this homework for Adrian Monroe so please do not send me MSG

Essay #1

Three Stages of Cultural Development

As an exercise in self-knowledge, the assignment is to read the following essay and answer questions at the end that document your stages of cross-cultural personal and professional development. This may parallel the outline of this essay as follows:

1st culture awareness

2nd culture’s impact on business

3rd culture differences for competitive advantage

Song For Gwydion

When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming

Quietly as snow on the bare boughs of bone,

My father brought me trout from the green river

From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland

Of stipples faded, as light shocked the brain;

They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,

A young god, ignorant of the blood’s stain.

In this poem R.S. Thomas captures the deep beauty as well as the harshness of his Welsh countryside. The description of trout outside their natural environment, e.g., “light shocked the brain,” is a graphic portrayal of the degree of culture shock human beings often feel when they travel, live, and work outside of their national environment.

I was exposed to these contrasting environments a world away from Wales and R.S. Thomas in the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador, South America. When I was a boy, instead of trout my father brought me Wambi and Cusea, salmon-like fish with lovely colored bands running down their sides. These fish had a magical effect on me, freshly caught and lying on our porch in handmade tribal baskets. Muscular and silvery, they were so obviously from a different world than ours – a world of swift currents, wet boulders, and lightening attacks on prey.

The culture around me, the Shuar, held an even greater fascination. The Shuar (previously called Jibaro) are the only head shrinking tribe in the world. On one hand, the Shuar were so fierce they are said to be the only tribe never conquered by the Incan Empire yet on the other hand they were always open and extremely hospitable to me. Like the Wambi and Cusea, the Shuar seemed to come from an entirely different world – another culture full of spontaneity and natural dignity in their isolated homes along jungle riverbanks and under the rainforest canopy.

Discovering other cultures like the Shuar is part of a three-step process in the human experience where: (1) we learn to recognize other people have different cultures than ours, and, (2) we arrive at that point, reached by fewer individuals, where we learn both how to understand those cultural differences, and, 3) how to use those differences to be more functional in the multi-culture workplace. The international professional or business person passes through these same three levels of cultural understanding in order to become effective in their jobs. The three steps, or levels of cultural understanding, can be classified as follows:

1) Cultural awareness

1. Culture’s impact on business and the professional world

2. Applying cultural differences for professional effectiveness and competitive advantage

Most of us can trace back to that significant period or incident when we first recognized other people can have very different perceptions of life than we and our family have. This first step is called the cultural awareness level. In my case this exposure came very early in life as my parents gave me the tremendous gift of a multi-culture, multilingual background in South America’s Amazonia.

Around five years of age I first remember being conscious of the fact that if a person spoke a certain language there was a strong tendency for that person to also behave in the same way as other people who spoke that language. And that people who spoke that one language had a tendency to have different ways of seeing the world around them than people who spoke a different language. I observed this while playing with my Shuar friends in the Shuar language, speaking Spanish -- the national language of Ecuador -- with settlers or colonistas to that region, and then speaking English at home with my expatriate American parents.

One of my early memories of culturally different ways of “seeing” had to do with Americans visiting us at our jungle station. In those days Shuar women were not so concerned about covering their bosoms and would nurse in public or not bother to close their blouses all the way. I remember guests from the United States and the men’s reactions when a Shuar was feeding her baby in front of them. The American’s eyes would look furtively to the left and to the right and his face would flush in embarrassment.

Then, when we went swimming, the “shoe would be on the other foot,” as we say in American slang. Our home was in the upper Amazon rainforest, where rivers were clear and fast-flowing, more like salmon streams than the lower, muddy Amazon river itself, and where we swam was also the place where Shuar came down to cross the river.

Visiting American women, knowing that Shuar culture was more traditional and wanting to be culturally sensitive, would wear conservative, single-piece bathing suits rather than two-piece or bikini styles. Now I watched as the Shuar men showed a similar embarrassment to the American men -- blushing under their brown skin and obviously not knowing quite where to put their eyes. This reaction was because Shuar women swam with full skirts on, so, for the Shuar men all that exposed American female leg was too immodest!

Again, as a small boy, these two situations were a bit puzzling. I was observing behaviors which, to me, were perfectly normal but it was obvious that according to the language you spoke each of these sets of behaviors caused a strong reaction with one group and went entirely unnoticed by the other group. Eventually, continuing incidents like these lead to an understanding of this first level of culture awareness and the fact that different groups of people see the world differently.

Many of us come to recognize this second level of culture when we join the working world. We had developed generally accepted approaches to managerial issues such as decision-making, leadership, problem-solving, superior/subordinate relations, conflict resolution, etc., then discover to our surprise that international colleagues may prefer approaches to managing people that are quite different, or even opposite, to ours.

I was also exposed relatively early to this second level of culture’s impact on business. Between high school/secondary school in Quito, Ecuador, and university in the U.S.A., I studied one year in the U.K. and then worked with a British organization for one year in Spain, and two years in India and Nepal.

Like other Westerners in Asia, I was hit immediately by the East/West culture differences in the workplace. For instance, I would schedule meetings with three different clients at 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 in the morning. The first meeting would start on time and the client was friendly but by 9:10 frustration and restlessness would set in as the client had become too “friendly,” we had not gotten around to real business yet, and he wanted to talk about how I liked India, my family background, local social events, etc., all the time supplying me with a constant service of tea and snacks. Of course this left me scrambling to re-schedule the next appointments, although at the next meeting the same process would happen again.

Eventually, like other Westerners, I learned that Asia is a more relationship-oriented culture and this meant it was necessary to take much more time with business partners to build personal relationships. So instead of scheduling three client meetings during a morning we would only schedule two. Relationship-oriented cultures also tend to be more relaxed about the use of time, expanding scheduled commitments if more time is needed to build, maintain, or bring better closure to human relationships. In the same way, I learned to always carry with me a book or magazines I wanted to read or writing materials or other work so that when there was an hour and a half wait at a government or business office I would not get frustrated and used that waiting room as my virtual office.

The differences between Asian and Western approaches to work in India/Nepal were very interesting, since East and West represent some of the greatest cultural variances on this planet. Just as fascinating to me, however, were the differences on our mobile sales and distribution teams between just Westerners. Young German, Canadian, Finnish, British, Swedish, and French team members also tended to use different approaches to the management and organization of our sales teams. Over time, those differences among ourselves as Westerners seemed to form a central tendency or pattern consistent with each of our national backgrounds.

For example, the Finns were very nice people but decidedly more reserved than other cultural groups of team members. The Swedes tended to be more comfortable if the whole team made decisions together instead of just the team leader. The French had a more formal, hierarchical view of the team leader than the Canadians and the Americans, the British and Australians tended to be more relaxed about the structure of team meetings than the Germans, etc.

Working on the sales and distribution teams in India/Nepal taught me that cultural differences in the workplace could be as great for “similar” cultures from Europe, the USA, and Canada as well as for the more dramatic culture differences between East and West. Each of us young professionals, Asian and European, also learned how strongly influenced we were by our own cultural and national backgrounds in terms of what we judged to be the “proper” or “improper” ways of doing our jobs or leading our teams.

The first level of cultural understanding is helpful, e.g., awareness of culture differences and awareness of how decent, rational people from different backgrounds can sometimes see the same issue from completely opposite perspectives. It is also important to understand the second level of cultural understanding – how differences in worldviews between people of different cultures can lead to approaching the same managerial issue in different ways.

While the first two levels of cultural understanding are helpful and important to people working in a multi-culture environment, the third level is absolutely vital. This third and highest level of cultural understanding is when cultural differences are recognized and used for greater effectiveness and competitive advantage in the workplace. More time will be spent on this level since it is the most important for professionals in today’s globally diverse workforce.

The particular importance of this last level of cultural understanding is due to the now-permanent internationalization and interdependence of human civilization (“globo sapiens” as someone once defined us). One difficulty of globalization, however, is that while people around the world are coming together more and more their cultures are not; even though human society is integrating on a social and commercial level it is simultaneously fragmenting on a political and cultural level. Since cultures are not blending together in the workplace one of the interesting phenomenon is that the demand curve for culturally knowledgeable professionals is both very high and rising higher all the time.

The importance of using cultural differences to be a more effective professional became a personal reality after I returned from India/Nepal, attended university, and re-joined the working world. I worked on Wall Street, New York, in international banking, management consulting, and investment banking, and then crossed over from the corporate world to my present occupation as a university professor and cross-cultural management consultant. One important lesson learned in those seven years on Wall Street can be framed as the following question: is finance above culture or is culture above finance? In other words, are financial instruments such as long-term loans, derivatives, letters of credit, payment transfers, etc., done in an objective, standardized manner regardless of their cultural setting or are they carried out differently in different cultural settings?

The same lessons I learned regarding international finance and its relationship to culture were reinforced in the area of international EDI, which was the topic of my first six years of research in the university world. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange and basically has to do with computers communicating to other computers without the involvement of human intermediaries. (Today, if EDI is done over the internet, it is more broadly defined as e-business or as EFT, electronic funds transfer.)

An example of international EDI would be a student in Buenos Aires, Argentina, buying a pair of Levi jeans at a local Walmart store. As the retail clerk passes those jeans over the electronic checkout scanner, a message is automatically sent down to a Walmart central database in Bentonville, Arkansas. That computer relays the message to a Levi Strauss data bank in San Francisco and then out to production plants in the Dominican Republic, Korea, etc., saying, “One pair of jeans has been sold at unit X in Buenos Aires, another pair of jeans need to be produced to replace their inventory.” This Levi jeans/international EDI process is carried on without any human intervention, only computers communicating with and sending commands to other computers.

Now a key question regarding this process is the same as the previous question with international finance: is international EDI above culture or is culture above international EDI? Remember, since EDI involves computers communicating with other computers we are dealing with purely technical, globally standardized items such as protocols, software, operating systems, etc.

In summary, what I learned through doing both Wall Street international finance and overseas EDI field research trips was that different cultures regularly have a tendency to carry out aspects of international finance and EDI differently from other cultures. So the answer to the above sets of question is that, yes, international finance and international EDI are influenced by national culture differences. (Although, to be truthful, the answer is also, no, since the extreme standardization of financial and computer processes means that often one will see areas where international finance and EDI are not influenced by culture differences.)

For example, in Mexico, EDI professionals had a more trust-and-relationship-oriented approach to EDI security which was different than the Canadian and USA EDI shops who tended to structure their security in a rules-and-objective-methods approach. Since one of my studies was looking at international EDI within the NAFTA framework, I observed management clashes between firms working together that were due primarily to each side having a different, culturally-generated approach to EDI security.

Anglo Saxon IT managers would walk into a Mexican supplier company, be shocked to see passwords posted openly above the EDI computer station, and declare unequivocally that EDI electronic keys cannot be posted in public under any circumstance.

On the other side of the coin, after working for months in a systems rotation with an Anglo Saxon joint venture (“JV”) partner, Mexican EDI teams became upset because they were still required to show personal identification and pick up new security passes each day they came to work. One of the reasons Mexican systems managers felt personally insulted was because they had already been subjected to extensive bonding procedures, background checks, and security workshops when arriving at their JV partner’s headquarters. And now, after working there long enough to become personally acquainted with their American or Canadian counterparts, they felt they had earned the trust of the department and yet were still being treated as if they were untrustworthy.

One lesson learned from international finance and EDI in the professional world is that national cultural differences can influence standardized technical and financial areas, even those that appear to be above culture or culture-free. It is in the understanding and use of these culture differences that management can gain a competitive advantage by doing international EDI in a more effective way than others who ignore the culture dimension.

This NAFTA EDI security situation is a good example of the need for this third level of cultural understanding, where the goal is to be aware of and use cultural differences for professional effectiveness and competitive advantage. The cross-culturally sensitive EDI manager will have an easier time understanding these business clashes and be able to adjust the workplace situation to accommodate both points of view.

He or she will understand that Mexico, having a more relationship and group-oriented culture, would tend to base EDI security on trust between an in-group of system professionals -- people who had worked together for so long that they were regarded as safe and trustworthy because of their demonstrated commitment over time to the department and to each other. Also, in Mexico, people tend to stay a long time at one job so these systems managers had plenty of opportunity to gain each others trust.

On the other hand, Canada and the USA, having more task-oriented and individualistic cultures, tend to base their approach to EDI security more on objective procedures such as bonding, daily passes, etc. which apply to every individual no matter who they were, how long they had worked for the company, or what relationships they had developed over time. Anglo-Saxons are much more mobile as a society, so with IT mangers moving in and out every several years, a standardized, objective security system makes more sense.

The culturally sensitized systems manager will recognize the background reasons why both sides had such different approaches to EDI security. He/she will be able to neutralize the conflict by explaining to both sides why they chose the procedures they did and then re-design the security process to be more functional to both sides. And of course this effectiveness in the multi-culture workplace was built as the managers progressed through the three stages of culture development mentioned above, from awareness, to its impact on the workplace, to finally using culture differences to improve the work itself.

First Class Assignment: Please describe your personal and/or professional experiences along the lines of these three stages/levels of culture development or consciousness.

(If you haven't international experience, or any international work experience, don't worry as you can write on sub-cultural experiences; like regional differences around the country, experiences with ethnic-Americans or internationals growing up, gender differences—men/women— you’ve encountered, etc…in other words, your essay can primarily be based around the first level of cultural development and your personal experiences with other cultures and sub-cultures)

3-5 double-spaced pages (check syllabus for due date.)