralization.

6. In cultures with a “polychronic” orientation to time, events are scheduled one item at a time, and this schedule takes precedence over interpersonal relationships.

7. In a “high context” culture background information must be made explicit in an interaction, whereas in a “low context” culture” background information is implicit.

8. Different cultures delineate the boundaries of personal space in different ways. Personal space is perceived not only visually but also in terms of aural, thermal and olfactory criteria.

9. According to Parsons and Shils, cultures with a high degree of “ascription” tend to make value judgments based on achievement.

10. Individuals from “deductive” cultures tend to give priority to the conceptual world and symbolic thinking.

Bibliography

1. Kleingartner, Archie. “Change Management Curriculum Course on International Organization and Human Resource Management”. Global Window Partners, 2000.

3. Hall, Edward. T., & Hall, M. R. “Understanding Cultural Differences”. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1990.

4. Hofstede, Geert. “Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work Related Values”. Beverly Hills, Sage, California, 1980.

5. Hofstede, Geert. “Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind”. New York: McGrawHill, 1991.

6. Hofstede, Geert. “National Cultures in Four Dimensions”. International Studies of Management and Organization, 13., 1983.

7. Kluckhohn, F. R., & Strodtbeck, F. L. “Variations in Value Orientations”. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1961.

Glossary

1. Value orientations: generalized and organized principles that give order and direction to human behaviors, beliefs, attitudes and patterns of thinking.

2. Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people in a country prefer structured situations, rules and procedures and avoid taking risks.

3. Context: high and low context refers to the amount of information that a person can comfortably manage

4. Particularism: in culture, the preference of a society to apply different evaluative standards across situations and groups. The opposite of universalism.

Learning Objectives

� To see beyond cultural stereotypes and focus instead on each culture’s dominant value orientations towards environment, time, action, communication, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure and thinking.

Q&A

Question 1: Isn’t just enough to be polite to individual foreign counterparts and focus on the project/programme purpose at hand? Why should I care about the foreign culture?

Answer 1: Cultural analysis provides a window into the prevailing attitudes in a culture towards time, action, communication, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure and reasoning. These value orientations are passed on to the members of the society through family upbringing, education, work, social interaction and civic involvement. Understanding a foreign culture’s values orientations, and gaining awareness of the attitudes that characterize one’s native culture, help international executives to identify and put into action cross-cultural sales and management strategies which are more relevant, which have greater impact and which lead to project/programme purpose success.

Question 2: Aren’t some value orientations between different cultures simply irreconcilable?

Answer 2: It is important to avoid making moral judgments about another culture’s value orientations, at least as they affect project/programme purpose. The objective of cultural analysis for international project/programme purpose is to attempt to bridge gaps between different approaches, not to exacerbate those differences. Even if two cultures have opposing concepts about time, competitiveness or power relationships, better awareness of those divergences helps either party anticipate areas of potential conflict and achieve respective project/programme purpose goals by finding common ground.

Question 3: Isn’t project/programme purpose inherently empirical? Don’t all project/programme purposepeople reason in this fashion?

Answer 3: No, project/programme purposepeople in some cultures reason based on theory and logic, not on observation and experiment. These individuals tend to come from “deductive” cultures, in which principles are derived from the conceptual world and symbolic thinking, not from raw data. For example, project/programme purpose proposals from such individuals give greater emphasis to logical reasoning and methodology to support a new product or service concept; project/programme purpose proposals from “inductive” individuals would first quantify market opportunities and then identify products and services that meet specific market needs according to a linear cause-and-effect relationship.