Cross-Cultural Management

PART I

Introduction to Cross-Cultural Management

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Cross-Cultural Management

Contextualizing Background Information

Globalization has probably developed faster than our capacity to digest all the changes it involves. One of the most stunning revelations that accompany globalization is the notion that geographical distance has changed, and with it, the way business is done.

Although globalization was estimated to have only limited effects, this is simply not the case any longer. Businesses that aim to remain mononational would simply lose too many competitive advantages to survive in any market. This obvious reality, no matter how hard to swallow for some, has been dealt with by technology quite efficiently. But the main aspects that could determine whether a business of any size would survive or die are relationships and communication: technology being an asset that is available to all players at the same level, the main competitive success factors remain (1) innovation and (2) the capacity to develop, entertain, and maintain business across borders.

Those who manage to gain the latter will probably win over those who do not, and to profit from that extra mile, the understanding of other cultures and their dynamics becomes crucial.

Many authors have tried to define what culture is and how it develops. The most commonly used definitions have originated in varied social sciences including psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

Some of these definitions include Sigmund Freud’s Culture is a construction that hides the pulsional and libido-oriented reality, Herder’s Every nation has a particular way of being and that is their culture, Kardurer’s Culture is the psycho characteristic configuration of the basis of the personality, and Sapir’s Culture is a system of behaviours that result from the socialisation process. Most of these definitions have in common the relationship between the individual and the society (s)he belongs to, and point to the cultural factor as being the key element of the dynamics that enhances the rapport between the two.

The notion of culture had not been thoroughly explored (or at least the concept had been not thoroughly disseminated) in management science until the 1970s. It was only in the 1980s that Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede wrote about business anthropology for the first time in his book Culture’s Consequences,¹ which opened the door to a new discipline that studied the impact of cultural diversity on business.

Since Geert Hofstede’s initial work, much has taken place in terms of updating of his data and applying it to the study of cross-cultural management. The most famous one is probably the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) study, which included research on 62 societies and their approaches to leadership.² Similar updates have been published, but not many have included a significant number of countries.

Hofstede’s definition of culture, which is certainly the most widely considered by both academics and practitioners in the management arena, states that:

Culture is the mental programming of the human spirit that allows distinguishing the members of one category in comparison with the members of another category. It is the conditioning that we share with the other members of the same group.

The key word in Hofstede’s definition of culture is certainly mental programming. It appears as both the link that glues all members of a group through a common set of assumptions and the behaviors resulting from them. At the same time, this collective similarity defines members by the exclusion of those who do not share the same background, and signs and symbols are therefore designed to exteriorize and, if possible, make visible who is part of which category and who is not.

Mental programming is a learnt attitude to life and a set of expected behaviors that could easily lead to stereotyping, as a safety net produced by society, to avoid the expected delusion that could naturally lead to frustration in having to face reactions that do not match with what is supposed to be the natural way of acting and feeling according to what the reference group has taught its members since their early childhood.

The Notion of Mental Programming

Geert Hofstede, who as mentioned above could be considered the father of business anthropology, has developed the concept of mental programming. Mental programming is what makes us expect a certain type of behavior from others. Any other action or reaction will be interpreted in varied ways, from weird to shocking. Interpretations of the same behavior may differ and vary from culture to culture.

For example, if I am from a culture where the boss has to show authority at all times and his/her decisions are not to be contested or even questioned by subordinates, then my mental programming will make me surprised when confronted with a situation in which a trainee openly objects to a comment made by the Director General in a meeting in front of all the other employees. Perhaps, in a different culture the same behavior would be interpreted as extreme interest, enthusiasm, and willingness to contribute, as expressed by the trainee.

Mental programming has to do with the glass through which we see life. We understand other people’s behavior (or we fail to understand it) according to the perspective from which we explore their attitudes and actions, and these viewpoints are strongly hardwired in the notions we have incepted through the socialization process.

In social sciences’ jargon, the word socialization refers to the process through which one learns the basic notions of good, bad, acceptable, non-acceptable, okay, and not okay. Social learning (or socialization) does not occur in a formal manner, but in an informal way, through experience and trial and error. When a mother suggests to her female children that they ought to learn how to do the cleaning and the washing at home, whereas their brothers are dispensed from that task, little girls learn that they are expected to assume a social role later on in life that is more connected to the care and service of their families, rather than with what is considered as male activities (the activities the boys of their age are expected to perform).

We are socialized by what our parents tell us, also by how they talk to us, how they react to others, and in particular by how they react to us, according to whether they consider our own behavior to be acceptable or not. Showing emotions in public, for example, can be considered as acceptable and even desirable in Southern European cultures, as it is commonly considered that those who are poker faced are not to be trusted. On the other hand, in Scandinavian cultures, not being able to control your emotions is perceived to be a sign of immaturity and related behaviors can be punished by a generalized shunning of the person exposing them.

However, parents are by far not the only socialization factor. Equally important are school, TV programs, and the media, which teach us what is correct or incorrect, normal or abnormal, acceptable or unacceptable. For instance, since the mid-2000s, European TV has made efforts to show representatives of minorities. Suddenly, weather presenters were not exclusively White and Asian, Latino, and Black Bond girls invaded the cinema screens in an attempt to generate a larger inclusion of previously neglected minority groups, who had been subconsciously receiving the message that only white people are nice and showable on TV and Bond girls are usually blond, and therefore may have understood I can never be fully included in this society, which is basically not designed for people like me.

Socialization can therefore be defined as a means to learn how to behave in a particular society, and is a basic element of our mental programming, which is the link that defines our belonging to a culture by the exclusion of those who do not share it.

The Facebook trail below illustrates a real-life case of cultural misunderstanding experienced by a British traveler (Stephen Gabbutt), on a business trip to Italy with his family, and the reactions of some of his compatriots (a few, a bit fueled by the author of this book).

In the above dialog, we can distinguish some of the elements that constitute the stereotypical British mental programming, as opposed to the Italian one.

In Italy, the general assumption is that rules can be slightly (at least) broken. Rules are imperfect, and they are not universal. They need, therefore, to be adapted to each situation. Rules such as seating arrangements may be seen as a formality that can be disregarded if other options are available that cause no discomfort to anyone (as rules do not necessarily derive from rationality, but perhaps from the need of the President of the Airline to reinforce his power through the imposition of aleatory norms). In this case, the fact of having children sit anywhere was not perceived as a disruption, but as a slight alteration to the rules that would make the children as happy as their parents (who would manage to get rid of them for a while). This behavior may have bothered the British passengers, but as ties with them were not expected to last for longer than 2 hours, there was not much point in trying to please them.

On the other hand, relationships between Italian parents and their children are meant to last for life. Children in Italy have traditionally been considered as those who will take care of their parents in their old age (perhaps as a payback to their parents, for having taken care of them when they were young), and therefore are spoiled much more than British children. Italian children, have traditionally played the Social Security role for parents in their old age, and therefore the emotional links between them have developed in different ways than in the United Kingdom.

In the British mindset, on the other hand, rules are supposed to be the result of thorough thought on what would be the best way to ensure the common good (in this case, a pleasant flight for everyone). And as long as rules are clearly communicated, it is everyone’s duty to abide by them. Failure to do so can be considered as a sign of rudeness or disrespect toward those who have to suffer from the consequences of such actions. Also, children are expected to behave, and it is their parents’ duty to make sure that they learn not to disturb others. The behavior of children is supposed to be the responsibility of their parents.

In such a context, the sources of conflict are multiple, as are the reactions from each party, directly deriving from their different mental programming, which is interestingly incompatible.

For instance, the Italians would have expected the British adults to talk to the children directly and have them move from the seats they were occupying without caring much about whether the children would find other seats or not (they probably would not have, as the single businessmen were occupying them at the time). By doing so, the conflict would have been smaller (there is usually no conflict because the Italian children would probably have moved when told to do so by an adult) and then the Italian parents would have assumed the charge of making arrangements with the businessmen.

It is worthwhile noticing that the notion of time and its use is very different across cultures. A British person would have considered a delay in the flight as something much more serious than an Italian (who would probably have considered it as part of the fun of traveling), and therefore the Italian parents would not have taken into consideration the extra time involved in rearranging the seating once, and if, the British had complained.

The reaction of the British was also quite strange to the Italians. Why would they just present the problem after a solution had been found?

The Italian parents must have felt quite surprised that the British parents confronted them at the arrival airport. If they were so angry about the change in seating, why had they not said so before? And actually, why were they so angry, instead of being grateful for having been given the glorious chance of relaxing out of the way of the misbehavior of their children for a while? For the Italians, the fact that the British did not complain before or during the flight meant that the slight change in rules did not actually bother them so much. For the British, it meant that there was no point in delaying a flight for a quarrel, but that the point had to be made regarding the situation in order to re-establish a sense of justice.

It is also interesting to note the comments of the British Facebook friends. Some tried to be polite and funny about the situation, suggesting a revenge for the affront at least equivalent in strength: the poisoning of the children (this was obviously a joke, but the interesting part is that there was the assumption that the Italians had meant to bother them and therefore ought to be punished for that). In a culture in which conflict and expression of emotions are to be minimized in order to ensure harmony and the continuing of social processes with minimum disruption, a quiet payback allowing to set the accounts right appears to be the most civilized option. Interestingly enough, for the Italians, having a British adult telling their children off would not have shocked anyone and would have appeared as a simple act of civilization for which they might even have been grateful, as it would have contributed to the general education of their little ones. On the other hand, any sort of quiet revenge would have led them to think of the British as those poker-faced people who stab you in the back (to remain within the same tone of funny exaggeration).

Other British comments blamed the procedures, probably because according to those making the comments, a good system cannot fail. Failure occurs out of the system, not out of people in it. In other words, if the Italians did not end up in the assigned seats, it must have been because the seating arrangement was wrong. In no (British) mind would it be normal to think that any civilized individual would simply ignore British Airways policy. Besides, such a statement was an attempt to show the open-mindedness of the poster, as the assumption was that it was all part of a professional mistake, nothing to do with Italian lack of consideration. The Facebook friend in this case just failed to ignore that what could be considered as an act of disrespect in a British mindset would not be so in an Italian one, and vice-versa, as in an Italian mind making a fuss about a seat during a relatively short flight was just a sign of excessive rigidity and lack of flexibility, which showed no attempt to develop peaceful relations with passengers from another country (the height of impoliteness and lack of civility in an Italian mind).

Interestingly enough, the victim in this anecdote gave up. He was frustrated, but surrendered to the fact that there would have been no way to communicate with the other party. He just gave up, obviously due to the language barrier