Two Cultural DimensionsCulture is the collective programming of the mind which

Two Cultural Dimensions
Good morning, everyone. Today, we are going to examine "culture", the first topic of our lecture series. As we all know, different countries have different cultures Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another. It is inevitable that the cultural difference has impact on business. For example, when a company has a meeting, the word "table" in American English means to put something on the agenda. But in British English it means to put something off the agenda. This example indicated how the culture affects the business.
There are four cultural dimensions that were defined in Hofstede’s research: Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Individualism, Masculinity, and recently Hofstede added one more: long-term-short-term orientation. In the interest of time, today we are going to cover the first two dimensions of cultures.
The first and I think the most significant influence in cultural difference is the power distance. It would condition the extent to which employees accept that their boss has more power than they have and the extent to which they accept that their boss’s opinions and decisions are right because he or she is the boss.[1]I considered it as how much subordinates can consent or dissent with bosses or managers. It is the distance between a manager and subordinate. Among most oriental corporate cultures, there is hierarchism, greater centralization, sometimes called "power-oriented culture", due to historical reasons.[2]That is a high power distance culture that managers make the decision and superiors appeal to be entitled more privileges. In this situation, it is not regarded if a subordinate has a disagreement with their managers, especially in Malaysia, Japan, China, and India
[3]In the oriental, power distance is also associated with "the family culture". In this kind of corporate culture the manager is like the "caring father" who knows better than his subordinates what should be done and what is suitable for them. The subordinates always esteem the managers, because of the managers’ age and experience. That is usually how employees get their promotion. There are both positive and negative parts in the family cultures. I feel it is an easy managing system.[4]But sometimes it is hard to get young creative employees to work well because of the hierarchy. So in family culture, the power distance can be viewed as the subordinates respect the superiors.
That is the corporate culture in the orient. Let us take a look at the western way. It is not a whole converse phenomenon.[5]There is "the Eiffel Tower Culture" in the international management. Its hierarchy is very different from that of the family. Each higher level has a clear and demonstrable function of holding together the level beneath it.[8]German and Austrian have the characteristic of the Eiffel Tower Culture, which is a low power distance. In the lower power distance, higher-educated employees hold much less authoritarian values than lower-educated ones. The obedience showed from the subordinates to the superiors is not as much as the oriental way.[6]The leadership can be called as hierarchy and consensus. An employee can have different opinion with his/her boss. And when he/she gets different ideas, he/she can go all the way up to the boss and discuss the problem.[7]This is a good thing usually a company may explore all the potentials of its employees, because sometime the subordinates may have the better idea of the business.
I think because of the different realization of power distance, people behave completely differently in business. So conflict and misunderstanding must emerge when two or more cultures meet up. Under this situation, the international managers must pay attention to the clashes and be aware of them.[9]How to work the subordinates together efficiently and more cooperatively is important too.
Now, the second part of my lecture is about the uncertainty avoidance. Uncertainty avoidance deals with a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it ultimately refers to man’s search for truth.[10]It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, and different from usual.[11]Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures,[12]and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; "there can only be one Truth and we have it". For example, in Germany there is a reasonable high uncertainty avoidance compared to countries such as Singapore and neighbouring country Denmark. Germans are not keen on uncertainty, by planning everything carefully they try to avoid the uncertainty. In Germany there is a society that relies on rules, laws and regulations. Germany wants to reduce its risks to the minimum and proceed with changes step by step.
There is high uncertainty avoidance in most oriental countries such as Japan and China[13]In these countries, people prefer a stable job. They feel safe and prideful when they keep working hard at the one place. Under this circumstance, an excellent manager should keep his employee away from unpredictable risk. And the employee would like to be worked within groups rather than independently because of the less risk-taking.[14]But in most western countries, there is low uncertainty avoidance showed, whereas high job mobility occurs in those countries such as USA, Denmark and Singapore. The western people think that when they change their jobs, they can get more experience because they like challenge. I believe that the divergence of the uncertainty avoidance is from different basic social ideology.[15]A competent manager should pay attention to the rules set between different uncertainty avoidance. The misreading of that may affect the initiative and the aspiration of the subordinates.
OK. In my talk today, I have mentioned some cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity. After that, I offer you some insights into the first two dimensions and hopefully I have set you on the right path to the understanding of cultures and cultural differences.