Transcripts
and taken for granted, much of the research in cross-cultural issues is based on the idea that understanding your own and other people’s unexpressed values and attitudes – the submerged section of the iceberg – will pave the way to better comprehension and, hence, to improved interactions between people from different cultural backgrounds.
The most prolific researcher in this field was the Dutch professor, Geert Hofstede, who carried out his first survey of cultural values while working for the multinational company IBM in the period 1967 to 1973. His data covered employees of IBM working in 70 different countries, though the original analysis he developed and published as Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values covered only the 40 largest of these countries. He carried out several other studies, the most recent being in 2013, and listing data for 76 different countries.
Hofstede’s model originally covered four dimensions of culture as it manifests in the workplace, and the countries he surveyed were mapped onto these dimensions depending on how high or low they scored for each. He named the first of these dimensions power distance. Power distance refers to the degree to which the less powerful members of organizations within a country accept that power is not distributed equally. To put this in other words, in a country with a high power- distance score, people accept that everyone has a place in society and that there is a hierarchy. Subordinates expect their bosses to tell them what to do and centralization of power is normal. In contrast, countries that score low on this dimension put stress on equal opportunities for everybody and employees expect their bosses to consult with them before taking a decision. Saudi Arabia is an example of a country that scores very high on the power-distance dimension, while Denmark scores very low. Next, we have …
… Those were Hofstede’s original dimensions; he later added two others, but we shall look at those next week.
I must point out that a number of criticisms have been voiced about his work. One of these is that it assumes that national borders and cultural borders are always the same, which is not, of course, the case. Another is that, being originally based on questionnaires completed mainly by male engineers, it is not representative of all groups in society. Nevertheless, his work was groundbreaking and many subsequent researchers have validated his original findings and expanded upon them.
3.6
… Another early researcher in the field was Edward T. Hall, an American anthropologist whose interest in cross-cultural issues began when he was hired to train American diplomats in the 1950s. Hall’s approach differed from Hofstede’s in that he didn’t seek to analyze underlying values, but instead looked at differences in how cultures behaved and communicated, and the underlying attitudes that caused their behaviour. Hall pioneered the study of proxemics – that is, how the physical closeness of people is shaped by culture. He was also the originator of important theories of communication styles, which we shall look at next week.
Today, I shall briefly introduce Hall’s theory of time, which he published in his 1983 book, The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time. Hall observed that cultures structured and perceived time differently and that this led to different behaviours. In monochronic societies, time is considered as a commodity that must be used well. To do this, monochronic societies assign tasks to specific times and like to complete one task before moving on to the next. Polychronic societies, in contrast, see time as flexible and unlimited. These societies are happy with a large number of tasks being carried out simultaneously. These fundamental differences in attitude result in behaviour that can irritate others – for example, a person from a monochronic culture will be upset by a polychronic person’s lack of punctuality. A person from a polychronic society may be surprised or irritated by a monochronic person’s insistence on taking their lunch break at a specific time because that is the time they always take their lunch.
As with Hofstede, the work of Hall has been extremely influential and has led to many practical applications in the area of communication skills training for people working in international business and diplomacy. His original theories have been confirmed by subsequent research and have been developed and adapted by other theorists, most notably Lewis, who …
3.7 a As I said before, this analogy is frequently used in the field of cross-cultural studies and is now so widely accepted that there is disagreement about when it was first formulated and who actually originated the model. The general consensus is that it was most probably Edward T. Hall, about whom you will hear more later in this lecture.
b I must point out that a number of criticisms have been voiced about his work. One of these is that it assumes that national borders and cultural borders are always the same, which is not, of course, the case. Another is that, being originally based on questionnaires completed mainly by male engineers, it is not representative of all groups in society. Nevertheless, his work was groundbreaking and many subsequent researchers have validated his original findings and expanded upon them.
c As with Hofstede, the work of Hall has been extremely influential and has led to many practical applications in the area of communication skills training for people working in international business and diplomacy. His original theories have been confirmed by subsequent research and have been developed and adapted by other theorists, most notably Lewis, who …
Unit 4
4.1 Hi, I’m Takis. Most of you know me by sight at least, as we’re in the same class, but you may not all know that I come from
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