SEEING THE FOREST, NOT THE TREES

Seeing The Forest, Not The Trees

   International businesspeople, who face the challenge of managing and motivating employees with different cultural backgrounds, need to understand these cultural elements if they are to be effective managers.

Hall’s Low-Context–High-Context Approach

   In a low-context culture, the words used by the speaker explicitly convey the speaker’s message to the listener (see Figure 4.2).
   In a high-context culture, the context in which a conversation occurs is just as important as the words that are actually spoken, and cultural clues are important in understanding what is being communicated.
   Low-context cultures place more importance on the specific terms of a transaction.
   Table 4.2 provides additional
   information about differences in negotiating styles across cultures.

Figure 4.2
High- and Low-context Cultures
Source: from Edward T.Hall, “How Cultures Collide,
Psychology Today, July 1976, pp. Reprinted with
Permission from Psychology Today magazine.
Copy right ©1976.




The Cultural Cluster Approach

   The cultural cluster approach is another technique for classifying and making sense of national cultures.
   Map 4.4 shows the eight country clusters developed by one such team of researchers,Ronen and Shenkar.
   Cultural clustercomprises countries that share many cultural similarities, although differences do remain.
   Closeness of culture may affect the form that firms use to enter foreign markets.


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