Communication

between cultures 8TH EDITION

Chapter 6
Cultural Values:
Guidelines for
Behavior

Cengage 2012 Chapter 6 Cultural Values: Guidelines for Behavior 1

 Key Ideas
Understanding perception
Understanding values
Cultural patterns
Cultural patterns and communication

Cengage 2012 Chapter 6 Cultural Values: Guidelines for Behavior 2

 Understanding perception
Perception
Making sense of your physical world
Making sense of your social world
How you construct reality
Perception is selective

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 Understanding perception
Perception is learned
Perception is culturally determined
Perception is consistent
Perception is inaccurate

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 Understanding values
Beliefs are foundations for values
Values are individual and collective
Values inform a culture of what is good or ba,
right or wrong, correct or incorrect,
appropriate or inappropriate
Values establish normative modes of behavior
in a culture

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 Cultural patterns
You are more than your culture
Cultural patterns are integrated
Cultural patterns are integrated
Cultural patterns can be contradictory

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 Selecting cultural patterns
Cultural pattern typologies help to identify
and understand dissimilar cultural values
Values presented I cultural patterns are points
along a continuum
There is a great deal of duplication and
similarity between different cultural patterns

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Kohls Values Americans Live By
US Values Foreign Counterpart Values

Personal Control over the Environment 1 Fate

Change 2 Tradition

Time & Its Control 3 Human Interaction

Equality 4 Hierarchy/Rank/Status

Individualism/Privacy 5 Groups Welfare

Self-Help 6 Birthright Inheritance

Competition 7 Cooperation

Future Orientation 8 Past Orientation

Action/Work Orientation 9 "Being" Orientation

10
Informality Formality
11
Directness/Openness/Honesty Indirectness/Ritual/"Face"
12
Practicality/Efficiency Idealism
13
Materialism/Acquisitiveness Spiritualism/Detachment

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 Hofstedes Value Dimensions
Individual/Collectivism
Uncertainty Avoidance
Power Distance
Masculinity/Femininity
Long term/Short term Orientation
Indulgence/Restraint

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 Minkovs
Monumentalism/Flexhumility

Monumentalism Flexhumility
Self-pride/self-promotion Humility
Self-concept is Self-concept is
consistent/fixed flexible/fluid
Truth is absolute Truth is relative
Absolutist cognition Holistic cognition
Religion is important Religion less important

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 Minkovs
Monumentalism/Flexhumility

Monumentalism Flexhumility
Interpersonal
Interpersonal
competition valued competition problematic
Lower value on education Higher value on
Difficulty in adapting to education
another culture Easily adapts to another
culture
Suicide taboo Suicide accepted
Tipping Tipping not
expected/prevalent expected/rarely done

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 Kluckhohn and Strodtbecks
Value Orientation
Basic questions
What is the character of human nature?
What is the relation of humankind to nature?
What is the orientation toward time?
What is the value placed on activity?
What is the relationship of people to each other?

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 Kluckhohn and Strodtbecks
Value Orientation

ORIENTATION VALUE AND BEHAVIOR CHANGE

Human nature Basically evil Mixture of good and evil Basically good
Humans and nature Subject to nature Harmony with nature Master of nature
Sense of time Past Present Future
Activity Being Being-in-Becoming Doing
Social relationships Authoritarian Group Individualism

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 Halls High Context and
Low Context Orientations
High Context
Most of the meaning exchanged during an
encounter is often not communicated through
words
High-context cultures are usually quite
traditional
People from high-context cultures tend to be
attuned to their surroundings and can easily
express and interpret emotions nonverbally

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 Halls High Context and
Low Context Orientations
High Context
Meaning in high-context cultures is also conveyed
through status (age, sex, education, family
background, title, and affiliations) and through an
individuals informal friends and associates
Members of these groups often communicate in
an indirect fashion and rely more on how
something is said, rather than what is said

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 Halls High Context and
Low Context Orientations
Low Context
Low-context cultures typically have considerable
population diversity and tend to
compartmentalize interpersonal contacts
The verbal message contains most of the
information and very little is embedded in the
context or the participants nonverbal activity

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 The Globe Study:
The Globe Study and Cultural Dimensions
Uncertainty The extent that societal or organizational members
Avoidance work to reduce uncertainty about future events
through the use of social norms, protocols, and
established practices.
Power The degree that societal or organizational members
Distance acquiesce to the unequal distribution of power.
Collectivism The degree that established social and organizational
Societal practices condone and reward collective actions and
resource distribution.
Collectivism The degree of pride, loyalty, and interconnectedness
In-group that people have in their family or organization.
Gender The degree that a society or organization minimizes
Egalitarianism differences in gender roles and gender inequality.

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 The Globe Study:
The Globe Study and Cultural Dimensions
Assertiveness How assertive, confrontational, and aggressive are
members of a society or organization in their social
interactions.
Future The extent that people take part in future orientated
Orientation actions, such as planning and investing for the future
and delaying gratification.
Performance The degree that a society or organization rewards
Orientation members for improvement and excellence.
Humane The degree that a society or organization promotes and
Orientation rewards displays of fairness, altruism, generosity,
caring, and kindness toward others.

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Anglo Cluster:
All of the members of this cluster are developed
nations with predominantly English speaking
populations
A major characteristic is an individualistic,
performance based orientation, with a forward
looking perspective
Rewards are a result of merit and there is less
dependence on formal rules and established
procedures
While gender equality is valued, in practice the
countries are male-dominated

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Latin Europe Cluster
A distinctive feature of the Latin Europe group is
the reliance on the state to provide a wide range
of social support services
tends more toward collectivism than
individualism
gender equality was the lowest score of the
cluster
power distance was the highest score

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Nordic Europe Cluster
High score on gender equality, future orientation,
and uncertainty avoidance
Underplaying of assertiveness, familial, and
masculine authority and emphasis on certainty,
social unity and cooperation
The welfare state found in all Nordic nations may
contribute to the clusters low performance
orientation scores

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Germanic Europe Cluster
High scores on assertiveness, uncertainty
avoidance, and power distance
Low scores on gender
Self reliance on well-defined rules and standards,
masculinity
Assertive approach taken by members of these
nations, along
Technocratic orientation

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Eastern Europe Cluster
Preference for hierarchical organizational
leadership practices
Strong in-group collectivism, and gender equality
High tolerance for uncertainty It is useful to note
that
Many of the nations in this cluster were once part
of the former Soviet Union

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Latin America Cluster
Paternalism perspective is a central theme
Desire to sustain personal social status
Predilection for in-group collectivism
Sense of fatalism
Prefer to live life in the present, rather than
planning for the future

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Middle East Cluster
The five nations of this cluster share a common
historical, religious, and socio-cultural heritage.
Arabic is the common language in all but
Turkey
Islam is the dominant religion
Strong in-group collectivism - centers on the
family and attachments to other groups such as
tribe, sect, village, neighborhood, or classmates

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Middle East Cluster
Follow well-defined power distance hierarchies in
their relationships
Have very distinct gender roles, with masculinity
being predominant
Many institutionalized values can be attributed to
the Koran, which teaches that leadership
authority should be respected and provides clear
definitions of the different roles for men and
women

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Southern Asia Cluster:
Strong in-group collectivism, humanism
Preference for social hierarchy
Tendency toward male domination
Within the workforce, women commonly have to
rely on family connections or a lengthy work
history in order to compete with their male
counterparts
It appears that modern South Asian women are
seen as having outside accomplishments but are
expected to concurrently maintain strong family
ties

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 The Globe Study:
Globe societies and clusters
Confucian Asia Cluster
Pervasive influence of Chinese history and
Confucianism
Confucianism that contributes to the
contemporary practice of strong societal and in-
group collectivism performance
Rewards are associated less with individual
achievement and more with attainment of
collective goals

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 Face and Facework
Face is your public identity
Face is acquired, lost, and maintained through
social interaction
The process of acquiring face is referred to as
facework
Facework consists of those actions you
engage in to acquire or maintain face for
yourself or give face to someone else

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 Face and Facework
Face and facework, however, are influenced by
cultural values and vary across cultures
In individualistic cultures a persons face is
usually derived from his or her own self-effort and
is normally independent of others
In collectivistic cultures, group membership is
normally the primary source of identity and
status

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 Face and Facework
Varying attitudes as to what represents face
and how facework is conducted have a very
noticeable impact on how a culture views and
approaches conflict
The differences between face and facework
across cultures are a function of different
cultural values

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 Cultural patterns and communication

Individualism Collectivism
Focus is on the Focus is on the
individual & self- group/affiliations & self-
promotion criticism
Independency Interdependency
Task dominates Relationship dominates
relationship task
Social obedience Social obedience
through sense of guilt through sense of
shame

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 Cultural patterns and communication

Egalitarian Hierarchal
Horizontal relationships Vertical relationships
Subordinates consulted Subordinates informed
Equality expected Inequality accepted

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 Cultural patterns and communication

Low Uncertainty Avoidance High Uncertainty Avoidance

Change is normal and Change is disruptive
good and disliked
Few behavioral Many behavioral
protocols protocols
Greater cultural Less cultural diversity
diversity

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 Cultural patterns and communication

Monochronic Polychronic
Time is linear and Time is flexible
segmented Focus on multiple tasks
Focus on a single task Weak ties to schedules
Adherence to
schedules

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 Cultural patterns and communication
Low Context High Context
Communication Communication
Meaning reliant on Meaning can be
verbal message derived from context
Nonverbal Nonverbal
communication low communication high
importance importance
Silence is avoided Silence is normal

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 Cultural patterns and communication

Low Face Concerns High Face Concerns

Conflict/disagreement Conflict/disagreement
is constructive is threatening
Concern for self-face Concern for
mutual/other-face

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Communication
between cultures 8TH EDITION

Chapter 6
Cultural Values:
Guidelines for
Behavior

Cengage 2012 Chapter 6 Cultural Values: Guidelines for Behavior 38