Riassunto esame Inglese monografico 3, Prof. Rossi Enrica, libro consigliato Riding the waves of culture, Fons Trompenaars

Riding the waves of culture - Fons Trompenaars

Chapter 1: An introduction to culture

This book talks about how cultural differences influence the process of doing business and managing and it’s a study of 15 years. It wants to make 3 specific actions:

• To dispel the notion that there is “one best way” of managing and organising
• To give readers a better understanding of their own culture and cultural differences in general by learning to recognise
• To cope with different cultures in a business context; provide some cultural insights into the global versus local dilemma facing international organisations

The impact of culture on business

Can a universal solution be a solution? Not really, because many well-intended universal applications of management theory have turned out very badly. For example, pay-for-performance has been a failure on the African continent because there are a lot of thought unspoken, rules about the consequence and timing of reward and promotions. What matters for products and services is not what people are but what they mean to the people in each culture.

Glocalization: the growing dilemma facing international managers. As markets globalise there is the need for standardisation in organisational design, system, etc. Some managers, especially in Japan, recognise the multi-dimensional character of their company. They seem able to see a logic appropriate to machines (analytic-rational) and a logic more appropriate to social relations (synthetic-intuitive) switching them when needed.

Culture is a way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas. Culture comes in layers: the outer layer is the products of a culture. Culture is the context in which things happen.

Attitudes to time: in some cultures what matters is what a person has achieved in the past; in others, the past is not important, what matters is to know what plan you have developed for the future. For Americans, Swedish, and Dutch, time is a sequence of separate events, time is seen as a straight line.

Attitudes to the environment: some people see the focus affecting their lives and the origins of virtue as residing within the person and here the motivations and values are derived from within. Other cultures see the world as more powerful than individuals where nature is something to be feared or emulated.

Chapter 2: The one best way of organising does not exist

We cannot understand why individuals and organisations act as they do without considering the meanings they attribute to their environment. The organisation and its structures are thus more than objective reality; they comprise fulfilments or frustrations of the mental models held by real people. All organisational instruments and techniques are based on paradigms. Rather than there being "one best way," there are many ways, some varying much more culturally appropriate and effective than others.

Chapter 3: The meaning of culture

In this chapter, there is an example: a man who enters a cigar shop and buys a pack of cigarettes, and he wears a Burberry coat.

The outer layer: is the explicit culture. This level is the observable reality of the language. We should never judge because this layer is just the external one. It symbolises the deeper, more basic values and assumptions about life.

The middle layer: in this layer, there are the norms and the values. The norms are the mutual sense a group has of “right” and “wrong”. They give us a feeling of how I should normally behave. Values: determine the definition of good and bad and are related to the ideals shared by a group and they give us the feeling of “this is how I aspire or desire to behave”.

The different layers are complementary. Culture comes from the word “cultivate” and it means the way people act upon nature. Culture is like an iceberg: the largest part is under the water, and you can’t see it. Culture is made by people interacting and at the same time determining further interaction. Stereotyping is dangerous because it exaggerates and caricatures the culture observed and the observer. Then is dangerous because people assume that something different is something wrong. Then stereotyping ignores the fact that individuals do not necessarily behave according to their cultural norm. Cultures can be distinguished by the way they solve problems, so there are 5 orientations.

Chapter 4: Relationships and rules

The Universalist tends to be abstract. They want to follow the rules no matter what. The particularist behaviour focuses on the circumstances and if a person is a friend of mine, my brother, my mother, etc., they will go in favour of them no matter what rules say.

When companies want to work globally, they tend to think in a universalist behaviour. There are 4 areas where dilemmas between universalist and particularists come:

• The contract: it is important because there are written promises each part has made. Another reason why people maintain their promises is because they have a relationship with their colleagues.
• Timing a business trip: universalists take much longer when visiting a particularist culture. Particularists tend to not trust people when hurried, and so for them, it is normal to see people at least twice to create a relationship.
• The role of head office: in universalist culture the head office is the key to the global marketing and all the staff. Particularist people seek gratification through relationships with the leader.
• Job evaluations and rewards. Even if there are two parts of a dilemma, they can be very close to each other. When the 2 parties come together, they create a sort of vicious circle (p.48).

Chapter 5: The group and the individual

Individualism vs Collectivism: individualism has been described as a “prime orientation to the self”. Communitarianism as a “prime orientation to the common goals and objectives”. It all depends on if you see the individual as strong when it focuses on itself or it is just a piece that can help a group.

Individualism is characteristic of a modernising society, while communitarianism reminds more of a traditional culture. It is seen that the individualists are more Protestant and Catholic are more communitarianism. Individualism has been used also in different political factions. Individuals are either self- or community-oriented. It is important to consider the responsibility of a person or of the group when something goes wrong. (North America and North-west Europeans are individualism).

We can reconcile these two parts and one values increase the quality of the opposite one. To take a decision, communitarianism takes a lot longer because they try to have everybody's consensus. The most famous example of communitarian decision is the Japanese method “RINGI” process where proposals circulate and are initialled by agreeing participants. The individualistic process of making a decision is usually very short. In individualistic societies, there is a disparity between decision and implementation. The relationship between people motivates them. For individualistic culture organisations are instruments in order to serve individuals and it is a means to what its actors want for themselves.

Chapter 6: Feelings and relationships

It talks about the way cultures and people show their emotions. Members of neutral culture keep their feelings very controlled and carefully. Members of affective culture show their emotions without being afraid. Neutral cultures don’t mean that they are cold or unfeeling cultures but it just the amount of emotions they show because this is a convention. (Ethiopia and Japan are very neutral).

When the approach is emotional/affective, we are searching for a direct emotional response. When the approach is neutral, we seek an indirect response. The indirect path gives support upon the success of an effort of intellect. The direct path allows our feelings about a factual proposition to show feelings with thoughts in a different way.

Americans tend to be affective and to express their feelings. This is because with so many immigrants and such a huge country they had to tear down the barriers again and again. At the same time, they separate them from “objective” and “rational” (because they think that emotions should be separated from the reasoning process because they can corrupt them). Italians and southern Europeans show their emotions, and they don’t separate them. Dutch and Swedes don’t show the emotions and don’t separate.

Cultures use a sense of humour, but it depends when and how.

Intercultural communication

Workshop participants have been asked to describe intercultural communication. They list instruments and more general definitions like the exchange of information. Communication is essentially the exchange of information, be it words, ideas, and emotions. It is the carrier of meaning. Communication is only possible for people who share a system of meaning.

Western society has a predominantly verbal culture. We have a different style to discuss. For Anglo-Saxon, it is polite to not interrupt the speaker so person A waits for person B to stop talking. In Latin culture, when we interrupt, we show that we are interested in the object. The silent communication of oriental language scares the western because silence is seen as a failure in communication.

Tone of voice: some problems can come up when we don’t use a tone of voice in a correct way. For example, for Latin culture raising your voice means that you are interested in the matter. Oriental culture will not take seriously people who raise their voice. For them, the higher position a person holds, the lower and flatter their voice. In Nigeria, raising the voice is important, but in Malaysia, shouting is not seen as good.

Non-verbal communication: 75% of all communication is not verbal. This means that we need to be very careful about eye-contact, personal space, touching each other, etc. Eye-contact in the USA between strangers is something that lasts very little but in Western culture, it is crucial to let the speaker know that we are interested in what he is saying.

Chapter 7: How far we get involved

Kurt Lewin has represented the personality as a series of circles with “life space” and “personality levels”.