6. “Culture is more often a
source of conflict than of
synergy
Cultural differences are a
nuisance at best and often
a disaster.”
Prof. Geert Hofstede
http://doingbusinesswithpeople.weebly.com/
Editor's Notes
1. The workshop starts with a presentation of the attendees and their opinion about the quotes in this slide: The world is essentially a global village Business is business in any country National cultures are a thing of the past2. It continues with Presenter BackgroundThe main purpose of this workshop is to demonstrate that each one of the sentences in the slide is wrong
Doing Business With… People is about understanding others and achieving common goals in the international Business environment
We are what we are. But what we are has multiple dimensions: gender, religion, ethnic group, education, kinship, Socioeconomic Status, and finally NATIONAL CULTURE.Today we will focus in the analysis of National Culture."Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia"For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. In order to accomplish such tasks the philosopher must, as Husserl proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism (in which reality is centered around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (in which reality is located outside the subject) in order to focus on the only truthful reality (i.e., "my life" — the life of each individual). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me: "I" (human being) can not be detached from "my circumstance" (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance")(Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914)[4] which he always situated at the core of his philosophy.For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or "radical" reality is "my life" (the first yo) which consists of "I" (the second yo) and "my circumstance" (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.
National differences make international business difficult or easy Ask the attendees their opinion on this quote
National differences influence management, decision making and negotiationsAsk the attendees their opinion on this quote
Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergyCultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.”Prof. GeertHofstedeHofstede is a sort of modern “Guru” in cross cultural communication.He is a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational cultures. His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence behavior of societies and organizations.During this workshop we will be presenting some of their studies related with cultural dimensions.IBM researchAfter working in the industry for ten years, Geert entered part-time doctoral study at Groningen University in The Netherlands, and received his PhD in social psychology cum laude in 1967.[1] His thesis was titled “The Game of Budget Control.” During this time, he joined IBM International, working as a management trainer and manager of personnel research. He founded and managed the Personnel Research Department. This was his transition from the field of engineering and into psychology. In this role, he played an active role in the introduction and application of employee opinion surveys in over 70 national subsidiaries of IBM around the world. He traveled across Europe and the Middle East to interview people and conduct surveys regarding people’s behavior in large organizations and how they collaborated. He collected large amounts of data, but due to the pressures of his daily job, was unable to conduct a significant amount of research. When he took a two-year sabbatical from IBM in 1971, he delved deeper into the data he had collected from his job, and discovered that there were significant differences between cultures in other organizations, but got the same ranking of answers by country.[5] At the time, the results of the IBM’s surveys, with over 100,000 questionnaires, were one of the largest cross-national databases that existed.