Module 1

What is culture?

Papiya De

·         What is culture?

·         How to decode culture

·         Study of individuals and cultures

·         Categorization of cultures

·         Culture shock

Communication and culture

According to Rao and Thombre in Intercultural Communication : The Indian Context, in the larger Indian worldview and philosophy, communication is viewed as a process of achieving sadharanikaran, which essentially means simplification.  Conceptually, it means achieving oneness or commonness through sharing, and comes close to the Latin word communis or its modern English version communication.  The concept is linked to sahridayata- being kindred in spirit.  It is only due to sahridayata that two-way communication and mutual understanding are possible in a society with asymmetrical relationships.  When sadharikaran is successful, commonness of experience takes place. 

Communication skill is intrinsically related to the culture of the group to which the individual belongs.  Messages that we send individually or as members of a group or receive are processed by a cultural/mental filter.

This filter or the mindset is forged by our family, friends, neighbourhood, the school, and society at large.  In India, even caste, community, and class contribute to the making of this mental filter.  The mental filter or mindset makes us understand each other better, but at times leads to misunderstandings.  Unless we understand the attitude, the mindset and the background of the person with whom we interact, our communication skills would be imperfect and ineffective. 

Reciprocal relationship between Communication and Culture

The two terms are interconnected in fundamental ways.  Communication influences culture and in turn culture influences communication.  Culture is created, shaped, transmitted, and learned through communication.  The reverse is also the case: that is, communication practices are largely created, shaped, and transmitted by culture. 

What is culture?

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As we grow up, these learned national and/or regional concepts become our core beliefs, which The word culture comes from the Latin cultura, which is related to cult or worship. (Luthans & Doh, p.96).

Geert Hofstede defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.”  According to Richard Lewis, the key expression in this definition is collective programming. Although not as sinister as brainwashing, with its connotations of political coercion, it nevertheless describes a process to which each one of us has been subjected since birth.  Parents and teachers obviously give children the best advice they can to prepare them for successful interactions in their own culture and society, where good and bad, right and wrong, normal and abnormal are clearly defined.  It is perhaps unfortunate in one sense that each cultural group gives its children a different set of instructions, each equally valid in their own environment we find almost impossible to discard.  We regard others’ beliefs and habits as strange or eccentric, mainly because they are unlike our own.  On the other hand, we have a sneaking feeling that “deep down all people are alike.” There is also truth in this, for there are such things as universal human characteristics.  They are not as numerous as one might think, for our national collective programming distorts some of our basic instincts.  Some people, by dint of personal originality, extra powers of perception, stubbornness or even genius, stand apart from their colleagues and deviate sharply from the national track.  Such people often become famous for their idiosyncrasies, and a few have actually changed the course of their nation’s destiny, for example, Kemal Ataturk. 

In general, however, our national or regional culture imposes itself on our behaviour rather than the other way round, and we become a solid German, a good Swede, a real American or a true Brit, as the case may be.  Interacting with our compatriots, we generally find that the closer we stick to the rules of our society, the more accepted we become. (Lewis, pp 19-20).

Culture is something that members of groups have in common.  It is the glue that binds groups together.  Without cultural patterns – organized systems of significant symbols – people would have difficulty in living together. 

Culture is a way of life of a people which demonstrates their celebrated achievements in thought, morals, and material production, and a community’s body of knowledge, beliefs and values. 

Individuals are products of their culture, and their social groupings.  Culture is neither a system of abstract values that exists independently of individuals, nor can it be separated from the historical context.  Culture is to society what memory is to individuals.  It includes the things that have worked well in the past.  It includes shared beliefs, attitudes, norms, roles, and values found among speakers of a particular language who live during the same historical period in a specific geographic region.  These shared elements of subjective culture are usually transferred from generation to generation.  Often people refer to culture as an environmental influence, as if it is outside the person, but it is an integral aspect of a person (Rao & Thombre, pp. 8-9).  

For the purposes of the study of international management, culture is acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behaviour.  This knowledge forms values, creates attitudes, and influences behaviour (Luthans & Doh, p.96).

How to decode culture: 

Every group or category of people carries a set of mental programs that constitutes its culture, so the term “culture” can be attributed to different collectives such as nations, regions within nations, ethnic or tribal groups, occupations, organizations, and even gender or age cohorts.  Thus, there are several layers of culture.  However, and primarily, culture is divided into two main aspects: the material and the immaterial or spiritual.  The material part consists of our dressing styles, eating habits, and use of household goods among other things.  The immaterial aspects of culture consist of ways of our thinking, ideals, emotions, and beliefs.  For want of a better definition, it is best conceptualized as a totality.  It is composed of a complex system of symbols possessing subjective dimensions such as values, feelings, and ideals and objective dimensions including beliefs, traditions, and behavioural prescriptions, articulated into laws and rituals.  The unique capacity of culture is to bind the objective world of perceived reality to the subjective world of the personal and intimate (Rao & Thombre, p.11). 

According to Elizabeth Tuleja, culture is, in some ways, like an iceberg.  What we see on the surface is the most familiar and readily identifiable.  The usual associations with culture are a people’s language, traditions, customs, food, dress, and more.  Such things are noticeable, identifiable and observable.  What we can’t see below the surface is what supports those external trappings.  What we can see is simply an outward manifestation of all of those underlying factors that inform our behaviour and shape our world view -  our attitudes, beliefs and values.  Values are fundamental, unmovable tenets that make us who we are and that shape all other structures in our attitudinal system.  We acquire them at an early age from people we trust, before rational thought begins to play a role in what we know and hold to be true.  Those values serve as the foundation for everything else in our attitudinal system.

These provide the basis for our beliefs, those truths that we hold to be self-evident because they are based on our value.  If friendship, for example, is a fundamental value for us, then we believe that genuine friends will behave in certain ways and will expect certain things of us.  We, in turn, can expect certain things of them and will be more willing to go out of our way to help our friends – because we believe in them. 

Attitudes, in turn, arise from and are consistent with those beliefs.  It’s a navigational term, really, meaning orientation and position.  Thus, an attitude gives some meaning and direction to our beliefs, serving as a guide to general thinking and our views of life over the near term.  If a fundamental value of ours tells us that living a healthy lifestyle is important, than a consistent belief might be that smoking cigarettes is not a good idea.  The attitude that arises from that belief would tell us, for example, that we not only shouldn’t smoke, but that we should dissuade others from smoking.

Behaviour is the direct result of all these structures and is found at the uppermost level of our attitudinal system.  It not only gives meaning and life to our more basic attitudes and beliefs, but it is the most visible portion of our system of beliefs.  We observe behaviours and infer the attitudes and beliefs that animate them.  Behaviour is often expressed in the form of opinion: for the moment, at least, it’s our opinion that we will vote for this person, dine at that restaurant, or purchase a particular brand.  It’s all subject to change, of course, and is less predictable than the underlying attitudes, beliefs, and values that support it.

Edward Hall, who gave the analogy of the iceberg suggests that the only way to learn the internal culture of others is to actively participate in their culture.  When one enters a new culture, only the most overt behaviours are apparent.  As one spends more time in that new culture, the underlying beliefs, values, and thought patterns that dictate that behaviour will be uncovered.  This model teaches to not judge a new culture based only on what we see when we first enter it.  We must take time the time to get to know individuals from that culture and interact with them.  Only by doing so, we can uncover the values and beliefs that underlie the behaviour of that society.

The importance of studying intercultural communication

The business world is becoming more international and interrelated, and international economies are bound together and are interdependent.  Widespread population migrations have changed the demographics of several nations, and new intercultural identities and communities have been born.  Cultural diversity and multiculturalism are the realities of working and domestic life everywhere.  In order to live and function in this multicultural environment as effectively and meaningfully as possible, people must be competent in intercultural communication. 

 

If international managers do not know something about the cultures of the countries they deal with, the results can be quite disastrous.  For example, a partner in one of New York’s leading private banking firms tells the following story:

I travelled nine thousand miles to meet a client and arrived with my foot in my mouth.  Determined to do things right, I’d memorized the names of the key men I was to see in Singapore.  No easy job, inasmuch as the names all came in threes.  So, of course, I couldn’t resist showing off that I’d done my homework.  I began by addressing top man Lo Win Hao with plenty of well-placed Mr. Hao’s – sprinkled the rest of my remarks with a Mr. Chee this and a Mr. Woon that.  Great show.  Until a note was passed to me from one man I’d met before, in New York.  Bad news.  “Too friendly too soon, Mr. Long,” it said.  Where diffidence is next to godliness, there I was, calling a room of VIPs, in effect, Mr. Ed and Mr. Charlie.  I’d remembered everybody’s name – but forgot that in Chinese the surname comes first and the given name last” (Luthans & Doh, pp.96-97). 

Study of individuals and cultures

The challenge of studying culture in the present times is to understand what contributes to the development of toxic, pathological cultures of tyranny, terrorism, and despair as well as to understand what contributes to healthy and salugenic (transformative) cultures of freedom, compassion and optimism. 

Six false or inadequate assumptions of culture:

1.       Culture is homogenous: There are internal paradoxes, differences and contradictions in all cultures

2.       Culture is a thing: Culture is not always concrete; it can be manifested in many ways beyond the concrete and sometimes, even beyond the other senses.

3.       Culture is uniformly distributed among members of a group: Even in a small, specifically identifiable group, all members do not share a uniform culture.

4.       An individual is a member of a single culture: We are members of a variety of several cultural groups – religious, social, political, economic, etc. 

5.       Culture is custom: Since customs and traditions that change over time are influenced by a variety of historical, economic, political and other factors, we can surmise that not every girl growing up in Chennai learned to wear a sari, nor does every Delhi bridegroom ride in a baraat to the wedding.

6.       Culture is timeless: Traditions, behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs change over time.  Modernity has wrought major changes and globalization is bringing more changes faster.

 

Dimensions of culture

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Dutch researcher Geert identified four dimensions and later, a fifth dimension, of culture that help explain how and why people from various cultures behave as they do.  His initial data were gathered from two questionnaire surveys with over 116,000 respondents from over 70 different countries around the world – making it the largest organizationally based study ever conducted.  The individuals in these studies all worked in the local subsidiaries of IBM.  The dimensions examined were as follows:

1.       Power distance: This is the extent to which less powerful members of institutions and organizations accept that power is distributed unequally.  Countries in which people blindly obey the orders of their superiors have high power distance.  In such countries, strict obedience is found even at the upper levels.  Examples include Mexico, South Korea, and India.  The effect of this dimension can be measured in a number of ways.  For example, organizations in low-power-distance countries generally will be decentralized and have flatter organization structures.  These organizations also will have a smaller proportion of supervisory personnel, and the lower strata of the workforce often will consist of highly qualified people.  By contrast, organizations in high-power-distance countries will tend to be centralized and have tall organization structures.  Organizations in high-power-distance countries will have a large proportion of supervisory personnel, and the people at the lower levels of the structure often will have low job qualifications.  This latter structure encourages and promotes inequality between people at different levels. 

Power distance in Indians: Indians score 77 on the power distance index (compared to the world average of 56.5) indicating that Indians are accustomed to and like a top-down structure and hierarchy.  Indian corporate workforce power distance relates to acceptance of unequal rights between the power-privileged and those who are lower down the pecking order.  Likewise, in a typical corporate set up, immediate superiors are accessible but are paternalistic in leadership order.

2.       Uncertainty avoidance:  This is the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these.  Countries populated with people who do not like uncertainty tend to have a high need for security and a strong belief in experts and their knowledge; examples include Germany, Japan, and Spain.  Cultures with low uncertainty avoidance have people who are more willing to accept that risks are associated with the unknown and that life must go on in spite of this.  Examples include Denmark and Great Britain.  The effects of this dimension: Countries with high-uncertainty-avoidance cultures have a great deal of structuring of organizational activities, more written rules, less risk taking by managers, lower labour turnover, and less ambitious employees.  Low-uncertainty-avoidance societies have organization settings with less structuring of activities, fewer written rules, more risk taking by managers, higher labour turnover, and more ambitious employees.  The organization encourages personnel to use their own initiative and assume responsibility for their actions.

Uncertainty avoidance for Indians: India scores 40 (as against the world average of 65) on this dimension and thus a medium to low preference for avoiding uncertainty.  In India, there is acceptance of imperfection; nothing has to be perfect nor has to go exactly as planned.  India is traditionally a country with a long-term view, where tolerance for the unexpected is high, and even welcomed as a break from monotony.  People generally do not feel driven and compelled to take action initiatives.  They comfortably settle into established roles and routines without questioning.  This behaviour is much evident in the chalta hai attitude which has become the bane of Indian society. 

3.       Individualism: This is the tendency of people to look after themselves and their immediate family only.  Hofstede measured this cultural difference on a bipolar continuum with individualism at one end and collectivism at the other.  Collectivism is the tendency of people to belong to groups or collectives and to look after each other in exchange for loyalty.  The effects of this dimension:  Hofstede found that wealthy countries have higher individualism scores and poorer countries higher collectivism scores.  The United States, Canada, Australia, Denmark, and Sweden, among others, have high individualism and high GNP.  Conversely, Indonesia, Pakistan, and a number of South American countries have low individualism (high collectivism) and low GNP.  Countries with high individualism also tend to have greater support for the Protestant work ethic, greater individual initiative, and promotions based on market value.  Countries with low individualism tend to have less support for the Protestant work ethic, less individual initiative, and promotions based on seniority. 

Individualism for Indians: A comparison of India and the US, on this dimension, reveals a marked difference between the two cultures.  This implies that the Indian culture reinforces taking responsibility for extended family and fellow members of the group.

4.       Masculinity: This has been defined as the extent to which the dominant values in society emphasize the relationships among people, concern for others, and overall quality of life.  It also deals with gender differentiation in the form of degree of reinforcement by the society for traditional masculine role models of male achievement and power and control (McShane, Glinow & Sharma).  Traditionally men are more assertive, achieving status and material gain for the family, while women are the nurturers assigned to a clear role as caregiver for the family.  Feminine cultures accept that both men and women can be ambitious and are comfortable with overlapping gender roles that include both those of provider and those of the empathic care-giver.  The countries with cultures that emphasize distinct differences in gender roles and are considered high on the masculinity scale include Arab countries, Mexico, Japan, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany. 

Masculinity for Indians: India has a ranking of 56 on this dimension as compared to the world average of 51.  This indicates a gap between the values of the males and females in India.

5.       Long-term/Short term orientation: Hofstede added another dimension that relates to a long-term versus short-term focus on life. The long-term focus includes persistence, maintaining order in relationships through status, thrift, and having a sense of shame.  The short-term focus includes stability, saving face, respecting tradition, and giving favours and sharing gifts.  Values toward the long-term pole are more future-oriented and dynamic.  Countries that tend to be more long-term oriented include China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan South Korea, Brazil, and India.  Values that reflect a more short-term orientation (focus on past and present) are usually more static.  Countries with short-term orientation include Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Canada, Great Britain, the United States, and New Zealand.  This is demonstrated in the business world by the notion of reciprocity.  Part of the Asian way of developing and maintaining strong business relationships is through trust and mutual respect.  Meetings serve the purpose of establishing the relationship.  Taking time to get to know your clients is paramount to Asian ways of thinking; after all, how can you do business (which requires trust) with strangers? 

6.       High-context v/s Low context cultures:

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall created the notion of high-and-low context cultures.  Hall developed a continuum along which he charted the communication patterns of various cultures:

In high-context cultures meaning is derived from the subtle, tacit actions and reactions of the communicators and not necessarily the words they use.  Communication is less direct.  Relationships are especially important, so the manner in which something is said, and the attention paid to the audience for those remarks are carefully observed.  For example, silence can mean that a person is thinking, is showing deference, or is simply taking the time to respond while observing the reactions of the receiver.  A speaker from a high context culture will understand the importance of that silence and will infer that implicit meanings often speak louder than words. 

A low-context culture relies more on the explicit or actual words that are spoken.  Emphasis is placed on being direct, and receivers are meant to the respond to the verbal code in more literal ways.  The task is more important than the relationship, so low-context speakers will use clear language, and a lot of it, to get the point across.  Low-context speakers are uncomfortable with silence and will quickly try to fill it with words.  Such speakers may interpret silence as a lack of understanding and will, therefore, feel as if they have to explain in more detail.

Because people of low-context cultures favour directness, they are likely to consider high-context communication a waste of time.  An awareness of how high-and-low context cultures approach conflict is important; U.S. Americans, for example, will raise their voices, speak rapidly, and express clearly what is on their minds.  People of China, on the other hand, will be less open and will use body language, silence and pauses to convey messages.  An example of high-context communication is the way the Japanese indicate “no”.  They say “yes” for “no” but indicate whether “yes” is “yes” or really “no” by the context, tone, time taken to answer, and facial and body expressions.  This use of high-context communication can be very confusing to the uninitiated non-sensitive intercultural business person.  In the United States, which is a low-context society, “no” means “no”.  Group oriented collectivistic cultures tend to use high-context languages; individualistic cultures tend to use low-context languages.

Culture shock:

This generally goes through five stages: excitement or initial euphoria, crisis or disenchantment, acceptance, and re-entry. It has been visualized as being represented by a U-curve, with the top of the left side of the curve representing the positive beginning, the crisis stage starts down the left side to the base of the U, the adjustment phase starts at the base of the curve, then acceptance moves up the right side of the curve, and re-entry into the original curve is at the top of the right side of the curve. 

1.      The initial euphoria or the honeymoon stage:  The first stage may last only a few days or several months.  During this time, everything is new and different; you are fascinated with the food and the people.  Your enthusiasm for the new culture causes you to overlook minor problems, such as having to drink bottled water and the absence of air conditioning.

2.      The crisis or the disenchantment period: Your excitement has turned to disappointment as you encounter more and more differences between your own culture and the new culture.  Problems with transportation, unfamiliar food and people who do not speak English now seem overwhelming.  Emotions of homesickness, irritation, anger, confusion, resentment, helplessness and depression occur during the second stage.  People at this stage often cope with the situation by making disparaging remarks about the culture; it is sometimes referred to as the “fight-back” technique.  Others deal with this stage by leaving, either physically, emotionally or psychologically.  Those who remain may withdraw from people in the culture, refuse to learn the language, and develop coping behaviours of excessive drinking or drug use. 

3.      The adjustment phase:  You begin to accept the new culture or your return home.  Those who stay will try new foods and make adjustments in behaviour to accommodate the new lifestyle.  You begin to see the humour in situations and realize that a change in attitude toward the host culture will make the stay abroad more rewarding.

4.      The Acceptance phase:  You feel at home in the new culture, become involved in activities of the culture, cultivate friendships among the nationals, and feel comfortable in social situations with people from the host culture.  You learn the language and may adopt the new culture’s style of doing things.  You even learn to enjoy some customs.

5.      The re-entry shock:  This can be almost as traumatic as the initial adjustment to a new culture, particularly after an extended stay abroad.  Many individuals are shocked at the fact that they feel the same emotional, psychological, and physical reactions they did when they entered the new culture.