»culture examples«

While I needed the summaries to understand what Hall was actually talking about, I summarize my own little reflections on it here:

Hall bases most of his findings on his experiences with the Navajo and Hopi. This sometimes makes it difficult to transfer his theories on expatriates encountering a new cultural environment. Nevertheless he provoked quite some thoughts.

1. language.
I had always thought of language to reflect the life of the respective culture. I had thought of the Inuit for example whose language offers them ten words for white while we have only one. Thus: since they experience a lot of different "whites" they need more words to articulate this experience. Vice-versa: since white is not important in our all-day life, we did not invent any words for it. Hall says that man's explanation of nature tells much more about man than about nature. It shows how he sees the world.
At the same time language, according to Hall, is limiting: while it reveals how man perceives the world, it also limits him in his perception. This becomes obvious when you learn a new language and there are simply no equivalent words to express yourself in just the same way as you would in your mother tongue. English for example is regarded as action-orientated and expressing thoughts in another language can provoke completely different images.
I actually get a little stuck in this concept because experience does not equal language. Language is just a model to structure and share experiences and thoughts.
This leads to another of Hall's ideas: we mistake the model, the symbolization of something as the thing itself. This means that we take poor expression for little intelligence. Thus poor English skills is often interpreted as incompetence. This becomes especially awkward regarding the fact that in most cross-cultural encounters English is not the mother tongue for either party. Culturally-learned concepts are transferred into the foreign language which already does not make sense and are then further translated/interpretated by yet another understanding of language. On official meetings this means that it might make sense to rely on professional translators.
This relates to another of Hall's concept: situational frames. People always approve to be addressed in their situational dialect (e.g. ordering something in a restaurant asks for a special style of talking, acting, ... just like any other situation consists of an appropriate catalogue of language, actions, behaviors). Using the situational dialect tags the speaker as insider and earns him recognition. But using the dialect wrong ultimately declares him as outsider.

2. situational frames and action chains
Hall defines all human interactions as situation which are culturally bound by situational frames and follow patterned action chains. While action chains are not explicitly expressed, they define which behavior is culturally appropriate. Not following the expected action chains is ultimately disrupting.
This shows in all aspects of life. While the question "How are you?" seems to be universal, the answers can be very different. Germans, I generalize at this point, like to hold a monologue on how bad everything is. North-Americans on the other hand regard this question only as an opener and are always fine. North-Americans are regarded to be superficial while Germans are just big whiners. Good start for a talk.
On a higher business level all organizational aspects are defined by action chains: who takes part in a meeting? Where does the meeting take place? Who is seated where? Who gets to talk? Who gets involved in conflict resolution?
On a political level this is worked out in the diplomatic etiquette (sag ich mal so!): which country is visited first? Which at all? Which officials are honored with a meeting?...

Even though Hofstede does not dedicate a sub-chapter to the States, I want to summarize the points he made in contrast to France and Holland.

Based on d'Iribarne all business in America is based on the idea of the market. Employer and employee join interests in a contract: the worker is selling his/her labor for earnings and career opportunities. With the contract the employer is assigned certain privileges.

In the research conducted by Hofstede himself, the American students asked about their ideal job put an emphasis on the following:

• earnings,
• advancement,
• benefits,
• good working relationships with their boss, and
• security of employment.

Learn more about:

• Germany
• France
• Japan
• The Netherlands
• The Overseas Chinese

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[p.20]
Hofstede relies on Phillipe d'Iribarne (1989) who compared France, the States and the Netherlands to differentiate three principles of management.

Business in France is based on honor. In a quiet stratified (geschichtet) society everybody is aware of his/her position in the hierarchy. Nevertheless each group carries its own pride.
While it is very rare to cross ranks from non-cadre to cadre, it is only by attending the right school that you become a member of the cadre. This automatically assigns you with privileges of a higher social class and puts you in leadership positions.


Learn more about:

• Germany
• Japan
• The Netherlands
• The United States
• The Overseas Chinese

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(thanks to my mother here a quick update on history....I know you need it ;-)

The medieval guilds in Germany had basically the function to suppress competition and see to it that their members were sufficiently secure. The leaders of the guilds decided on the number of their members and how many people worked in the master's business ( they decided how many apprentices and how many "Gesellen" - journeymen). Moreover, the quality of the products were controlled by the patricians (= the members of the city council), who were entitled to judge the economic worth of the product. Most of the production was due to orders - so consequently the market did not have the function to provoke competition.

So it makes sense to maintain that due to the control of the quality and - to some amount - the quantity of production organizers ( = managers) were not really needed.

As far as I know conditions were not really different in England; but in Germany the guilds were the decisive form of organization and had the control up to the time when Napoleon's troops occupied the land and reforms were established (about 1810, some earlier, some later; cp: Steinsche Reformen in Prussia).

patricians, patriciate - the latter is the name for this social shift. Just as you were born into the nobility you were born into the patriciate. Nevertheless there was competition among them. They were the merchants that traded with far away regions; so one might speak of international business. In the big international market places the successful merchants used to have their own offices and their own money in the currency of the city (like Venice, Bruges, Cologne, Rome to name just a few.). So it was up to them how to value the products they sold or purchased. Naturally the merchant dealing on such a scale was not able to be present in these different market places but had their representatives - often relatives -, who acted on their behalf and were responsible for their actions.

The fact that the patriciate was something like a closed shop is reflected in the story of the Fuggers in Augsburg. When they were the most successful business in Augsburg and even lent money to the Kaiser they applied for being a member of the Augsburg patriciate. The August city council, which consisted only of members of the patriciate, was not pleased at all and only the influence of the Kaiser opened the door for the Fugger family to the council.

So you may say that among the closes circle of the patriciate competition was possible but the patricians saw to it that they had a common basis which they decided on as members of the political body. As you may remember the guilds rebelled against this economic and social structure and in the course of the 15th century the guild masters got their access to the councils which then had two chambers and only when both chambers agreed on a draft this could become a law.

All this applies only to the free towns which were only under the Kaiser and no other authority.

As the reform bills under von Stein and Hardenberg show it was the king who decided on the liberties of the towns and in the early 19th century many Prussian town were entitled to decide on their economic activities.

Altogether, my interview partner summarizes, are German companies appreciated for their accuracy and precision in planning and construction. They often believe that only a German company will put the project through in the limited time given. He claimed that in some towns even some streets are named after his company. This appraisal keeps them from delegating expatriates among subsidiaries. A client assigns a German company because he expects German experts.

At the same time Germans are seen to be smart asses that know everything better and know how to do everything better. They live on their procedures and check-lists and they cannot talk about anything else than business. They are the small talk losers because after two minutes they get serious and talk business again.



And of course you are invited to comment on other things typical for Germans, especially regarding the work aspect...

While I can mostly understand what foreigners stumble about in German culture, I could never put it in words for myself. Thus I'm very happy to have a professor who came from Canada to Germany ten years ago.

He was telling how much he was still astonished by the German rivalry among colleagues. While in other countries at least the staff might stick together under claim "everybody hates the dean", Germans like to fight at their work place. What a silly competition when there are enough enemies out there.

(Maybe that's why I have such a hard time believing in the calls for team work.)

[p.19]
Germany as Hofstede sees it, is much influenced by its mediaevel guild system which in modern times lead to the system of apprenticeship. In a number of fields on the shop floor as well as on the office level the apprentice gains an occupational certification. Along with the qualification comes an occupational pride. Consequently, managers are not needed for motivation. They are to assign tasks and to resolve technical problems.
Compared to British or French organization, Hofstede declares Germany to have "the highest rate of personnel in productive roles and the lowest number both in leadership and staff roles". He estimates two thirds of the population to have successfully undergone apprenticeship. At the same time there are no traditional business schools.
Hofstede understands the raise of the German economy as an example that "a strong concept of management might have been a liability rather than an asset."


Learn more about:

• France
• Japan
• The Netherlands
• The United States
• The Overseas Chinese

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Situational frames are the smallest unit which can be observed in culture. They are common settings and situations such as greeting, working, eating, bargaining, fighting, governing, making love, going to school, cooking, hanging out, ... (cp. p.129). They are made up of different components: linguistic, kinetic, temporal, social, material, .... Some of these components can be learned, especially what Hall calls the situational dialect. A situational dialect would be how to order or behave in a restaurant: "a few properly placed words will do" (p.132)

• to facilitate and simplify things and
• to identify the speaker as someone who knows how to work the system and thus as someone who belongs.

Being given the proper expressions, like a condensed code puts the respective individual in high-context.

Hall applies the concept of situational frames not only to cross-cultural encounters. Basically all situations in life are surrounded by a frame of appropriate language and following consequences as well. Hall gives the example of Rosenhan and his group. For the purpose of research they submitted themselves to mental hospitals saying that they heard voices. Once they entered the hospital all their actions were regarded to prove or go in accordance with their insanity.

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further to chapter ten and eleven

Beyond Sophisticated Stereotyping - Cultural Sensemaking in Context
by Joyce S. Osland and Allan Bird

[p.58]
Osland and Bird criticize that cross-cultural training as well as research in this field only move between bipolar cultural dimensions - describing one culture as more individualistic than another, or less easy with uncertainty, ... Thus they pretty much explain why I did not bother too much about the dimensions as introduced by Hofstede. This is not to neglect the importance of this method to compare and describe cultures - the dimensions are fundamental when learning about cultures. Nevertheless it has its shortcomings.

[p.59]
Osland and Bird argue that describing a culture based on dimensions allows a better cultural understanding but at the same time creates stereotypes of entire cultures. They call it sophisticated stereotyping. This is to be differentiated from low-level stereotypes which are "often based on lack of personal contact and an irrational dislike of people who are different from oneself". Sophisticated stereotyping is based on theoretical concepts and therefore lacks the negative attributions normally associated with stereotypes. This often results in not recognizing them in their limiting character. Based on Adler (1997) they introduce the idea of "helpful stereotypes". As such they should be

• consciously hold
• rather descriptive than evaluative
• accurate in their description of a behavioral norm
• modifiable according to further observation and experience.

[p.60]
Osland and Bird see cultural learning analogous to putting a puzzle together. While the picture on the box works like a guide it does not really say anything about the single pieces. Only by putting more pieces together the overall picture becomes clearer. "Similarly, as one acquires more and varied experiences in the new culture, one can develop an appreciation for how certain attitudes and behaviors fit the puzzle and create an internal logic of the new culture." Sophisticated stereotypes in a way prevents to see the huge variety of shapes and suggests that putting them together is rather easy while actually it can never be achieved to create a wholly picture this way.

[p.61]
While general characterizations can only reflect attitudes and sort them in comparison to other cultures, they completely neglect context. Osland and Bird later [p.65] give an example of Americans who are generally defined to show a high tolerance of uncertainty but when it comes to business contracts for example they cannot bare any uncertainty at all only believing in the written and signed word.
The authors call these incidents contradicting the overall picture paradoxes. They warn that ignoring the context limits cultural understanding and "prevents rather than opens up opportunities for learning and exploration". This goes in line with Hofstede who was aware of the fact that his system of cultural dimension was only an abstraction and had warned to not overly use it.

[p.62]
As an alternative or addition Osland and Bird introduce several sources of paradoxes of which I only summarize a few.

1. First of all it is a matter of statistics. Of 100 people filling in a questionnaire 63 might anticipate new things easily which would give the overall impression of a society with a rather low uncertainty avoidance. Nevertheless there are still 37 people who would rather reject new things. Scales can only show tendencies.
2. This makes obvious, too, that within cultures there are a lot of unresolved cultural issues which from the inside as well as from the outside are perceived as paradoxes.
3. Paradoxes also appear in the context of role differences. While the people of a culture could, for example, believe in egalitarianism in general, CEOs could be allowed autocratic behavior. This would also be an example of a high power distance in an overall low power distance culture.
4. Other paradoxes come about because it is difficult to differentiate real from epoused values. People simply do not live up to their own ideals. While in many cultures equality is much anticipated, everybody works hard to gain power and influence for him/herself.
5. [p.63] Just as with values according to rules, context might judge certain values over others. Lies, for example, are normally unacceptable a lot of incidents allow so-called white lies.

Osland and Bird come up with a model of sense-making trying to allow a diagnosis of perceived paradoxes.
They ask to first index the context based on observation. The second step is to make attributions. Thirdly, possible schemas are to be conducted. These schemas reveal cultural values and history. This process reveals that the behavior perceived as paradoxon is merely a re-arranging of values.

[p.64]

This is the schema as introduced and underneath how I tried to employ the model. (you understand why I don't like abstractions - I can never make them fit)

Osland and Bird gave an example of a charity organization calling for money in the States. While the Americans are considered a rather individualstic society in regards of cultural dimension, they spend quite a lot of money and time on charity. A paradoxon? Yes! Indeed! At several levels! First of all it does not match the perception based on the dimensional model. Then .... and that's the point where I get confused.
The other part that bugs me about the model is the fact that they start confusing history and value. The actually put "individualism" as a cultural history but I don't quite agree with that, so there goes another question mark...

[p.65]
So, while I have quite some problems with the abstraction of a model I still like what came out of it: It reflects pretty well the idea of culture as defined by Geerts (1973). "[He] maintains that 'culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns - customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters - [...] but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call 'programs') - for the governing of behavior.'"

As Osland and Bird acknowledge the importance of factual and conceptual knowledge in facing different cultures, they also call for attributional knowledge.
[p.66]
Factual knowledge would describe knowledge such as that Japanese often work in small group. Conceptual knowledge would back this up with the information that Japanese live in an communal society. But this would not explain non-communal activities or when or when not communal activities will take place. This latter, attributional knowledge can be gained by personal experience, by learning vicariously (= nachempfinden) from other people's experience as condensed in cultural assimilators or by cultural mentoring carried through by people of the host culture or long-term expatriates, who would both function as live cultural assimilators.

Osland and Bird claim that "learning another culture occurs in a dialectic fashion -thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." While the thesis is made on base of sophisticated stereotypes, critical incidents revealing paradoxes provoke an antithesis while synthesis is achieved by understanding which values are regarded more important in which context.

[p.67]
Consequently, they see cross-cultural training moving along the following steps:

1. Recognizing the complexity of one's own culture.
   This includes tracing the internal cultural logic back to its socioeconomic, political and historical roots. It also calls for analyzing in-culture paradoxes/variations in behavior based on regional, organizational or individual differences. Looking on different values (as for example friendliness) it would be necessary to ask questions such as: "Are all people friendly? Are they always friendly? In which incidents are they not friendly anymore? How come?"
2. Studying cultural dimensions as a basic tool.
   This means to learn about typical incidents and behaviors and trace them back to cultural values. Characterization along bipolar dimensions allows to compare two cultures; thus to distinct between cultures and to gain conceptual knowledge.
3. Acquiring skills in cultural observation and behavioral flexibility.
   This asks to look on incidents perceived as paradoxes. Questioning sophisticated stereotypes practices observational and interpretive skills. This can be achieved by role-playing or by working with videos.
4. Studying or experiencing one culture in-depth.
   This means to gain attributional knowledge form cultural mentors. Additionally, extensive research is to be made. Further knowledge is gained by actual cultural immersion.
5. Learning context-appropriate behavior. (actually fits to point 4)
   This calls to actively ask the how's and why's. "How do managers encourage their staff?", "Why does that work for them?"

Osland and Bird conclude calling expatriates to not give up their stereotypes but to hold them consciously in order to modify and change them when necessary. They suggest to find a cultural mentor and to learn cultural schemas. In combination with examining paradoxes this will lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying values and thus promote cultural understanding.

published in: D.C.Thomas: Readings and Cases in International Management; Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003.

Hall defines action chains as "a set sequence of events, reminiscent of a dance that is used as a means of reaching a common goal." (p.141) As far as I understood it action chains are basically what happens in different situations or is expected to happen: how does it come about to meet friends, which steps are to be taken to engage, to buying something or to writing a book....

While he takes the example of cultural-different approaches to dating someone, I was rather thinking of protocols in politics: which country is being visited first? Which at all? Which officials are honored with a meeting? .... And on a lower business level it is just the same...

Coming to Covert Culture and Action Chains Hall gives various examples. Being asked about how they are doing, Americans would answer in a very self-orientated way while the Pueblo Indians were much more concerned with the groups well-being. In the same way might German answers be disruptive to Americans. Germans like to whine and say directly what all is going bad while Americans often mean that question as an opener to an informal talk.

Disrupting action chains. also lead to problems when criticism is expressed in culturally different ways. While Japanese, according to Hall's observations, tend to not openly express emotions, e.g. anger about a certain behavior, Western people expects to be told when they reach their borders. (cp. p.161)

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jumping some questions right to chapter fourteen