Culture Flashcards
Culture
Basic beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and customs shared and followed by members of a group, which give rise to the group’s sense of identity.
Cultural settings
- When two or more people get together to perform some task.
- As people interact within the cultural setting, they exhibit behaviors that are the result of their culture.
- Settings occur at work, home, school, a house of worship, or a place for recreation.
Culture is only part of an individual’s makeup and shares spaces and can be affected by
- Individual’s personality, which is a product of inheritance and experience.
- Human nature, which is universal—such as feelings of joy or loss.
Culture is the “software of the mind”
- Mental programs that predispose us to patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting
- We simultaneously run these programs to carry out our daily tasks - sometimes creating conflicts and overloads
Layers of culture
- Center - basic assumptions (implicit culture)
- Middle - norms and values
- Outside - artifacts and products (explicit culture)
Explicit characteristics of culture
- Easy to appreciate
- Ex: language, dress, manner
Implicit characteristics of culture
- Take time to experience, discover and understand
- Ex: world views and cognitive habbits
Understanding the layers of culture
Like an iceberg, can only see the tip (explicit culture) and going deeper down are the beliefs and values which are the foundation
Artifacts and products layer of culture
- Culture’s obvious features
- Includes: food, dress, architecture, humor and music
- Artifact could also include climate
Organization’s observable features are often referred to
Organization’s climate
Dangers in using only climate to understand culture
- May result from actions of a few individuals or external forces
- Distinct from culture
Norms and values
- Culture’s shared and stated sense of acceptable behaviors— what is right and wrong
- May include country’s rules and regulations
- Companies mission statement and code of conduct
Basic assumptions
- Culture’s core beliefs about how the world is and ought to be.
- May be unspoken, and members may not even be consciously aware of them.
- Cultures with similar norms and values can have different basic assumptions
Cultural intelligence
Ability to recognize, interpret, and behaviorally adapt to multicultural situations and contexts
Aspects of cultural intelligence
- Cognitive
- Motivational
- Behavioral
Cognitive aspect of cultural intelligence
- Thinking, learning, and strategizing.
- Involves developing a knowledge of cultural differences and similarities.
- Being able to use that knowledge to determine how best to handle a cross-cultural situation.
Motivational aspect of cultural intelligence
- Effectiveness, confidence, persistence, value congruence, and the level of attraction toward a new culture.
- Enables one to genuinely enjoy cultural differences rather than feeling threatened or intimidated by them.
Behavioral aspect of cultural intelligence
- Individual’s range of possible actions and responses to intercultural encounters.
- Enables one to be flexible and adapt in multicultural contexts.
Most effective way to enhance cultural intellegence
Pay equal attention to all three components of cultural intelligence
Three Culture Theories
- Edward T. Hall
- Geert Hofstede
- Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner
Edward T. Hall
- Context level affects communication and relations:
- High-context culture
- Low-context culture
Edward T. Hall—high- and low-context cultures question to identify culture’s context
How much context or unspoken background does someone need to understand a statement or behavior
Low-context culture
- A statement’s meaning is encoded in its words only.
- What you say is what you mean
High-context culture statement meaning
- Includes the verbal message and the nonverbals and social and historic content attached to the statement.
- What you say is not necessarily what you mean
High-context culture
- “No business until I get to know you personally.”
- Require a lot of background
- Complex, long-standing network of relationships (blurred lines between work and social lives)
- History of common experiences - Interactions and interpretations of events is usually not apparent to outsiders
- Rules are complex and not plainly expressed -Usually applied with flexibility
Low-context cultures
- “It’s not personal. It’s just business.”
- Less history with relationships
- Not a large database of experience
- Explicit communication
Situations where levels of context create potential for misunderstandings
- Negotiations
- 360-degree performance reviews
- Training meetings
Geert Hofstede—dimensions of culture includes
- Power distance
- Individualism/collectivism
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Masculine/feminine
- Long-term/short-term
- Indulgence/restraint
Power distance dimension of culture
- Way that power is distributed in a culture
- How an unequal distribution is perceived by the culture’s less powerful members
High power distance culture
- Class may be inherited at birth and will closely define and individual’s rights and opportunities
- Social position is not changed
Lowe power distance culture
Minimizes the importance of class differentiation
Individualism/Collectivism
Contrasting visions of how members of a society relate to each other