The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

Product Information

To evaluate where a culture lies on the disagreement spectrum, ask yourself: How much would openly disagreeing with someone harm your relationship? Ignore how emotionally open they are.

High task-based scale – In countries such as the US and the Netherlands, the trust factor is created by achievements in business relations and profits. Such trust can be forged as well as dissolved easily.In 2013 “Business Inc.” selected her as one of the ten best business school professors worldwide. “The Culture Map” – her only book so far – was published the following year and was met with wide critical acclaim.

Low-context cultures have precise and clear styles of communication where there are lesser chances of misinterpretation. Countries such as the US and Australia are low-context because their history is shorter, more recent, and has influences of immigrants that required communication to be precise. In business, this focus on relationships is evident in longer responses to questions. People might present related information first before getting to their answers. As such, people from other cultures might find that dialectical thinkers are missing or unable to find the point. At worst, they might think dialectical thinkers are doing so deliberately.Flexible-time: Projects are approached with flexibility. Goals and deadlines are often changing (for example Kenya). In a high-context culture, the onus for communication is shared between the listener and the speaker. If a misunderstanding occurs, the fault lies with the speaker for not communicating effectively, but also with the listener for not interpreting the message correctly. How Late Is Late? Scheduling and Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Time Listening to the Air: Communicating Across Cultures Even though I worked most of my life in task-based societies, the relationship between coworkers was newer than straightforward and most companies I worked with emphasized community as one of their most important values. While hierarchical cultures typically have a top-down decision-making process and egalitarian cultures typically have a consensual decision-making process, this is not always the case. Japan, for example, is a very hierarchical society, but decisions are being made collectively. 5. Trusting: relationship-based vs. task-based