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Заказ 24479 (300 грн.) 03.07.2016 13:20
Ex 5. Read and analyse the following critical incidents which happened during some training courses abroad. What cultural factors might play a role in these training situations? Use the vocabulary of the Comments to give your arguments. Compare your answers to the Keys after the discussion. 1. In a training session in Dubai, some of the participants in an international group left the room for about 15 minutes outside the normal break times. This happened several times during the day, and the trainer found it irritating. 2. In a training session with the participants from various countries, a participant from South Korea remained silent during the course but went up to the trainer during breaks with questions. The trainer wondered why he didn’t ask questions in the group. 3. At the beginning of a training session, the trainer made it clear that one of the rules was that the participants should not use their mobile phones during the course. She had even allowed long breaks so that, if necessary, they could deal with urgent matters then. One participant consistently ignored the rule and answered calls during the course. The trainer wondered what to do. 4. On a German train-the-trainer course, the trainer was taught that the feedback should be given to the participants directly. This means that you first say what you saw ("I noticed that you were looking at emails on your BlackBerry during the course"), then what effect this had on you ("This made me feel that you were not interested"), and then, what you would like the person to do ("I would ask you to check your emails during the break"). He noticed that in international groups, participants from some cultures reacted negatively to this method. Ex 6. Do you agree that the mentioned above critical incidents should have been treated more flexibly and mindfully?
I agree, that mentioned above incidents should have been treated more flexibly. In the fourth situation, the trainer must give the procedure to preserve a friendly atmosphere in the team. it should allow some members not to participate in this discussion. In the first situation, the trainer can also show more flexibility because of differences in cultures time perception. Maybe he need to change some training tactics. Second incident demonstrates the situation where trainer did not get acquainted with the culture of all participants. If it’s necessary, it should be allowed to discuss some questions individually. To my mind, third situation, on the contrary, requires more stringent action by the trainer. 1. Do you feel that you belong to an individualistic or collectivistic culture? Why? What are the signs? 2. What do you think determines whether a culture is individualistic or collectivistic? Try to come up with three main points. 3. Do you think Eastern culture is more collectivistic than Western culture? Give reasons for your answer. 4. Are people in collectivistic societies happier than those who live in individualistic societies? Why? Why not? 5. Do societies become individualistic through civilization and modernization? Or are societies more civilized and modernized because they are individualistic? Or is it just a coincidence that most of the wealthiest countries today have individualistic cultures rather than collectivistic? 3. Read the dialogue and explain what mistake Mr. Patterson has made. Complete the dialogue. Mr. Patterson, an American manager working in Korea, is meeting with his supervisor, Mr. Wyman, who is also American. Mr. Patterson reports to Mr. Wyman about some changes he has made within several of his sales teams. Later, Park Young Sam, their Korean counterpart, enters into the dialogue. Mr. Patterson: -I guess I should choose for this position someone who are older to make the subordinates pay due respect towards their superior. 4. Comment the situations. b) 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. What was the reason? 5. Using all information given above create simulations for hiring employees in the collectivistic and individualistic cultures. Recognize how differences between these cultures may play out in interviewing situations. Adapt interview questions so that people from both individualistic and collectivist cultures feel comfortable answering.
3. Time in Cross-Cultural Communication 2. Does a culture’s orientation to time affect its response to certain products and services? 3. What is the effect of shareholder pressure on an organization’s temporal orientation? Part 2 Focus on cultural differences A student is going to take a course of lectures in a foreign country. Is it essential for him/her to identify themselves as polychronic vs monochronic individuals? Read the text and make a list of tips to help a student adapt in a foreign environment. For study abroad students to avoid constant frustration, it is essential for them to have some idea about how a culture is likely to view time. If what you define as "chronic lateness" is perceived in the host culture as "reasonably on time," it is clear that you will need to adjust your expectations of how long things will take to accomplish. It would also be advisable that you prepare to ease up a bit, if you are a monochronic type, on obsessing over maintaining strict schedules in cultures with a more relaxed approach towards timetables and punctuality. On the other hand, you might be a polychronic person even though you have grown up in US-American culture where the majority is not. In that case, going to, say, Argentina or Mexico would be relatively easy and suit your personal preferences, while going to Germany, France, or England might be somewhat more of a challenge. A Peace Corps volunteer is talking about his experience in West Africa. In pairs discuss the answers to the questions. - What is the role of schedules in West Africa? - What is the true meaning of the phrase “In’shallah”? These words give people permission to come later than the scheduled time, so that they'll be able to greet people along the way and take care of whatever other problems may arise. - Why is the weather the foremost obstacle in Guinea? In the rainy season, it faithfully pours down every day, leaving knee-deep puddles of muddy water that form small lakes in the dirt roads. Plans are often delayed until the rain lets up a bit. In the dry season, the sun's hot rays beat down and force people to take cover in the relatively cool shade of their homes between noon and 3 p.m. So it is common knowledge that any meeting scheduled during mid-day will have few attendees. - How do people deal with transportation problems? Few Guineans own personal vehicles so most people use public transportation, such as taxis, vans, buses, motorcycles, and dump trucks. There are no bus schedules or set times for departures and arrivals. Vehicles simply leave when they are full. - What has communication with people from another culture taught the author? During each trip, a breakdown or an accident of some sort can be quite normal, even expected. When this happens, all of the passengers get out. Some will push the vehicle as others cut off tree branches or search for rubber bands and tin cans that may be used to repair the car. (It's amazing what Guineans can fix without any tools or special parts!) Often, these repair jobs can take up to five hours or more, but people rarely complain. They simply eat mangoes that they pick off the trees, talk to one another, and sleep along the side of the road. - Identify the cultural type (monochronic/polychronic) of Guineans. Also, instead of letting misunderstandings complicate a situation, I take the extra effort to talk about it until all the confusion is cleared up. My Peace Corps experience has taught me that a problem is only as big as you make it. It had been a challenge to accept the fact that meetings or scheduled events never start "on time" in West Africa. If a meeting is set for 8 o'clock, people begin arriving around 9 o'clock and the meeting actually starts at 10 o'clock. After this happened several times, I asked my friend if all Guineans were habitually late. Surprised, she told me, "We Guineans aren't late. You Americans are just early!" I had been acting like a typical American by arriving 15 minutes before a scheduled appointment, whereas I should have been arriving an hour after the scheduled time, which is the Guinean way. In the beginning, I failed to notice the true meaning of the phrase "In'shallah" (God willing) which, people add to the end of certain sentences. For instance, someone might say, "See you at 4 o'clock, In'shallah (God willing)!" I now interpret this as, "I'll try to be there at 4 o'clock, but if something comes up, I may arrive a bit later than that." These words give people permission to come later than the scheduled time, so that they'll be able to greet people along the way and take care of whatever other problems may arise. And in Guinea, many other interruptions can and WILL arise! The first and foremost obstacle is the weather. In the rainy season, it faithfully pours down every day, leaving knee-deep puddles of muddy water that form small lakes in the dirt roads. Plans are often delayed until the rain lets up a bit. In the dry season, the sun's hot rays beat down and force people to take cover in the relatively cool shade of their homes between noon and 3 p.m. So it is common knowledge that any meeting scheduled during mid-day will have few attendees. Difficulties with transportation also cause delays. Few Guineans own personal vehicles so most people use public transportation, such as taxis, vans, buses, motorcycles, and dump trucks. There are no bus schedules or set times for departures and arrivals. Vehicles simply leave when they are full. In the U.S., we'd consider a typical car "full" when it contains five people. But in Guinea, as many as eight people plus a few children will pile into a car. Then about five people will ride on the roof of the car, holding onto the luggage rack. And that's not all! During each trip, a breakdown or an accident of some sort can be quite normal, even expected. When this happens, all of the passengers get out. Some will push the vehicle as others cut off tree branches or search for rubber bands and tin cans that may be used to repair the car. (It's amazing what Guineans can fix without any tools or special parts!) Often, these repair jobs can take up to five hours or more, but people rarely complain. They simply eat mangoes that they pick off the trees, talk to one another, and sleep along the side of the road. When I was in the United States, I never thought twice about how easy it was to leave my house 15 minutes before work and arrive on time almost every day. I remember getting upset when I had to wait in traffic for an extra half-hour because of a car accident …or becoming extremely upset when I got a flat tire, even though AAA (Emergency Road Service) would come to repair it within 45 minutes. Now, I've learned to be very patient. I've also become more tolerant. I realize that I don't have control over certain things, and that sometimes I must accept my fate and not get upset about unexpected events and problems. Also, instead of letting misunderstandings complicate a situation, I take the extra effort to talk about it until all the confusion is cleared up. My Peace Corps experience has taught me that a problem is only as big as you make it.
Case 3. On his first trip to Mexico, Harry, a U.S. manager interested in negotiating a contract for his firm with a Mexican firm, was invited to a dinner party by his Mexican counterpart. Since the invitation indicated that cocktails would begin at 7 p.m., Harry arrived promptly at that time. His host seemed surprised, and no one else had arrived. People began arriving about 8 p.m. Harry knew he had read the invitation correctly but felt he had gotten off to a bad start. What advice would you have given Harry? . High-Context and Law-Context Cultures
Завдання 1 http://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/pub/Context_Cultures_High_and_Lo.htm Знайти розділ When a Greeting Takes More Than “Hi, How are you?” прочитати все, що стосується привітань і Commentary on Greeting і Tales from the Peace Corps: Learning from Cultural Encounters. Надати свої коментарі. Завдання 2 Той самий сайт. Знайти розділ CULTURAL-CONTEXT INVENTORY і протестувати себе, надати результати тестування і свої коментарі. Завдання 3 Той самий сайт. Знайти розділ Book Learning – What Happened and Why? Проаналізуйте ситуації і ознайомтесь з відповідями про правильну поведінку. №1. Надати свої коментарі. Location: Dharamsala, India Student: Female, 20 Three weeks after I arrived in Dharamsala, India, my host family and I were invited for a special dinner at a relative’s house. I knew the dinner would last for hours and hours, and I couldn't leave to study for my exam the next day because it would be considered rude to do so. Therefore, I stayed and studied during the long preparation of the dinner. I read and highlighted our textbook, A Joyful Picnic for Those Who Have Come from Afar. Завдання 4 Once one recognizes not only that all humans have such preferences and that some significant differences are likely to exist between individuals in any work or social setting, the next step is to move from awareness to action. Look again at the characteristics for High and Low Context communicators that introduced this site and answer the following questions. 1). How might knowing your preferred communication style be useful to you in intercultural situations? 2). What is the dominant communication style of groups you have grown up with or interact most with now? Under what circumstances are you most comfortable communicating? 3). When you feel uncomfortable communicating in certain situations, do you ever consider that the problem might be the way some people are expressing themselves, rather than a personal reaction to individuals? 4). What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of both High and Low context communication styles? 5). What differences in communication style are you likely to encounter when studying abroad, and how are you going to react to them? What can you do to prepare to communicate more effectively with someone who has a different style? 6. Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) and Masculinity versus Femininity
Exercises for Practical Session 1
“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences” (M. Scott Peck, American author). “When overseas you learn more about your own country than you do the place you are writing” (Clint Bargen, American activist). “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, that is not difficult”. (Charlotte Whitton, late mayor of Ottawa). What do you understand from these quotations? Do you agree with them? Exercise 5 Read the fragment of a text about two approaches in resolving international conflicts (the Åland crisis and of the Falkland crisis.)
The Åland islands are a small archipelago halfway between Sweden and Finland; as part of Finland they belonged to the tsarist Russian Empire. When Finland declared itself independent from Russia in 1917, the thirty thousand inhabitants of the islands in majority wanted to join Sweden, which had ruled them before 1809. The Finns then arrested the leaders of the pro-Swedish movement. After emotional negotiations in which the newly created League of Nations participated, all parties in 1921 agreed with a solution in which the islands remained Finnish but with a large amount of regional autonomy. The Ålands have become a prosperous part of Finland, attracting many Swedish tourists. The Falkland Islands are also a small archipelago disputed by two nations: Great Britain, which has occupied the islands since 1833, and nearby Argentina, which has claimed rights on them since 1767 and tried to get the United Nations to support its claim. The Falklands are about eight times as large as the Ålands but with less than one-fifteenth of the Ålands’ population: about 1,800 poor sheep farmers. The Argentinean military occupied the islands in April 1982, whereupon the British sent an expeditionary force that chased the occupants, at the cost of (officially) 725 Argentinean and 225 British lives and enormous financial expense. The economy of the islands, dependent on trade relations with Argentina, was severely jeopardized. The Falklands remain a disputed territory needing constant British subsidies and military presence. Case study analyses. Work in small groups. Read the situations below. Think about different cultural backgrounds of the participants. Discuss each story. What do you think happened? Why? How could misunderstanding have been prevented? Case 1 In Jose's adult English class in Chicago, students are learning about different names for food. To make things more realistic, the teacher makes a plan to use the school's kitchen and have the students prepare some food. When the day comes for the kitchen assignment, Jose and other two men from Mexico do not go into the kitchen with the other students but remain outside in the hall. His teacher cannot understand why Jose and the other men do not want to participate. Case 2 A U.S. American woman executive is sent to negotiate a contract with a corporation in Saudi Arabia. She dresses conservatively in a dark business suit and completes her makeup and hair as she would in the United States. She finds the Arabs to be very aloof. She is asked when her boss will be arriving and is basically feeling ignored. What mistakes have been made? What can be done to correct such a situation? Case 3 Joe Anthony, a U.S. graduate student, was beginning a semester-long internship in Mexico City with an international health care products firm. After he had been there about a week, some male employees invited him out to a bar to sample the local specialty, bull's testicles. Joe had heard about this practice considered a sign of young Mexican machismo (male power). The idea didn't appeal to him since something he had eaten recently had made him queasy. What are Joe's options? What are the possible implications or consequences of each option? What would you do? Exercise 8. 1 Listen to Geert Hofstede talking about “ Uncertainty Avoidance" and make a plan of his speech and examples of interesting correlations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZF6LyGne7Q (10 minutes with Geert Hofstede on Uncertainty Avoidance 01032015)
In cross-cultural psychology, uncertainty avoidance is a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. It reflects the extent to which members of a society attempt to cope with anxiety by minimizing uncertainty. Uncertainty avoidance is one of five key qualities or dimensions measured by the researchers who developed the Hofstede model of cultural dimensions to quantify cultural differences across international lines and better understand why some ideas and business practices work better in some countries than in others. According to the theory's framework, the dimensions are only applicable to a society as a whole, not for each individual in the society. |