Notes on Culture, Social Cognition, and Cross-Cultural Management

Describing Culture

  • Working definition: Culture is a set of knowledge structures consisting of systems of values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioural meanings that are:
    1. Shared by members of a social group
    2. Embedded in its institutions
    3. Learned from previous generations
  • Culture is Shared
    • Intuitive understanding among people within a society of logics, beliefs, and norms that underlie what is socially deemed desirable/appropriate
    • Inherent familiarity with central norms and values
    • Individuals can vary in what they like/dislike about those shared features
  • Culture is Learned
    • Over time, society develops patterned ways of interacting with environment (language, government, marriage, religion)
    • They signal what is acceptable and desirable
    • Story-telling
  • Culture is Systematic & Organized
    • Organized system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioural meanings related to each other and to environment and other cultures
    • Context is significant
    • Integrated coherent systems; not random

Levels of Culture

  • Language, dress, technology, architecture, etc.
  • Consciously held to explain observable features
  • Unconsciously held to influence actions & values

Why do Cultures Differ & Persist

  • Survival: Cultural concepts rooted in ancient survival beliefs become fundamental beliefs; deep unconscious; resistant to change (Hofstede 1991; Schein 1985)
  • Language: Encoding in memory, defines worldview (Whorf 1956); some features related to worldview (Nisbett et al. 2001)
  • Pictorial vs phonetic scripts: Languages based on pictorial representations associated with holistic view
  • Religion & Ideology: Influence via belief content, rituals, and identities
    • Mendenhall, Punnett & Ricks (1995): Influence depends on dominance, state sanction, religious homogeneity, diversity tolerance
  • Other: Climate, Proximity, Topography, Economic systems, Technology, Political boundaries

Major Debates

  • National Culture: Is there only one culture within a country? Can multiple cultures coexist?
  • Convergence, Divergence, Equilibrium
  • Organizational vs National Culture: How relate and inform one another? Similarity of conceptualizations?
  • Acculturation & Biculturation: Changes after contact; culture not static; migration and mutual adjustment

Social Cognition

  • How we develop mental representations & how they influence processing of information about people & events
  • Perception: Process of receiving and processing cues; selective
  • Type 1 (fast & automatic) & Type 2 (less automatic & more conscious)
  • Schemas: representations defining category/object/others/self
  • Self-schema: representations of inner self (e.g., competence)
  • Independent vs interdependent self-schemas: impact motivations
  • Scripts: behavioural sequences guiding action; used when new situations match prior experiences
  • Cultural identity: characteristics associated with a national culture label; schemas and scripts emerge

Stereotypes

  • We build expectations around others via schemas; resistant when new information conflicts
  • Learned; more complex for familiar in-group
  • In-group schemas more nuanced; out-group schemas tend toward generalizations
  • Perceived Similarity & Attraction: similarity fosters attraction and validates worldview
  • Social dominance theory: groups with high/low status influence attitudes and belonging; shapes stereotypes

Attribution

  • Assigning causes to behavior
  • Dispositional vs situational attributions
  • Attribution error: attribute desirable in-group behaviors to internal causes, out-group to external
  • Fundamental Attribution Error: tendency to attribute behavior to person rather than situation
  • Differences across individualist vs collectivist cultures

Social Groups

  • Culture is associated with groups; in-group/out-group boundaries; identity
  • In-group bias & Prejudice: self-esteem from group; favor in-group
  • Ethnocentrism: Sumner (1940): center of world; others measured by it; parochialism
  • Triandis (1994): ethnocentrism characteristics: what goes on in our culture seen as natural and correct; in-group customs universal; norms as correct
  • Tendency to help in-group members vs mistrust toward out-group

References

  • Thomas, D. & Peterson, M. (2018). Cross-Cultural Management, 4th Ed., Sage Publications.
  • Thomas, D. & Inkson, K. (2009). Cultural Intelligence: Living and Working Globally, 2nd Ed., Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
  • Thomas, D. & Inkson, K. (2009). Mindfulness and Cross-Cultural Skills. Cultural Intelligence: Living and Working Globally, 2nd Ed., Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.