Future vs Present vs Past Orientation

Past-oriented societies are concerned with traditional values and ways of doing things. They tend to be conservative in management and slow to change those things that are tied to the past. Past-oriented societies include China, Britain, Japan and most spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

Present-oriented societies include the rest of the spanish-speaking Latin American countries. They see the past as passed and the future as uncertain. They prefer short-term benefits.

Future-oriented societies have a great deal of optimism about the future. They think they understand it and can shape it through their actions. They view management as a matter of planning, doing and controlling (as opposed to going with the flow, letting things happen). The United States and, increasingly, Brazil, are examples of future-oriented societies.

Quantity of Time

In some cultures, time is seen as being a limited resource which is constantly being used up. It's like having a bathtub full of water which can never be replaced, and which is running down the drain. You have to use it as it runs down the drain or it's wasted. In other cultures, time is more plentiful, if not infinite. In old agricultural societies, time was often seen as circular, renewing itself each year.

Implications

• In societies where time is limited, punctuality becomes a virtue. It is insulting to waste someone's time, and the ability to do that and get away with it is an indication of superiority/status. Time is money. In cultures where time is plentiful, like India or Latin American, there is no problem with making people wait all day, and then tell them to come back the next day.
• Time-plentiful cultures tend to rely on trust to do business. Time-limited cultures don't have time to develop trust and so create other mechanisms to replace trust (such as strong rule-by-law).

Power Distance

The extent to which people accept differences in power and allow this to shape many aspects of life. Is the boss always right because he is the boss, or only when he gets it right?

Implications

• In high power distance countries (most agrarian countries), bypassing a superior is unsubordination. In low power distance countries (US, northern europeans, Israel), bypassing is not usually a big deal.
• In the US, superiors and subordinates often interact socially as equals. An outsider watching a party of professors and graduate students typically cannot tell them apart.

Individualism vs Collectivism

In individualist cultures, individual uniqueness, self-determination is valued. A person is all the more admirable if they are a "self-made man" or "makes up their own mind" or show initiative or work well independently. Collectivist cultures expect people to identify with and work well in groups which protect them in exchange for loyalty and compliance.

Paradoxically, individualist cultures tend to believe that there are universal values that should be shared by all, while collectivist cultures tend to accept that different groups have different values.

Many of the asian cultures are collectivist, while anglo cultures tend to be individualist.

Implications

• A market research firm conducted a survey of tourist agencies around the world. The questionnaires came back from most countries in less than a month. But the agencies in the asian countries took months to do it. After many telexes, it was finally done. The reason was that, for example, American tourist agencies assigned the work to one person, while the Filipinos delegated the work to the entire department, which took longer. The researchers also noticed that the telexes from the Philippines always came from a different person.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 820