Intercultural Skills for International Business and International Relations

1 Introduction 9
1.1 What is the use of this book? 11
1.2 Resistance to intercultural training 12
1.3 A costly example: Sephora’s failure in Japan 15
1.4 Another costly intercultural business blunder: Walmart’s failure in Germany 18
1.5 The need for intercultural training 20
1.6 Cultural units: countries, religions, languages 22
1.7 Cultures as partially overlapping entities 25
1.8 The ecological fallacy 26
1.9 A definition of culture 30
1.10 Values and practices 31

2 Basic mechanisms: SRC, attribution 35
2.1 SRC, the self-reference criterion 37
2.2 Attribution 38
2.3 Reversibility and transitivity of attributions 41

3 Time 45
3.1 Temporal structure of a conversation 47
3.1.1 Backchannelling 47
3.1.2 Turn-taking 50
3.1.3 Tolerance of silence 53
3.2 Punctuality 55
3.3 Temporal structure of a negotiation 58
3.4 Long-term vs. short-term orientation 70
3.5 Time and tasks: polychrony vs. monochrony 73
3.6 Some philosophical aspects of time 77
3.6.1 The arrow of time 77
3.6.2 Event-linked time (procedural time) 80
3.6.3 The past and the future 82

4 Space 89
4.1 Proxemics: interpersonal distance 91
4.2 Haptics: physical contact 93
4.3 Office space 95

5 Verbal communication: language 97
5.1 English as a foreign language 99
5.1.1 Avoid idioms and check for understanding 99
5.1.2 Some common pronunciation problems 101
5.1.3 Working with interpreters 103
5.2 Loudness of voice 104
5.3 Expressing oneself 105
5.3.1 Verbal exaggeration, overstatements and superlatives 105
5.3.2 Verbal rhetoric and expressing emotions 107
5.3.3 Conflictual tone of voice 108
5.3.4 Honorifics and social stratification 110
5.4 High/low context communication 115
5.4.1 High context communication, face-saving and preserving harmony 116
5.4.2 Low context communication 134

6 Non-verbal communication 141
6.1 Facial expressions 144
6.2 Eye contact 146
6.3 Gestures 148
6.3.1 Nodding and shaking your head 148
6.3.2 The OK-sign 149
6.3.3 Beckoning 151

7 Etiquette 153
7.1 Greetings 156
7.2 Gift-giving 157
7.3 Dining, smoking and entertainment 159
7.4 Hands, feet, the head and other taboos 167
7.5 Belief systems and superstition 170

8 Hierarchy 177
8.1 Power distance in Hofstede’s work 179
8.1.1 What does power distance mean? 179
8.1.2 The power distance index: country scores 182
8.1.3 The origins of cultural dimensions 183
8.1.4 Power distance in business and organizations 184
8.1.5 Power distance and professional class 186
8.2 Hierarchy in the workplace 187
8.3 Beware of oversimplification 189

9 Individualism 191
9.1 Individualism: a Western and historically recent invention 193
9.2 Hofstede’s individualism index values and their implications for work-related situations 196
9.3 Individualism vs. group orientation: discussion and further examples 199
9.4 Related and correlated concepts 203
9.4.1 High vs. low context communication, vagueness and tolerance of silence 203
9.4.2 Shame vs. guilt cultures 204
9.4.3 Face-saving and harmony 205
9.4.4 Indebtedness 205
9.4.5 Getting acquainted and being part of the in-group 207
9.4.6 Dependency relations 209
9.5 The correlation between Hofstede’s power distance and individualism 209

10 Work, ambition, career orientation vs. leisure, family and vacation 213
10.1 Masculinity vs. femininity 215
10.2 Indulgence vs. restraint 220

11 Uncertainty avoidance: stress, anxiety and fear of the unknown 221
11.1 Country scores on the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) 223
11.2 The UAI scores in the workplace 224
11.3 Uncertainty avoidance: discussion 228

12 Research methodologies 229
12.1 Sociology 231
12.1.1 Hofstede 231
12.1.2 Dimensions, value types, values: terminological and conceptual issues 234
12.1.3 Authors inspired by Hofstede 236
12.2 Anthropological approach 241
12.2.1 Qualitative vs. quantitative research 241
12.2.2 An example: d’Iribarne, The Logic of Honor 243
12.3 Cross-cultural psychology 250
12.4 Linguistics: conversational analysis 251
12.5 Cases and examples 253
12.6 Cultural clusters 257
12.7 Stereotypes and how to deal with them 259
12.8 Change and evolution of cultural values over time 265

13 Attitudinal issues and ethics 269
13.1 Ethnocentrism 271
13.2 Universalism and cultural relativism 272
13.3 Minimizing and normalizing differences 279
13.4 Cultural bias 283
13.4.1 Cultural bias in publications 283
13.4.2 Hofstede’s survey and the Chinese Values Survey (CVS) 286
13.5 Tolerance 287
13.5.1 Religious (in)tolerance and syncretism 287
13.5.2 Tolerance and openness today 292
13.6 Nationalism vs. multiculturalism 295
13.6.1 A homogeneous society? 295
13.6.2 Nationalism 296
13.6.3 A multicultural society 300
13.6.4 Diversity 306

14 Adaptation strategies: who should adapt to whom? 309
14.1 An often ignored issue 311
14.2 Some preliminaries and a research program 313
14.2.1 A typology of adaptation strategies 313
14.2.2 Predictive factors 316
14.2.3 Evaluating adaptation strategies 318

15 Globalization 323
15.1 Convergence 325
15.2 Divergence 328
15.3 Cultural features and economic growth 333

16 Further explorations 337
16.1 Intercultural negotiations 339
16.2 Expatriation 341
16.2.1 The failure rate of expatriates 341
16.2.2 Selection of appropriate candidates for expatriation 343
16.2.3 Pre-departure training and repatriation training 344
16.3 International management: managing multicultural teams 346
16.4 Cross-cultural marketing 346
16.4.1 Pictures and names 346
16.4.2 Colors, sounds and smells 347
16.5 Intercultural communication in general 350
16.6 Area studies 350

Exercises 355
References 377
Index 399