On Culture – part IV of a series (2008 to the present)

Three of today’s books are particularly interesting. I’ve already quoted from Wiarda’s 2014 book so I can leave it and turn first to “The Culture Map” which came out the same year. It’s not an academic text – based rather on the intensive work (not least listening) which the author has done with global clients and at INSEAD, the management training centre in France. Her job has been to help prepare managers for the inter-cultural work they are or will be doing in foreign places.

Basically she looks at 8 elements which profoundly affects the effectiveness of teams which consist of different nationalities - 

·       Communicating: the ease of which depends on the extent to which team members use direct or indirect language or what is known as “low-context vs. high-context”

·       Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback

·       Persuading: deductive (principles-first) vs. inductive (applications-first)

·       Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical

·       Deciding: consensual vs. top-down

·       Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based

·       Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation

·       Scheduling: order vs. flexibility 

She references Richard Nisbett and makes this interesting comment – 

Chinese people think from macro to micro, whereas Western people think from micro to macro. For example, when writing an address, the Chinese write in sequence of province, city, district, block, gate number. The Westerners do just the opposite—they start with the number of a single house and gradually work their way up to the city and state. In the same way, Chinese put the surname first, whereas the Westerners do it the other way around. And Chinese put the year before month and date. Again, it’s the opposite in the West. 

The table which heads this post is a famous one which she also uses. As someone who worked for some 20 years with multi-cultural teams, I find her analysis and insights very helpful. Indeed, in its stress on the importance of thinking about how each of us might behave more appropriately when faced with cross-cultural problems, it reminded me of “The Art of Thinking” by A Harrison and R Bramson (1982) which made me realise that we all think in different ways. The book identifies 5 styles (synthesist, idealist, pragmatist, analyst and realist) and at least 10 combinations (the full book can be accessed here). We too easily attribute differences in thought processes to stupidity; and more of us need to be aware that these differences (whether in styles of thought or indeed cultures) are real and legitimate. 

The third book of interest I’’ keep for another post 

Book Title	Author	Takeaway
Remaking Management – between global and local	ed Smith, McSweeney and Fitzgerald 2008	Management academics A rare book which disputes the de Hofstede thesis
Age of Fracture;	Daniel T Rodgers (2011)	Intellectual historian A tremendous analysis of the development of the US zeitgeist in the 4 decades from 1970
The Culture Map; Erin Meyer (2014)	INSEAD consultant	A pop management book which will annoy academics since it doesn’t seem to be based on theory. It focuses on 8 processes – leading, deciding, trusting, conflict, scheduling, persuading, evaluating and communicating
Political Culture, political science and identity politics – an uneasy alliance;	Howard Wiarda (2014)	Political scientist - a fantastic intellectual history of the field doing justice from Montesqeuieu, Comte, Marx, Weber, Almond and the moderns - and not forgetting more popular writing. A delightful read
The Idea of Englishness; English culture, national identity, social thought	Kristan Kumar 2015	A follow-up to his 2003 book which must be the best source book for this strange nation. Very accessible and surveys all the relevant literature
A World of Three Cultures – honour, achievement and joy;	M Basanez (2016.	Political scientist Not an easy read – with a large number of tables
The Patterning Instinct;	Jeremy Lent (2017)	how worldviews develop and can change history
Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ;	Ronald Inglehart (2018)	Inglehart, a political scientist, has been at the heart of discussion about cultural values for the past 50 years – both the book and this article summarise that work.
Culture, Crisis and Covid-19 – the great reset	Trompenaars and C Hampden-Turner (2021)	Management consultants A curious book which doesn’t seem to rest on any analytical base. Strong on opinion – and starts with a strange assertion that private enterprise knows best; strange because Asian governments did best in the Covid Crisis.