Cross cultural management

Outline: what Is culture?

Are people born with their culture or they learn their culture

Culture is everything that people have, think, and do as members of their society (Ferraro 2002)

Acquired learning of a group that gives its members a sense of belonging, of how they should behave, and of what they should be doing; culture makes that group recognizably different

That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and habits acquired by man as a member of society

A learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values and norms which affect the behavior of a large group of people

Culture is learned through: family, school….

Being given explanations of natural and social things

Culture is a set of shared interpretation: it’s something that we think

‘Culture is the software of the mind’

Cultures exist in the minds of people, not in extended tangible objects

Symbols, then, would mean the same thing in the same culture as they are shared

Layers of onion (Hofstede 2005) ‘values-rituals-heroes-symbols’

Iceberg (hall)

Beliefs: what’s true and false

Values: what’s good and what’s bad

Norms: what’s appropriate and inappropriate

When you do business with somebody from another culture there’s no obvious cuz everything is different

Our behavior is affected by our beliefs

People practice and preform their culture in their daily lives, this behavior is consistent with

Cultural involves large groups of people

Nation, country, state: a piece of land

Subculture: the different cultures within the same culture

Intercultural: between two different cultures

Cross-cultural: ex: studying people of different cultures

Transcultural: something that goes beyond cultures

Similarities among cultures:

Similar problems (resources allocation …)

Have stood the test of time (habits)

Most people think that their culture is normal and natural and make sense ( the culture becomes the norm)

Why are cultures different?

Different solutions to probably similar issues

Forces resulting in cultural differences:

History: wars, major events, historical leaders… ‘you have to know what people have been through….’

Ecology: weather conditions, water supply, geography of the area, scarcity of resources

Agriculture vs hunting; agriculture is more family oriented

Collectivism vs individualism (Hofstede)

Technology: tools, media, phones, computers… more individualism

Intracultural: inside the same culture

When do we consider an interaction intercultural: if the difference is significant enough for them that it creates dissimilar interpretations and expectations about what are regarded as competent communication behaviors (lustig and koester)

Session 3: aren’t they all the same

Elevator experiment

1. Unexamined cultural identity:
2. Cultural identity search
3. Why are we different?
4. Cultural identity achievement: I’m happy being…
5. Ethnocentrism: having my culture in the center, and to think that everyone thinks the way you do
6. Categorization (to simplify and manage the stimuli)
7. Stereotyping (to simplify the characteristics of categories)

The view of things in which one’s group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it

I’m ikram

20

Student

Moroccan

I enjoy reading

• All Moroccans are loud and messy
• All 20 years olds are careless and irresponsible
• All bookworms are smart and nerds
• All women are weak and inferior to men
• Confirmation bias

Session 4: what about companies?

Proverbs and cultures

Cultures and solving problems

Corporate culture

Culture is powerful, and it remains even when you try to change it

Every business, organization, team, etc. has its own culture

If culture is the collective personality

We can see different/similar personalities of organizations, teams, groups

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