Just finished my lectures in inter-cultural communication (in the
organizational context)! I think models are useful to highlight
cultural differences and means (but may be, concerning
Hofstede, we
should also refer to "factors") are just analytical tools, as every
kind of statistics. I agree with Romie, when he pointed out "nation"
does not match necessarely to culture. I try to help students to be
more aware of their prejudices, stereotypes, and so on. Cultural shock
and "w" adaptation model is another theory i find very usefull (and
students seem to be very impressed by this model). I told students that
culture is dynamic and that expatriates or people working at
multicultural organizations may not completely fit to theorical models.
So, i agree with Jacob, when he wrote that students coming from abroad
are supposed to not fit to means...Frankly speaking, i am much
interested in ibridation processes, in the forming of the so called
"third culture" in multicultural organizations, in intercultural
communication. But, to help people to manage more effectively
intercultural relations, we have to make them to be more aware about
cultural differences. And so even models could be useful, if managed
with "grano salis".
Ciao ;-)
fabrizio
----Messaggio originale----
Da:
littrellaom@yahoo.co.nz
Data: 16-mag-2006 11.30 PM
A: <MG-ED-
DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
Ogg: Re: The value of stereotypes
Jacob, in our
business and culture paper/course I start with understanding
ethnocentrism and then culture shock (fortunately in New Zealand I have
classes with majorities of foreign students from up to 10 cultures who
can personally relate to culture shock), then go to dimensions of
culture from GLOBE, Hofstede, Inglehart, Schwartz, and E.T. Hall, all
except Hall's reprsented by national mean scores, and then relate these
dimensions to oral communication and then to negotiation behaviour.
More if it's a 39-contact-hour paper, such as leadership, gender,
expatriation issues, etc.
Romie
Jacob <
Jacob.Eisenberg@UCD.IE>
wrote: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url
(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url
(#default#VML);} st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui)
} Rusty and colleagues,
Obviously, we all (or 99% of
us) can identify with Einsteins (or whoever was the one who really
said it) statement. I also think that you will find very few people who
will endorse reducing a culture to a number all neat and tidy; I
definitely would not and neither, I believe, would Romie. So, let us
depart from erecting feeble straw-men and lets discuss these matters
on a more serious, scholarly-based level.
My personal dilemma, as
a researcher and educator is this: if I have 10-30 contact hours with
students, who know little of cross cultural issues, and given that this
may be the only course they will take (say, during their undergraduate
years) that deals with such matters and given that I wish to have them
gain more understanding of the meaning of cross cultural differences at
the end of this one-semester course, which approach do I take?
Obviously, if we had unlimited resources of time and energy, we could
go into depth into dozens of cultures and explore the intricacies of
each such rich culture. But what can be done to optimize the cultural
learning process given our limited resources? This is posed not as a
rhetorical, but rather as an open question.
Ciao,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jacob Eisenberg, Ph.D.
UCD
School of Business,
University College Dublin,
Belfield, Dublin 4,
Ireland
Tel: +353-1-716 4774
Fax: +353-1-716 4762
Email: Jacob.
eisenberg@ucd.ie
http://www.ucd.ie/busadmin/
---------------------------------
From: Management Education and
Development Discussion [mailto:
MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of
rustyrae@comcast.net
Sent: 16 May 2006 15:24
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.
PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: The value of stereotypes
All -- I
believe that it was Einstein who said and I am paraphrasing here:
Sometimes what counts most can't be counted. I am not sure that you can
reduce a culture to a number all neat and tidy.
best regards,
Rusty
-------------- Original message
--------------
From:
Lmxlotus@AOL.COM HI ROMIE
WHAT ABOUT YOUR DYSFUNCTIONAL STEREOTYPES THAT ARE ABUSED BY THE
MASSES? IT IS BETTER TO UNDERSTAND THE REAL CULTURE THAN DEPEND ON
SOUNDBITES OF BIGOTS I BELIEVE. OF COURSE, YOU MAY BELIEVE THE OPPOSITE
GEORGE
message
dated
5/15/2006 1:51:38 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
littrellaom@yahoo.co.nz
writes:
Hello George, statistical analysis processes provide
numbers to which we assign cognitive meaning. Using means to describe
cultures is stereotyping them, to me at least. That's why whomever
invented medians, modes, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis
measures and bar charts, radar diagrams, smallest space analysis
diagrams, and distribution curves invented them. We're still developing
depictions of data and printing journal articles as if we're in the
19th century. (Me too; I promise I'll do better.)
Regards,
Romie
"Who dare to teach must never cease to learn."-John Cotton
Dana
Romie F. Littrell, BA, MBA,PhD, FIAIR, An fánaí fiáin
Faculty of
Business, Auckland University of Technology, N.Z.
http://www.
romielittrellpubs.homestead.com/
http://www.crossculturalcentre.
homestead.com/
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