Cross-Cultural Management
Task One: Personal Interview
Introduction
In the context of the cross-cultural interview, I had an encounter with a person of different cultural values and origins from those being attributed in various dimensions. The cultural contrasts were in the context of socialization among men and women, personality traits, food staff, and drinks, marriage and child upbringing, and language structures and communication. Therefore, I shall endeavor to recognize and appreciate the differences objectively for easier interactions applying the Hofstede layers of culture and Trompenaars theories of cross-cultural management.
Discussion
According to Ahmad et al. (2019), personality traits can be influenced by the cultural values and origins of a country from which she or he hails. For the case at hand, the interviewee is an American woman who is 26 years old. She is a middle class and holds a business-related degree course (Bachelors’ of Commerce). The significance of the biographic information and the nationality is to the fact that they influence the personal character as influenced by the respective culture. For the ease in the reference to the interviewee in the entire document, we will refer to her as Janet.
Janet being an American woman is of great importance to determine her personality traits based on her country of origin. Notably, in traditional America, women were generally obedient to the male chauvinism societal systems with women performing just the house choirs and included in the decision making processes in the society at all. According to Altmura et al. (2019), the role of women in American society became less prominent especially after World War Two as women did not possess any authority in society. This was regardless of the nature of the American society of individualism and liberalism (Ayobi et al. 2018). Therefore, there has been a big contradiction among the cultural divide more so concerning time.
In the context of the time, the American’s perception and attitude are very prominent and highly valued in the sense that the Americans are always very conscious of time management and work within the stipulated time frames (Ahmad et al. 2019). The American society and cultural identity predominantly revolved around punctuality as a valued trait among the Americans contrary to the Japanese (Ayobi et al. 2018). The major contributors of such innovation are the aspects of valuing risk acceptance emanating from processing low avoidance of uncertainty. This has enabled American women in recent years to give an overview of tangible contributions in many fields of human operations and accomplishments. Notably, it is evident in the life and the various achievements of Janet.
Another cultural difference lies in the context of American pride. The pride in them creates an inward perception to achieve and own within themselves unlike the Japanese cultural understanding (Barnes et al. 2018). Unfortunately, the American women for a long time have not had enough achievement and authority space to fully operate in the various fields of human endeavor and achievements. As a result, American women have since become humble and generous as they allow their space to be shared with others.
In the context of communication, they tend to be very explicit in communicating their opinions, desires, and ambitions. In the view of religion, the Americans are normally not aligned to one specific religion but rather the entire society combines different religions (Dubey 2018). While they tend to apply the scientific and practical approaches in life situations, most of the Americans are superstitious. For the case at hand, Janet seems to be both pragmatic and scientific especially in her profession and general life.
Conclusion
The above personality analysis gives proof that culture is very pivotal in terms of defining and shaping the individual’s personality even if the experiences of life may differ from one person to another. In the context of socialization and interactions among individuals from different cultures, cultural understanding play a significant role in harmonizing and creating a peaceful and conducive interaction environment altogether.
Task Two: Cross-Cultural Competence Reflection
Description of the Experience
Cross-cultural management appears to be one of the most effective strategies that global managers can apply to effectively manage organizations. According to Cox et al. (2017), Cox reflexive model helps in the deep understanding of organizational cross-cultural management. The model-assisted me gain skills and competency development regarding cross-cultural management entirely. The model elaborates on the concept of work and levels of culture within the confines of the organization. This is in the areas of repairing, reviewing, researching, and reformulating. These organizational levels are the most effective and helpful to understand the formulation in this study. In this study, there are a lot of influencing factors that have been noticed by me. The influencing factors are such as intension, emotion, values, and attitudes.
Discussion
At the beginning of this module, I had lots of expectations though with certain levels of uncertainty. However, the fear for the unknown became the foundation for curiosity and inquisitively leading to motivated aspirations, positive attitudes, and perception towards the course. Cross-cultural management at first became my area of interest thus, enabled me to learn different aspects of cultural interactions and dimensions and appreciate the essence of cultural understanding and harmony. Personally, the entire course has created a difference in the context of professional and career flexibility regarding cultural understanding and relations. It became clear to me that almost everybody across the globe belongs to a given set or category of people at a given time and avoidably possess numerous layers of programming that correspond to distinct cultural levels such as national, regional or ethical, gender, generational, or social class.
Besides, to understand the concept of cross-cultural management, cultural diversity is very fundamental in the classification of the models of cultural differences. That is to identify and classify them appropriately without any biasness. The whole process of cultural differentiation is representative. Although people may not possess similar education, environment, and personality, the entire society holds the largest percentage of influence on the behavior and thinking of individuals. For example, one may avoid embarrassing and frustrating scenarios in work or business environments involving other different cultural bases (De Albuquerque et al. 2018).
However, there was also some negative encounter concerning cross-cultural management courses especially in the interactions across different cultures that are dissimilar from my own set of cultural values and norms. This created an obstacle in the learning of this course thus could lead to the formulation of negative perception towards the entire course. The case where others feel that their culture is superior to that of others could also be an obstacle towards a clear understanding and demonstration of cross-cultural management globally.