Cultural Background And Intercultural Experience

Growing up, I didn’t really get the chance to have a lot of intercultural experiences. I really didn’t get the chance to actually speak one on one with someone from a completely different culture either. I must say, meeting with my conversation partner, Elena, even if we only met the two times so far, really opened my eyes and helped me learn a lot. I did not think that cultures could vary as much as they do. From meeting with my conversation partner, I learned that the social norms to me are not the social norms to everyone.

Moving to a new country, a new culture, and a new society after 18 years of living in my small hometown was really tricky, especially for a teenager who just got out of high school. Leaving my home and friends, changing my routine and letting go of the simple, insignificant daily things that I used to do over and over again is surprisingly heartbreaking. You see, I was born and raised in Jordan and have lived there for about 18 years before moving here to Chicago. When I first started college here at Moraine Valley, I was a bit scared that I might not be able to fit in with the students or get used to this new culture. I was not a complete ignorant of American culture since I watched a lot of American TV back home, so I did not really experience

Arriving at a foreign country at the age of eleven years old was and exiting and yet intimidating experience. High buildings, wide roads, newer and nicer cars on the streets were some of the first things I noticed when I arrived to the city of Los Angeles CA. Living in a country where you were not born in could be difficult some times. Although Spanish is spoken at a grand scale in CA, it was difficult to communicate with and understand the teachers from my classes at the elementary level since all they spoke was English. Los Angeles is a city of great diversity, therefore it is believed to be the perfect place for any person arriving from another country to not feel like a foreign, such believe

Globalization and technological advancement have dictated the need for managers to deal with multiple ethnic groups with different culture in their day to day interactions. According to Kulkarni (2012), cultures play critical roles in individuals, including values, beliefs, humor, worries, fears, hopes, opinions, attachments, and anxieties.

Itideed, so much has been written that summary is all but impossible. The principles of organizational behaviour have long been acknowledged, and legions of authors have attempted to develop both a theory and practice of cross-cultural management. To quote in this paper the more salient works in the field would merely be redundant. The conclusion from studies on cross-culture management is that managers must analyze and become familiar with the hidden language of foreign cultures. Some key starting points include: perceptions of time, space, material possessions, and friendship; patterns of business agreements; religion, language, and tradition; educational levels; urbanization and minority patterns; features of social and business customs; crime rate and corruption levels; attitudes towards foreigners; and social structure. Although sociology and psychology, as fields of research and practice, have been entertained in connmunist countries, they have served mainly 'social-engineering ' purposes, in that they have been subordinate to pditical agendas. Relatively litUe attention has been paid to the impact of national culture detominants on organizational solutions. Even in the rare instances where local enqnrical studies of this sort have been performed, results have frequently been incommensurable with research in the West. A number of works (published before political/economic changes began in 1989) have dealt with issues of organizational culture in Poland

Ever wondered why humans travel form one place to another place for their existence? This is because birth happens in one place but real life happens in another place. Few years back when I reached Canada leaving behind my home and loved ones I had a destiny and irresistible desire to succeed in my life. But to be honest I was unaware about the hardships and challenges that was waiting for me. I fought for existence and struggled a lot enough to thrive. Intercultural course has helped me a lot in identifying the various cultural dimensions, culturally sensitive issues and stages of cultural shock. In the following paragraphs I will discuss more about my intercultural experiences, learned qualities and significant things I noticed about Canadian

The second approach is constituted by Hofstede, who makes various researches to compare work-related values across employees working for a multinational corporation IBM in a total of 65 countries. Using the information obtained with these researches Hofstede produced a comparison between national cultures on five dimensions:

The most famous researcher of prevailing cultures in different countries goes by the name of Geert Hofstede. “He conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture” (). With the help of his research team, Professor Geert Hofstede created a model of national culture consisting of six dimensions. “The cultural dimensions represent independent preferences for on state of affairs

Dr. Hofstede performed a comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. In the 1970’s, as a Dutch researcher Dr. Geert Hofstede, collected and analyzed data from 116,000 surveys taken from IBM employees in forty different countries around the world. From those results, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions of differentiate cultures. These include: Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), Masculinity-Femininity (MAS), Individualism-Collectivism (IND), Power and Distance (PD). After a further study of the Asian culture by researcher Michael Bond in 1991, Hofstede added a fifth dimension in his theory, Long- and Short-term time orientation (LTO), also referred to as the Confucian Dynamism. His research has framed how cultural differences can be used in professional business transactions. Geert Hofstede 's dimensions analysis can assist the business person in better understanding the intercultural differences within regions and between countries.

Society is a structured hierarchical system of classes. The higher class you hold, the higher power often associated to you. With this construction of society one-group claims dominance over another doing so with “power over” (Bishop, 2015). Power over others can be visible through physical strength, wealth, resources, and access to opportunities, etc. These dominate groups not only spread ideas, but often are in charge of the creation of ideas, their importance, and the norms and roles for society and classes labeling groups different than their own as inferior.

Mismanaging cultural differences can render otherwise successful managers and organisations ineffective when working across cultures. As stated byOsland (1990, p. 4) ``The single greatest barrier to business success is the one erected by culture''. Hofstede (1983) defines culture as "the mental programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another" (Hofstede 1983 p. 25). Through the comparison of Chinese culture and Australian culture using Hofstedes five cross-cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and long-term orientation an insightful view into the differences and similarities of the cultures can be obtained (Chong & Park 2003). Human Resource Management

With the unstoppable trend of globalisation, it becomes extremely significant for international businesses to have a thorough understanding of different cultures. Hofstede (1980, pp. 21-23) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from another’. This essay examines Hofstede’s cultural framework and suggests that Hofstede’s cultural framework is an outstanding and authoritative tool to analyze culture differences. In this essay, cultural frameworks will be discussed firstly, following by a discussion of my cultural scores and background. Finally, recommendations on cross-cultural management between China and Australia will be provided.

According to The Oxford Dictionary, culture is defined as “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people or other social group (Oxford, 2016).” With the rise of multiculturalism and diversity across many nations, understanding and practicing cultural etiquette within the business arena has never been of greater importance. Geert Hofstede, a well known leader in intercultural research and studies, conducted a comprehensive study in which he analyzed how culture influenced the values rooted within the workplace (The Hofstede Centre, 2016). Hofstede focused on evaluating nations based on the following dimensions in order to be better equipped culturally, socially and professionally: Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV), Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS), Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI), Long Term Orientation versus Short Term Normative Orientation (LTO) and Indulgence versus Restraint (IND). For the purposes of this research paper, a brief country profile of China, Ethiopia and Germany is provided along with an analysis of the six cultural dimensions of Hofstede at work in these countries in comparison to the United States of America.

When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.

In times of rapid globalisation and economic development growth, the environment of business has become more and more complicated as a huge number of firms want to globally expand their businesses. Subsequently, the managerial implications of cross-cultural management is the challenge of this development. As Abbe (2007) states, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the global markets. Culture is the “software of mind” that can influence people’s patterns of thinking and behaving.