Almost all politicians told you that everyone is created equal, but the truth is we are not created equal. We are born light or dark-skinned, to parents of education or parents without access to education, and we grow up short or tall. Therefore, we all have viewpoints of our own, but we are shaped by our interactions with communities. In doing business, we must examine several points of divergence across cultures, in order to win the opportunity to cooperate with business partners.
Individualistic versus Collectivist Cultures
According to the book Business Communications for Success, by Scott McLean, people in individualistic cultures value individual freedom and personal independence. For example, Amazon's stock soared recently, triggered many online media to post articles about it to get attention. Most of them are focused on how much money the CEO Jeff Bezos is earning per day, how worthy Jeff Bezos becomes, or what percentage does Jeff Bezos increasing his rich. These newspapers authors, editors, or publishers are reflecting their cultural viewpoint.
Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, focus on the needs of the nation, community, or groups. Ownership of private properties is one of the ways to examine this difference. You probably saw the movie line before, "Get out of my private property!" many times, it reflects the opposite of collectivist cultures.
Explicit-Rule Cultures versus Implicit-Rule Cultures
Did you ever been to airports? What are the rules you have to comply with? What happens if those rules are implicit? If custom rules are not clearly communicated, even no agenda, airports will work inefficiently. For example, what are dangerous goods? A knife can be a danger to the general public, but also can be just one of the necessary tools for a chef to make delicious meals. Instead of discussing this topic all day, we set these explicit rules to avoid arguments and save time to work more efficiently.
In an implicit-rule culture, where rules are often understood nonverbally. The premise is that everyone must have known what role each member plays, the rules, even though the expectations may not be clearly stated. However, It can be a huge challenge for people from outside this culture to understand the rules of the context.
Uncertainty-Accepting Cultures versus Uncertainty-Rejecting Cultures
Have you ever been to a strange place alone? What would you do? Happy to explore the unfamiliar place? Or, it is impossible for you to explore any unfamiliar place. Similarly, when we meet each other for the first time, we often use what we have previously learned to understand our current context.
Although there are always a little bit uncertain feelings, some people are happy to build a new relationship, some are not. Uncertainty-Accepting cultures, such as the United States and Britain, tend to accept a higher degree of uncertainty, while others go to great lengths to reduce it. On the other hand, uncertainty-rejecting cultures in the Arab world, tend to avoid uncertainty and resist to change or take risks.
Short-Term versus Long-Term Orientation
When you start up your own business, do you want to take back your costs immediately or wait for a long term revenue that is much more profitable? Did you ever dedicate yourself to a long-term goal? In doing business, the two different cultures tend to create different leadership, entrepreneurship, and management. For example, a coffee company, Nespresso, sell their expresso machines for a long-term reason, to sell their coffee capsules.
Direct versus Indirect
Have you ever been invited to a business meeting? How did it start? Right straight to the points, or start with those unrelated things such as the weather or the recent news. Some cultures tend to get straight to the most important topic since they think it avoids the waste of time, while people with indirect cultures are talking about those unrelated things.
In Taiwan, people tend to be like in materialistic culture which emphasis external goods and services as a representation of power, and social rank. For example, an iPhone may be an expensive smartphone for someone, but it also represents an effort. It represents how many engineers spending their time on study, and how much money their parents spent on their master's degrees. But most of the people in Taiwan, do not care about the efforts behind it, they commonly talk about the prices, the CP ratio(cost-performance), and the brand image.
Reference
McLean, S. (2015, November 25). 18.4 Divergent Cultural Characteristics. Retrieved July 31, 2020, from https://open.lib.umn.edu/businesscommunication/chapter/18-4-divergent-cultural-characteristics/
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