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.