L3: The Distant Voice of Cross-cultural Harmony

Question 1

What is high context communication?

Answer 1

subtle message content is indirect or hidden

e.g. declining a request with vagueness or body language

Question 2

What is the AIA model?

Answer 2

stresses conveying meaning
–> ‘noise’ reduction
language as an instrument we can control

Question 3

Can culture influence nature?

Answer 3

over time language differences can even buttress genetic distinctions btw. populations through inter marital linkages.

Question 4

What are the constraints to knowledge sharing in organizations?

Answer 4

• lack of common language
• ethnocentrism (regarding one’s own knowledge as superior)
• dominant groups (HQ) ignores local thinking and attitudes

Question 5

Facilitators for knowledge sharing & transfer

Answer 5

• dominant groups do not impose their own thinking & values
• long term commitment to learning and innovation
• trust and the ability to handle multicultural groups

Question 6

Where does Holden put his faith to translating cultural knowledge?

Answer 6

developing a CCM ‘lingua franca’ = common language, an artificial common language that offers:

• descriptive vocabulary for management tasks (SMART)
• interactive instrument to facilitate networking
• repository for shared company knowledge and vision

Question 7

constraints to successful knowledge transfer and translation

Answer 7

• ambiguity
• interference
• lack of evidence

Question 8

interference:

Answer 8

we should be careful not to impose our own linguistic and cultural background assumptions on the knowledge to be translated

Question 9

principle of charity

Answer 9

You presuppose agreement. That they roughly believe the same things we do
-> assume that they think the same as we do

Question 10

incommensurability

Answer 10

when paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense.

• not able to be judged by the same standards; having no common standard of measurement

Question 11

impartial

Answer 11

treating all rivals or disputants equally

Question 12

Which two disparities does incommensurability denote?

Answer 12

• meaning variance: they offer largely incompatible conceptual schemes that set our expectations of what the world may look like
• standard variance: provide divergent standards to assess the relevance of how we make successful sense of things

Question 13

What do we do when two belief systems clash?

Answer 13

• we invoke standards that are incompatible with both systems
• we use standards that are biased towards one of them

Question 14

Can incommensurable conceptual schemes be translated into one another?

Answer 14

Not without or loss of meaning.

words are differently to one another (meaning) and to the world (reference)
–> translation failure occurs: expressions in one language cannot be replaced with exactly co-referential expressions in another that completely preserve their meaning

Question 15

preposterous

Answer 15

contrary to reason or common sense

Question 16

Translation or understanding: which comes first?

Answer 16

Understanding must come first, because we first understand a language in order to translate it.

Question 17

preclude

Answer 17

prevent form happening

Question 18

What does Zizek mean?

Answer 18

he says that you can only understand other to the extent that you do not understand yourself