Research Process - Intercultural Management research - (4 Dec 2011)

From Carroll, Sarah and Wang, Qiufu (2008) Teach yourself Business Mandarin Chinese,
Business Mandarin Chinese culture book, Teach yourself series, Hodder Education, London

From Chapter 6, p63 Getting Academic, exact text below, interpretations marked in brackets.

What is culture?

Culture can be described as:
assumptions
behaviours
beliefs
customs
ethics
ideals
ideas
identity
morals
norms
perceptions
practices
principles
systems
values

Intercultural management or cross-cultural management is the study of management styles across different cultures.

The 'onion' metaphor

Culture can be compared to an onion in that people filter messages through their own culture.

It is described that the onion consists of three layers.

The outer layer - the stuff we can easily identify such as part of a particular culture such as clothes, food, housing, or even language.
The middle layer - norms (what is considered right and wrong) and values (what is considered good and bad) are not visible but influence the way people behave
The inner layer - assumptions and approaches to solving problems and dilemas

Fons Trompenaars, a cultural expert explains that while it is often easy to physically 'see' and become familiar with the outer layers of culture, it is possible to learn the norms and values, but it will take time and understanding to become familiar with the inner layer of assumptions and basic approaches to life.

Fons Trompenaars
7d-culture.nl

Fons developed a model for looking at culture, by interviewing over 15,000 managers in over 30 countries:
1) universalism vs particularism (rules or relationships)
2) individualism vs collectivism (individual or group)
3) affective vs neutral (emotional or non-emotional)
4) diffuse vs specific (involvement or non-involvement)
5) achievement vs ascription (prove ourselves to receive status, or it is given to us)
6) sequential vs synchronic (one at a time or several things at once)
7) internal vs external (control environment or it controls us)


Geert Hofstead
geert-hofstead.com

Geert developed a different model for looking at culture:
1) power distance - looks at the degree to which an employee accepts that a superior has more power that they do. measure of power and inequality.
2) uncertainty avoidance - looks at the ability of a culture to live without formal rules and to live with ambiguity. it measures how much structure a society needs.
3) individualism-collectivism - shows the degree of concern an employee is likely to have for himself as an individual over the group as a whole. It is a measure of how group-orientated an individual can be.
4) masculinity-feminity - describes whether a culture is likely to tend towards a male culture (work goals, assertiveness,male roles) or towards a more female culture (personal culture, nurturing, female roles). It is a measure of the role of males and females in society.
5) long-term short-term orientation - describes the view that an individual may take regarding time.