Practicing: Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture, 1997, pp. 8-9
Comparing different cultures’ attitudes towards human relationships:
- universal vs. particularist
- individualist vs. communitarian
- neutral vs. emotional
- specific vs. diffuse
- achievement vs. ascription
How would you assign these to the axes?
What could you compare using this structure?
Notes:
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner wrote Riding the Waves of Culture as an international business person’s guide to communicating, negotiating, designing, producing, and selling in an international, cross-cultural context. A very readable, well-organized book, it offers both cross-cultural comparisons to how different societies manage time, personal space, communications, etc., it also ends each substantive chapter with practical tips and guidelines for communicating and doing business in cultures different from your own. I recommend it.
Having said that, in Chapter 1 the authors give a brief overview of exactly what they mean by culture, and the particular axes of cultural characteristics that they will address in subsequent chapters of the book. I have displayed the axes relevant to human interaction above (if you are an anthropologist, you may or may not agree with this conceptual framework; I am using it here merely as an example).
Universal vs. particularist: do you apply abstract social codes or rules uniformly to all situations, or change codes, rules, and behaviors to suit each unique context or set of relationships?
Individualist vs. communitarian: do people in your community or society regard themselves primarily as individuals, or primarily as members of a group?
Neutral vs. emotional: should the nature of our professional interactions be objective and detached, or is displaying emotion appropriate even in a professional context?
Specific vs. diffuse: are relationships in your organization or community limited to the contractual activities, or are even business and professional activities assumed to engage the whole person – their interests, hobbies, family, land, culture, etc.?
Achievement vs. ascription: achievement evaluates people based on what they have accomplished, on their activities; ascription evaluates people based on birth, kinship, gender, age, connections, educational institutions – qualities are ascribed to you based on your connections.