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—high- and low-context cultures
- Geert Hofstede—dimensions of culture
- Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner—cultural dilemmas
Edward T. Hall—high- and low-context cultures
- 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
Individual cultures
- Clans and family are less important than individual achievement
- Ties are loose, self-reliance valued
Collectivist culture
- One’s membership in a group is more important than one’s individual identity.
- The group can provide security, protection, and access to opportunity.
- Strong cohesive groups: protection is exchanged for loyalty to group
Uncertainty avoidance
How members of a culture feel about uncertainty and lack of clarity.
Cultures that avoid uncernity
Tend to be more rigid about rules and uncomfortable with change (which always applies risk)
Masculine/feminine
The extent a culture embodies specific traditional gender images
Masculine culture
- Oriented toward competition and achievement
- Gender roles tend to be more distinct and rigid
Feminine culture
- Empathetic, nurturing, and collaborative
- Greater sharing of roles between the sexes
Long-term/short-term is also referred to as
Normative/pragmatic
Long-term/short-term
Way the culture sees the effect of the past on the future.
Long-term
- Normative culture
- Use traditions as a guide and values loyalty to those values and ideas
Short-term culture
- Pragmatic culture
- Believes that its actions today can shape its future
Indulgence/restraint
How the gratification of desires is viewed.
Indulgent culture
Believes in fun and pleasure
Restrained culture
Controls its desires according to social norms
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner
Seven dilemmas that illustrate points of cultural tension
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner—cultural dilemmas include
- Universal/particular
- Individual/communitarian
- Neutral/affective
- Specific/diffuse
- Achieved/ascribed
- Sequential/synchronic
- Internal/external
Universal culture
- A defined set of rules is applied to each case.
- Resulting in consistency and sense of impartiality or equal treatment
- The rules themselves may be partial to particular groups
Particular culture
- Context of each case is considered
- Fairness is achieved by considering factors and relationships that may have influenced the action in question or should influence the response to the action.
Individualist culture
Members are free to consider their own needs and opportunities when taking action
Collectivist cultures
- Members must consider how their actions will affect the entire group.
- Less “free” personally.
Neutral/affective
- Addresses attitudes toward displaying emotion
- To a member of a neutral culture, someone from an affective culture may appear to be overly emotional, and the validity of those emotions may be doubted.
Neutral cultures
Control outward expression
Affective cultures
More likely to display emotions in public
Specific/diffuse
Boundary between private and public lives
Specific cultures
- Firm boundary between public and private lives
- Restrict public contacts from entering into one’s personal life
- People who attempt to cross the line into a personal relationship may be perceive as intrusive
Diffuse cultures
- Public contact may be allowed access into one’s private life once certain conditions have been fulfilled (ex: time, introductions from other people)
- If the access is rejected, the person may be perceived as cold or standoffish.
Achieved culture
Individuals are judged according to their own merits—what they have achieved.
Ascribed culture
Individuals may be judged by class, wealth, gender, or family connections.
Sequential cultures
- See time as linear.
- Plans, productivity, and the future are important.
Synchronic cultures
- View time as more flexible and forgiving
- Schedules can be changed to accommodate the demands of traditions or relationships
Internal culture
Individual charts his or her own path
External culture
Individual plays a part in a story directed by fate.
HR obstacles to trying to understand multicultural organizations
- Ethnocentrism and parochialism
- Cultural stereotypes
- Cultural determinism
- Cultural relativism
Ethnocentrism
- Our way is the best way and we are not interested in other ways of reaching a goal
- Possible to alter views with time, experience and training
Parochialism
- There is only one way to solve a problem or reach a goal
- Such a rigid mindset that may not easily be changed
Cultural stereotypes
Perceptions of a culture are applied to all of the culture’s members, often in a negative manner.
Cultural determinism
- Culture defines behavior and therefore excuses some actions and makes changes impossible.
- The culture made me do it - absolves individuals for responsibility for their actions
Cultural relativism
- There are no absolutes.
- Norms and values vary by situation and cultural perspective.
Malicious compliance
- When headquarters develops standardized programs that fail to recognize local differences and forces them on their foreign subsidiaries
- Local managers know the programs will not succeed in their standardized form but agree to implement them and watch them inevitable fail and increased resistance to future programs.
How to negotiate cultural differences
- Cultural domination and cultural accommodation
- Cultural compromise
- Cultural synergy
Cultural domination and cultural accommodation
- Essentially about assimilation.
- I assimilate your beliefs, or you assimilate mine.
Cultural compromise
Both sides giving up some values in order to meet in the middle.
Cultural synergy
Creating a third way—finding what works well in each culture and removing barriers to communication and collaboration, including language and policies.
Cultural dilemma reconciliation steps
- Recognize
- Respect
- Reconcile
- Realize
Recognize step of dilemma reconciliation
Create awareness of cultural differences
Respect step of dilemma reconciliation
Appreciate the value of difference
Reconcile step of dilemma reconciliation
Resolve differences by finding a common path
Realize step of dilemma reconciliation
Implement solutions and institutionalize them in the organization
Synergistic solution to reconciliation
- Managers consider to the how much a conflict is cultural and find the assumptions that may be contributing to the dilemma.
- Alternatives are created by leveraging points of cultural siilarities
- Feedback from both cultures is collected to check and adjust solution as needed
