Cultural Differences

Understanding Cultural Differences

  • culture:culture: shared set of beliefs, values, knowledge, and patterns of behavior common to a group of people
    • ex: the culture of tipping in restaurants varies from country to country
    • kissing both cheeks is very common in Spain

Understanding Cultural Dimensions

  • low−contextculture:low-context culture: shared meanings primarily derived from written and spoken words
    • includes the United States, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany
  • high−contextculture:high-context culture: rely heavily on situational (nonverbal) cues for meaning when communicating with others
    • includes China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, many Arab countries

Other Cultural Variations

  1. language- more than 3000 languages are spoken in the world
  2. interpersonal space - americans like 3-4 feet of space while the range in Latin America and Asian cultures is typically 1 foot
  3. communication - do you treat business as a “task” (US) or as a relationship (china)
  4. time orientation - doing one thing at a time (monochronic) or more than one thing at a time (polychronic)
  5. religion- how does religion influence work-related values?
  6. law and political stability - be aware of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), instability, expropriation, corruption, or labor uses

   

  1. FCPA:FCPA: makes it illegal for companies to make “dubious” contributions to political decision makers in foreign nations

       1. makes it a crime to make a payment of, offer or promise to pay, or authorize payment of money or anything of value, directly or indirectly to any foreign official, politician, party official, or candidate for office with a corrupt intent for the purpose of influencing one of those people 2. two major components are anti-bribery provisions and maintaining accurate books, records, and internal controls 3. can charge up to $10,000 in civil penalties 4. proven to be one of the most powerful and effective transnational anticorruption laws in the world

  1. expropriation:expropriation: a government’s seizure of a domestic or foreign company’s assets

       1. ex: roads, railways, public utilities, parks, schools, or public health buildings

          1. the government might want to build a road, but the house on it is private property, they can use expropriation to force the property owners to sell the land for them