Cultural Barriers in Business

Nowadays, in almost every field of life cultures are interacting. Cultural barriers between different cultures often cause much frustration, annoyance, and lead to problems that erode efficiency and poison the atmosphere at work. What are these ‘cultural’ barriers and where do they originate?

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In culture studies, culture is seen as mental programming, where patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting are seen as mental programmes analogous to computer programming. Upbringing plays a major role here, and culture is generally considered learned and not inherited. The sources of an individual’s mental programming lie within the familial and social environment in which he/she grew up as well as the individual’s collected life experiences.

Significantly ‘culture’ refers to the process of socialization, which encompasses all the rules, regulations, assumptions, mindsets, world-view of the family/environment/society in which the individual lives and grows up. Culture enables individuals to play a normal role in society by teaching and shaping human behaviour in accordance with the values and norms that are accepted in that community.

Different Models of Culture

Cross-Cultural studies build on the conviction gained from different fields like social anthropology, sociology, or organisational psychology that all societies, traditional or modern, face the same basic problems; only their approaches at finding answers differ.
 

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

The ‘Onion’ diagram explains culture as different layers with no distinct core.

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

The ‘Iceberg’ model, explains that culture consists of visible levels like food, dress, behaviour and also invisible levels like mindsets, beliefs and assumptions.

Different theorists like Geert Hofstede or Frans Trompenaars try to understand differences among cultures through value differences along quantifiable dimensions. Hofstede uses High and Low Power Distance, Individualism and Collectivism, Masculinity and Feminity, low and high Uncertainty Avoidance to map cultural differences.

Trompenaars uses Universalism –vs- Particularism to understand whether rules or relationships are more important, Individualism –vs- Communitarianism to measure if we function in a group or as an individual, Specific –vs- Diffuse Cultures to investigate how far we choose to get involved, Affective –vs- Neutral cultures to understand how we display emotions, Achievement –vs- Ascription cultures to fathom if status is ascribed to us or do we need to earn it, and Sequential –vs- Synchronic cultures to understand if we do things in a sequence or do several things at a time.

Criticism of Cross-Cultural Models

Clifford Geertz, a very influential anthropologist, criticizes cultural theories ”Using an ‘I-am-a-camera’, phenomenalistic observation of a cultural enterprise or setting alone will not work.” This is because “the data” is really “…our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.”

Nigel Holden criticises cross-cultural management studies for depending overtly on traditional concepts of culture. These are too detached from the everyday cross-cultural aspects of knowledge sharing, networking and organisational learning in the global economy, he says.

Shortcomings of Current Cross-Cultural Models

Though they are very valuable tools for understanding cultural differences, identifying barriers, and finding ways of working around them, they suffer from some shortcomings.

Firstly, the concepts of ethnicity and nation-state are considered to be equivalent, which is not often the case in real life nowadays.  Not all German or French citizens are ethnic Germans or French and diversity creates complexity in behaviour patterns.

Secondly, scholars like Nigel Holden criticize the concept of ‘culture’ as a 19th century concept based on culture as difference.

Thirdly, much of cross-cultural literature present these ‘dimensions’ e.g., Hofstede dimensions uncritically as fact rather than theories with significant inherent limitations.

Last but not the least, the role of the particular industry/field and the organisation is not given due importance, though it might sometimes override ethnic cultural ‘dimensions’. In spite of having very different cultural ‘dimensions’, a German software designer might have more in common with a Russian software designer rather than with a German investment banker.

In a business context, two other dimensions complicate the picture. The culture of the profession/field and the organization play a major role in the success of organisational socialization, or how the newcomer successfully integrates and functions in the organisation. The behavioural/mindset expectations that newcomers must acquire in order to become investment bankers are very different from the behavioural/mindset expectations of DJs in the music industry. A 150 year old multinational in the steel industry, which still runs as a family business, is an entirely different world from a website graphics design startup business with 25 year olds.

Another aspect that these ‘cultural dimensions’ measure somewhat sketchily is mindsets or world-view (Weltanshaung as the Germans call it). Scandinavians often believe that the Nordic model of welfare state is the supreme achievement of mankind and all other societal models are somehow inferior. Scandinavian society is often extremely arrogant when the question of recognizing an immigrant’s educational and professional qualification comes up, especially if the immigrant has not been trained locally or at an elite Western educational establishment like Oxford University or Harvard.  A very qualified surgeon from China or Brazil with 20 years experience might be required to take basic courses to ‘bring her/his qualifications up to the local level’. This might cause very much resentment possibly affecting work commitment.

Typically the cultural barriers that are encountered in the business world originate from inadequate knowledge about:

• How different orientation to time and space affects behaviour
• Do people from different cultures have different expectations about induction and socialization from the firm and colleagues?
• Differences in communication methods (e.g., do they like to physically meet and discuss face to face or think over things alone and then e-mail own comments, do they signify dissent bluntly or keep silent)
• How people process information (do they take notes silently or air their views dramatically during presentations etc)
• What does it mean if the organisation is hierarchical and not flat
• Differences in how managers delegate, supervise and follow-up tasks
• How managers and subordinates see each others roles
• What different areas corporate social responsibility is seen to encompass (the Indians or the Japanese see the role of managers and the company very differently from the Finns or the Danes)
• How are Career and Performance Management implemented?
• Do employees from different cultural backgrounds have different concepts of getting and giving respect?
• How do the special characteristics of the field/industry affect daily behaviour?
• How important it is to learn the particular organisational culture of the firm?
• How does the equation of human capital, cultural capital, social capital as well as spiritual capital work for each person?

An organization’s strategy for dealing with cultural barriers should entail the following steps:

• Identifying precise nature, location and origin of barriers
• Deciding the aims of intervention – why and to what degree that particular barrier needs to be removed
• Choosing the method of intervention – is training the preferred method, should it be individual or group training, one time or repeated, self-learning or group learning etc
• Ways of securing commitment to change – people involved should know why changes are desired and what are the benefits for them
• Damage control strategies – what to do when things go wrong with interventions
• Follow-up mechanisms to prevent relapses, support learning, reward achievements and monitor overall success