Cross Cultural Issues Essay

With hot topics like globalization and cross-cultural opportunities in the Asia Pacific rim, one might think it would be easy to research the implications of cross cultural issues. Rather, what the writer found was a significant discussion all around the periphery but little in-depth analysis. Discussion prevailed on the socio-economic and technological ramifications. Others resources focused on the language issues but little work was intuitively available on the subtleties of cross cultural issues one may encounter. Based on experience working in the Asia Pacific rim for two years as a PMO Manager, and training PM’s in many European countries, I decided that understanding international socio-cultural issues encountered in business is essentially at the heart of the issues companies will encounter in globalizing operations. Therefore, the writer will approach the crosscultural issues from a personalized understanding based on his many months of first hand mistakes in understanding cultural issues encountered in Asia Pacific. I will base my observations of cross-cultural issues on my experiences in working most closely with individuals from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and India. Naturally there are more countries in the Pacific Rim but these mentioned provided the most opportunity for interaction. I want to also acknowledge the contributions of my wife, Helena Shiu Leung Chow Ballow, whom I initially met in Asia. Her wisdom, coaching, and meaningful insights on the many differences between Western and Eastern business and cultural practices were, and remain till this day, illuminating, helpful and daunting. Introduction Clearly we all understand to some degree the impact of cultural issues in communications. If nothing else, we have encountered situations where language was the barrier. But language may be the smallest of the issues when dealing with other cultures. Even when we pull out our Translation Guides or employ translators we may get pass some of the language difficulties. But from the writer’s experience, language is the least of the issues. Ingrained and systemic patterns of cultural behaviours can be so subtle as to completely deny meaningful communications. I found a really good example of just how easily cultural variances can cause communications problems. In this case the issues was â€Å"psychological filtering† of appearance or gesture. I would think is would also be easy for the reader to extrapolate this example into some experiences that may have encountered even in the West. Timofeev (2002), in an article in National Concepts and Globalization, provided the following example: â€Å"The idea or rather the hypothesis that underlies this paper was stimulated by a trivial chat with a friend of mine. Being a linguist by trade, Russian by origin and living in Finland, she is well aware of cross-cultural discrepancies and provided me with a curious example. It was a TV commercial of an international brand of Persil washing powder. Two young ladies were shown sitting in a crowded place, some restaurant or a cafe. One of the ladies notices quite a peculiar manner her friend has chosen to wear her wristwatch. It was placed above the cuff of her blouse. It turned out in a second that the only reason for placing her watch there was to cover some stain that regular detergents failed to deal with. Oh dear, you should use Persil instead! † So everything was straight and simple. But before that, when the attentive and thoughtful lady was describing her version of her friend’s peculiar manner of wearing her watch in Finnish (and I guess that the German, French and English versions were quite similar to that in Finnish), she said: â€Å"You are such a busy person. You have to wear your watch so that it can always be seen. † While in Russian the same lady made quite a different guess: â€Å"Your watch must be terribly expensive since you wear it so that everyone can notice it. † †¦ The Russian version, when translated into English, seems to be full of irony; it describes the lady’s manner as showing off. It would definitely undermine the main purpose of the ad, which was to provide a friend and those watching the commercial with thoughtful advice about using detergents. (p. 1)† To understand the issues we must start with a framework definition of culture. There are just too many definitions of culture, and even speaking the same language, we might get off tract pretty quickly. So, the writer did some research and decided on the following foundational definition of culture upon which to proceed. This is summarized by Kim (1999): â€Å"As the author himself confesses that there are 160 different definitions of the term ‘culture’ and picks up the definition of scholar Clyde Kluckhohn. According to him, â€Å"Culture consists of patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i. e. historically derived and selected) ideas and attached values. † continued  © 2004, 2005 Dennis G. Ballow, Sr. , PMKT, Inc. , All Rights Reserved Globalization and Cross-Cultural Issues in Project Management, page 2 Another scholar, Triandis, presents a psychological perspective to the description. â€Å"Culture is a subjective perception of the human – made part of the environment. And this includes the categorization of social stimuli, associations, beliefs, attitudes, roles, and values individuals share. † Culture thus is a melting pot consisting of many things gathered over a period of time in which religion and language play a great role. (p. 228)† Now, with a definition of culture in hand, and a real life example to back up the idea, we will look at some relatively common cultural issues that impact communication, and thus, also have implications for Western corporations working in the Asia Pacific Rim. Cross-Cultural Issues and Implications I will present the materials in a table format such that it may be easier to digest. A simple summary provided by Bhagat et al (2002 provides a good stepping-stone for analysis of the cross-cultural issues: Cross-border transfer of organizational knowledge is most effective in terms of both velocity and viscosity when the type of knowledge (i. . , human, social, or structured) being transferred is simple, explicit, and independent and when such transfers involve similar cultural contexts. In contrast, transfer is least effective when the type of knowledge being transferred is complex, tacit, and systemic and involves dissimilar cultural contexts. (p. 204) Table 1: Cross-cultural Implications – Asian (China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) and the West Cross-culture Dimension Language Implications Asian Perspective Not that complicated to the Asian. Foreigners should have more respect and learn the language. American Perspective English is the international business language so everyone should use it. Implications It is generally good practice to â€Å"localize† materials when feasible. Local words and expressions sometime just do not properly translate for English and may actually be offensive. A focus on team activities and collaboration vs. individual competitive activities is preferred. Individualism vs. Collectivism Strong Collectivism – The Asians depend more on groups or institutions to determine what they should do and emphasize loyalty to the group. They are more likely to cooperate with others to avoid risks and reduce responsibilities. Their value systems appreciate duty to the group and harmony among its members while pursuing personal goals is viewed rather negatively in Asia. The Asian person does not consider contracts as seriously as the Americans. They think there will always be changes and the contracts can be reasonably modified according to changes. Instead, they tend to pay more attention to relationships than contracts. Strong Individualism – They rely on their own view to determine what they should do. They tend to work alone and are reluctant to cooperate because their individualism and masculine culture view cooperation in general as a sign of weakness and place a high value on independence and control. Americans place greater importance on contractual safeguards than the Asian. They believe that contracts can ensure that their partners’ tendencies to focus on individual goals and aspirations do not interfere with their own individual goals and aspirations. Cooperation Nothing is cast in stone for the Asians. Authority is seldom, if ever, challenged. But when encouraged and trust is gained by the instructor, students will interact better, and challenge each other in a negotiative manner as not to create a †save face† problem. This takes much longer that you will ever plan – so take time to let the process work itself through. Asian employees seldom have the chance to really participate in the decision-making process. So activities requiring decisions may well take longer. continued