International Business, 6th Edition

The Role of Culture

4-1 Griffin & Pustay Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Chapter Objectives

• Discuss the primary characteristics of

culture
• Describe the various elements of culture
and provide examples of how they
influence international business
• Identify the means by which members of
a culture communicate with each other

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 Chapter Objectives (continued)

• Discuss how religious and other values

affect the domestic environments in
which international businesses operate
• Describe the major cultural clusters and
their usefulness for international
managers
• Explain Hofstede’s primary findings about
differences in cultural values
• Explain how cultural conflicts may arise
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 Culture

Culture is the collection of values,

beliefs, behaviors, customs, and
attitudes that distinguish one society
from another. A society’s culture
determines the rules that govern how
firms operate in the society.
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 Characteristics of Culture

• Learned behavior
• Interrelated elements
• Adaptive
• Shared

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 What happens when it goes
wrong?

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 Figure 4.1 Elements of Culture

Language

Social
Communication
structure

Culture

Values/
Religion
attitudes

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 Social Structure

Individuals, families, and groups

Social stratification

Social mobility

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 Language

• 3000+ different languages

worldwide
• 10,000+ different dialects
• Primary delineator of cultural groups

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 Map 4.1 World Languages

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 Map 4.2 Africa’s Colonial Legacy

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 Translation Disasters

• KFC’s Finger Lickin’ Good

– Eat your fingers off (China)
• Pillsbury’s Jolly Green Giant
– Intimidating green ogre (Saudi
Arabia)

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 Caterpillar Fundamental English

Caterpillar has
developed its own
simplified language
instruction program

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 Yes and No Across Cultures

• Latin America
– meaning of “mañana”
• Japan
– meaning of “yes” versus “yes, I
understand”

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 Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal Communication
may account for 80-90 percent of all
information transmitted among
members of a culture
by means other than language.

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 Table 4.1 Forms of Nonverbal
Communication, Part 1

• Hand gestures • Touching

• Facial expression • Eye contact
• Posture and • Architecture/
stance interior design
• Clothing/hair style • Artifacts and non-
verbal symbols
• Walking behavior
• Graphic symbols
• Interpersonal
distance
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 Table 4.1 Forms of Nonverbal
Communication, Part 2

• Art and rhetorical • Taste, symbolism

forms of food, oral
gratification
• Smell
• Cosmetics
• Speech rate,
pitch, inflection, • Sound signals
volume
• Time symbolism
• Color symbolism
• Timing and
• Synchronization of pauses
speech and
movement • Silence
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 Gift Giving and Hospitality

Gift giving is an
important means of
communication,
but what is
appropriate varies.

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 Religion

• Imposes constraints on roles of

individuals in society
• Affects the types of products
consumers may purchase
• Varies from country to country

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 Religion

Christianity

Islam

Hinduism

Buddhism

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 Map 4.3 Major World Religions

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 Religion

Two million
Muslims annually
descend on the
Grand Mosque in
Mecca, Saudi
Arabia as part of
the Haij

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 Values and Attitudes

Values are the principles and

standards accepted by the members;
attitudes encompass the actions,
feelings, and thoughts that result
from those values.

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 Values and Attitudes (continued)

Time Age

Education Status

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 Theories of Culture

• Hall’s Low-Context, High-Context

Approach
• Cultural Cluster Approach
• Hofstede’s Five Dimensions

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 Hall’s Low-Context
High-Context Approach

An approach to understanding
communication based on the relative
emphasis on verbal and nonverbal
cues to transmit meaning

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 Figure 4.2 High- and Low-Context Cultures

Low High
U.S. / Canadian

Context Context
Scandinavian

Vietnamese
Japanese

Chinese
German

Spanish

Korean
British

Greek
Italian
Swiss

Arab

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 The Cultural Cluster Approach

An approach to understanding
communication based on meaningful
clusters of countries that share
similar cultural values

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 Map 4.4 A Synthesis of
Country Clusters

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 Hofstede’s Five Dimensions

Social Orientation

Power Orientation

Uncertainty Orientation

Goal Orientation

Time Orientation

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 Social Orientation

Individualism Collectivism

Relative importance of the

interests of the individual versus
interests of the group

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 Power Orientation

Power Respect Power Tolerance

Appropriateness of power/authority
within organizations

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 Figure 4.4 Social Orientation
and Power Orientation Patterns

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 Uncertainty Orientation

Uncertainty Uncertainty
Acceptance Avoidance

Emotional response to uncertainty and change

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 Goal Orientation

Aggressive Passive

What motivates people to achieve different goals

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 Time Orientation

Long-term Short-term
outlook outlook

The extent to which members of a culture

adopt a long-term or a short-term outlook
on work and life
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 Understanding New Cultures

Self-reference
criterion

Cultural literacy Acculturation

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 Lecture Take Aways

• There are many cultural differences – most

experts disagree what exactly there are and
how they are defined.
• There is Natural Culture (sometimes more than
one, but also professional or organisational
ones.
• In the future, national culture may evolve into
hybrid culture where visual aspects may change
but distinct values remain the same……or vice
versa???? Food for thought.

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