The Culture Map
Page 22
Challenging? Yes! But it’s also fascinating. The range of human cultures can be a source of endless surprise and discovery—a fount of remarkable experiences and continual learning that can never be exhausted.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like most authors, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to a number of people whose help and support have made this book possible.
Thanks first of all to my excellent editor at PublicAffairs, John Mahaney. John managed to see promise in a first book chapter, which was very rough. He provided careful and insightful guidance throughout the writing process. He encouraged me to write from my own viewpoint, and he showed me, paragraph by paragraph, how to put color into my storytelling and make my examples more engaging. It wouldn’t be the same book without John.
A big ribbon-wrapped thanks to my literary agent, Carol Franco, who has also had an enormous impact on this book. Not only did Carol find the best publisher I could hope for, she stood beside me through two years of trials and uncertainty. When I needed advice from an expert, Carol was always ready and waiting with supportive and lucid guidance.
Thanks to Karl Weber, a terrific editor, who took a manuscript that was often too long and frequently too wordy and gave it a serious polish. If it weren’t for Karl, this book would be a whole lot more dull. It is thanks to him that the reader was saved multiple painful anecdotes such as the one about the fly who buzzed around the world viewing classrooms in different countries and the man who visited a doctor in rural China to get help with his foot only to have the doctor look at his tongue.
Thanks also to Elin Williams, the writer and editor whose assistance first made me realize that with really good help, I could write a book. Elin invested much time in learning about my work before we even started and then helped me through the entire first draft, skillfully editing every chapter.
Thanks to Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, who helped me get this project off the ground in the first place. They worked with me to outline the book’s content and sketch out the various chapters. Stuart and Des came up with the book title and wrote the first draft of the book proposal. They read versions of the first few chapters many times and provided support in the early days.
Thanks to my mother, Linda Burkett, not only because she has been a fundamental point of love and support for forty-two years, but because she has read versions of each chapter far more times than anyone else. She has been my professional confidante all along the way, weighing each example I was uncertain about, fixing any passage I couldn’t get quite right, and taking phone calls at 6:00 a.m. to weigh in on a new title idea or yet another cover design. Next to myself, my mother is the person who has devoted the most time to this book.
Now to the rest of my family, who put up with me throughout an arduous and sometimes trying process. I owe you a heartfelt thank you, which doesn’t have anything specific to do with the book but everything to do with the daily support you provide for all I do. I couldn’t have written this book without the support of my gaggle of boys—my husband, Eric, and our two sons, Ethan and Logan. The three of you are the foundation of everything good in my life. A big thanks to my father, Tim, who has taught me to be tenacious, and through his unwavering belief in me has taught me to believe in myself. Thanks also to my brother Jed and his wife, Seema, for demonstrating how to meet life’s unexpected challenges with grace and persistence. And a thank you to my close friend Jennifer, whose multicultural journey has often paralleled my own.
When I finished the first draft of this book, I was excited to get feedback. I sent the manuscript out to a number of colleagues who have specific expertise in various world regions. Each of them painstakingly read the manuscript and provided corrections and suggestions. Thanks to Mary Yoko Brannen, Elisabeth Shen, Edith Coron, Philippe Aboubadra, Monika Stok, Sabine Havenstein, Stanislav Shekshnia, Martina Harms, and Gisela Henrique for all the time you devoted to this project.
The team at PublicAffairs has consistently exceeded all of my expections. Thank you to Jaime Leifer, Melissa Veronesi, Melissa Raymond, Victoria Gilder, and the many other individuals who have given their care and attention to this book.
Thanks also to the people who inspired me. Thanks to Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, and Edward Hall, who were writing about this subject long before me and whose work provided the foundation for many of the concepts in this book. Thank you to Henry Zinglersen, who introduced me to many of the concepts that appear in this book. It was Henry’s early mentoring that led me to the eight scales. Thanks to my colleague and mentor at INSEAD, Herminia Ibarra, who encouraged me to write this book and had enough faith in my work to introduce me to both Elin Williams and Carol Franco.
Most of all, thanks to the thousands of executive students who have participated in my sessions and shared their experiences and perspectives, both inside and outside of INSEAD, thus providing the basis for every example and strategy present in this book.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. I first heard this analogy from my colleague and mentor, Professor Jose Santos, who speaks about the similarity between culture and water in his courses. The analogy is also referenced in the book by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998), who wrote: “A fish only discovers its need for water when it is no longer in it. Our own culture is like water to a fish. We live and breathe through it.” Just recently, after the first draft of this book was complete, author Kai Hammerich and Richard Lewis titled their new book after this analogy, Fish Can’t See Water: How National Culture Can Make or Break Your Corporate Strategy (Wiley, 2013).
CHAPTER 1
1. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (1976; New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 85–125.
2. This same dialogue in various formats has been told to me several times. The first time was by Denise Austin Guillon, an American consultant living in Paris, who included a similar dialogue in a presentation I attended many years ago.
CHAPTER 2
1. This translation guide has been circulated in various forms anonymously on the Internet. One idea is that it was originally developed by Shell Oil Co. to help their employees better understand one another.
2. Adapted from Vladimir Zhelvis, Xenophobe’s Guide to the Russians (2001; London: Oval Books, 2010).
CHAPTER 3
1. Richard Nisbett, The Geography of Thought (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 48–78.
2. Richard Nisbett and Takahiko Masuda, “Culture and Point of View” (Special series of Inaugural Articles by members of the National Academy of Sciences), PNAS 100, no. 19 (September 2003): 11163–11170.
CHAPTER 4
1. Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991; New York: McGraw Hill, 2010), 53–88.
2. Robert House, Paul Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter Dorfman, and Vipin Gupta, Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 513–563.
3. André Laurent, “The Cross-Cultural Puzzle of International Human Resource Management,” Human Resource Management 25, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 91–102.
CHAPTER 5
1. Patrick Lencioni is the author of ten business books including best sellers The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002), and The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass), 2012.
2. For more about the Japanese decision-making process, see Sue Shinomiya and Brian Szepkowski, Passport to Japan: Revised and Updated Edition (Berkeley, CA: Stonebridge Press, 2007), 100–103.
3. Many of these recommendations first appeared in Dr. Ernest Gundling, Communicating with the Japanese in Business, distributed by JETRO, 1999, 10–11.
CHAPTER 6
1. Roy Y. J. Chua, “Building Effective Business Relationships in China,” MIT Sloan Management Review 53, no. 4 (Summer 2012), and Crysta
l Jiang, Roy Y. J. Chua, Masaaki Kotabe, and Janet Murray, “Effects of Cultural Ethnicity, Firm Size, and Firm Age on Senior Executives’ Trust in Their Overseas Business Partners: Evidence from China,” Journal of International Business Studies 42, no. 9 (2011): 1150–1173. Roy Y. J. Chua, Michael W. Morris and Paul Ingram, “Guanxi vs. Networking: Distinctive Configurations of Affect-and Cognition-based Trust in the Networks of Chinese vs. American Managers,” Journal of International Business Studies (2009) 40, 490–508. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400422.
2. Kurt Lewin, “Some Social-Psychological Differences between the United States and Germany,” Character and Personality 4 (1936).
3. Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998), 83–86.
4. Roderick Swaab, William Maddux, and Marwan Sinaceur, “Virtual Linguistic Mimicry: When and How Online Mimicry Increases Negotiation Outcomes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011): 616–621.
CHAPTER 7
1. Suleman Shahid, Emiel Krahmer, and Marc Swerts, Fun and Games: Springer Proceedings of the Second Edition of the International Conference (Eindhoven, the Netherlands: 2008, Series: Springer—LNCS). Book chapter “Alone or Together: Exploring the Effect of Physical Co-presence on the Emotional Expressions of Game Playing Children Across Cultures,” 94–105.
CHAPTER 8
1. Edward T. Hall, The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (1983; New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 44–58.
2. Robert Levine, The Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 81–100.
3. This evergreen line was written about in the New York Times by Anand Giridharads, “Getting In and Out of Line,” New York Times, August 7, 2010.
INDEX
Africa, 220, 227, 227 (fig.)
communication and, 31
oral tradition in, 58
Americans, 26, 213
business culture of, 7–10
hierarchical culture of, 144
humor and, 44–46
Midwestern, 32
negative feedback and, 69–72, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.), 76, 77–80
persuasion and, 89–93, 107–112, 108 (fig.), 109 (fig.)
social customs of, 174–183
on trust, 169–170, 175
written reports and, 57–59
Anglo-Dutch Translation Guide, 67, 67 (fig.)
Anglo-Saxon, 227, 227 (fig.)
communication, 31–32
cultures, 39–41, 39 (fig.), 47
language cluster, 40–41, 41 (fig.)
on persuading scale, 95–97, 96 (fig.)
school system, 94
Antithesis, 99–100
Arabic culture
as emotionally expressive, 207–209
wasta (connections that create preferences) in, 190
Argentina, 31
high-context communication and, 39–40, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
negative feedback and, 69, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.)
Aristotle, 97, 110
Asian languages
cluster of, 40–41, 41 (fig.)
saying “no” in, 50–51
Asians, 187–189, 213, 227–228, 227 (fig.)
assumptions regarding, 4–6
communication and, 31
differences among, 12–13
hierarchical culture of, 129–131, 131 (fig.)
high-context communication and, 47–49
negative feedback and, 69, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.), 82–87
oral tradition of, 58
persuasion and, 104–112, 108 (fig.), 109 (fig.)
Assumptions
regarding Asians and Westerners, 4–6
shared, 35–37
Astellas, 154, 156
Australia, 138
low-context communication and, 34, 39, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
on persuading scale, 95–97, 96 (fig.)
trusting scale and, 171 (fig.), 172
Austria, 178
Authority
aura of, 122–123
respect and, 139–140
Bacon, Francis, 97
Bacon, Roger, 97
Bae Pak, 112
Belgium, 96–97, 96 (fig.)
Bieber, Justin, 93
Brainstorming, 212
Brazil, 31, 233–235
high-context communication and, 39–41, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.), 55
trust in, 163–165, 170, 175–176
trusting scale and, 171–172, 171 (fig.)
BRIC countries, 171–174, 171 (fig.)
Brown, David, 32–34
Buddhism, 110–111
Business, 6, 170
leading scale and, 121–122
philosophy and, 97–101
power distance and, 121–122
practice of clarification, 46–47
relationships outside of, 106
thinking, 111–112
Business culture
of Americans, 7–10
of France, 7–10, 123
of Israel, 16–18, 17 (fig.)
of Russia, 16–18, 17 (fig.)
of U.S., 7–10
Cambodia, 70
Canada
as low-context, 34, 39, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
on persuading scale, 95–97, 96 (fig.)
Case method, 102
Catholicism, 128–129
Children, 38, 243–244
China, communication and, 35–36
feedback and, 79
of Holland, 201–204, 202–203 (fig.)
India, communication and, 35–36
Japan, communication and, 35–36
of Pakistan, 201–204, 202–203 (fig.)
China, 124, 213, 236–237, 245–247, 246 (fig.)
children and communication in, 35–36
communication in, 31
in disagreeing scale, 201 (fig.), 209
feedback in, 65
guanxi (relationships) in, 166–167, 173
high-context communication and, 39–40, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.), 48–51
negative feedback and, 69–70, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.), 85
nianzi (face) in, 198–200
trust in, 165–167, 169–170, 188–189
trusting scale and, 171–174, 171 (fig.)
Chua, Roy, 168–169
Clarification
asking for, 49, 51–54
business practice of, 46–47
repetition and, 51
Collaboration, 239
improving, 76–77
strategies for multiculturalism, 54–57, 103–104, 114
Communicating scale in eight-scale model, 16, 17 (fig.), 244–249, 246 (fig.)
by language, 40–41, 41 (fig.)
negative feedback, evaluating scale and, 62, 69–72, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.)
ranking of cultures within, 39–41, 39 (fig.)
relativity within, 44–49
Communication
China, children and, 35–36
effective, 31–32
explicit and literal, 31–32
in France, 31, 61–62
implicit, 31–32
India, children and, 35–36
Japan, children and, 35–36
level-hopping and, 134–139
styles of, 32–36, 37–41, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
Communicator
bad, 42–45
Brown as, 33–34
good, 31, 42–45
Meyer, Erin as low-context, 42–43
Confucianism, 110–111, 129–130, 132, 198–199, 209
Consulting firm, 15, 67–69, 67 (fig.)
Criticism
downgrading, 66
negative, 69–72, 69 (fig.), 72 (fig.)
receiving, 62–65
Cultural relativity, concept of, 21–24, 21 (fig.), 23 (fig.)
Culture, 249–253
communicating scale and ranking of, 39–41, 39 (fig.)
contextual cues rega
rding, 10–12
decoding, 12
diversities, 229–251
eight-scale model and, 15–21, 17 (fig.), 244–249, 246 (fig.)
heterogeneous backgrounds and, 23–24
high-context communication and, 34, 39–41, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.), 50–52
impact of, 10–14
language and, 37–40, 39 (fig.)
low-context communication and, 34, 39–41, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
map and eight-scale model, 16–18, 17 (fig.), 244–249, 246 (fig.)
miscommunication and, 8–10
monochronic, 224–225
national, 24–26
polychronic, 224–225
protective instinct towards, 24–26
See also Egalitarian culture; Hierarchical culture; specific cultures
DaimlerChrysler, 205–207
The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (Hall), 224
Dark and light. See Yin and yang
de Groot, Karl, 134–135
Deciding scale
consensual on, 150–153, 150 (fig.)
in eight-scale model, 16, 17 (fig.), 244–249, 246 (fig.)
Sweden and, 150 (fig.), 151–153
top-down on, 150–153, 150 (fig.)
Decision-making
consensual, 145–150, 149 (fig.), 158–159
in egalitarian culture, 145–146
in Germany, 144–148, 150, 150 (fig.)
in hierarchical culture, 145–146
individual or top-down, 146, 149, 149 (fig.), 159–160
Ringi system on, 154–158
styles of, 148–150, 149 (fig.), 158–161
in U.S., 144–148, 150–153, 150 (fig.)
Denmark, 201, 201 (fig.), 207
egalitarian, 116–117, 123, 125 (fig.), 126, 128
low-context communication and, 39, 39 (fig.), 41 (fig.)
Descartes, René, 98
Dialectic model of deduction, 98
Disagreeing
agreeably strategies, 210–216
confrontation and, 106–107, 197–210
debating and, 195–197
by playing devil’s advocate, 216–218
Disagreeing scale
avoiding confrontation, 204, 204 (fig.), 207–209
China in, 201 (fig.), 209
confrontational, 200–204, 201 (fig.)