Comparison of Indonesian and Australian National Cultures - Case Study Example

A Report on National Cultures: A comparison of Indonesian and Australian National Cultures Name Institution Instructor Date Table of Contents Understanding the Concepts of Culture 3 Hofstede’s Theoretical Frameworks of Cultural Dimensions 4 Approach to Social Relationships 9 Approach to Power Distribution 11 Approach to Uncertainty and Social Control 11 Conclusion 13 References 14 A Report on National Cultures: A comparison of Indonesian and Australian National Cultures Introduction The similarities and differences of Indonesian culture with Australian cultures in their business, society and family matters has been analyzed in this report. Culture has been communicated in many ways, such as the way people speak, live, conduct public life, picture the future, and the way entertainment is carried out. The major concern is how the cultural uniformity and related variances in the norms, behavior, and anticipation of particular assembly of managers, employees, customers, or colleagues affect commercial business and managing decision making. Governments are struggling globally on how to support their individuality and project it out of the country. The craving to enable an assemblage of cultures to co-exist harmoniously and productively to use them as a promoter for innovation and creativity has been common to many nations. Understanding the Concepts of Culture Culture can be referred to as a cumulative deposit of experience, values, hierarchies, knowledge, values, attitudes, meanings, roles, religion, spatial relations, material objects, understanding of the universe, and possessions. It is also about communications, people’s way of life, and the patterns that are transmitted by symbolic communications. Hofstede’s Theoretical Frameworks of Cultural Dimensions Hofstede contributes a lot to the understanding of theoretical frameworks of culture in different dimensions. According to (Hofstede, 1980), there are some cultural dimensions that segments workers effectively from different countries depending on their behavior in the work conditions. Following are example of cultural dimension: uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and individualism-collectivism. The above cultural dimensions can be used to evaluate differences among consumption performancedue to the different customs, cultural values, and religious beliefs that have been apprehended in the dimensions of Hofstede’s model. Individualism refers to the collectivity that succeeds in a society and the connection between the individual. Individualism refers to societies where bonds between persons are loose, and every individual is expected mind of herself or himself or the close family. On the other hand, collectivism talks about the societies that are united into cohesive in-groups, strong, that protect the persons throughout their lifetime in exchange for loyalty (Hofstede, 1991). The cultures of Indonesian country are collectivism, high power distance, masculinity, andlow uncertainty, unlike the Australian cultures that are high individualism, low power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance. An individualistic culture shows that individuals are rational to point out their reasoning in any kind of conflict. For instance the Australia people do not annoy by mentioning some words like “no”. In case of any disagreement and discomfort, verbal communication is used directly to bring the two parties together. The low individualism mark shows that the Indonesia is a collectivism society (Colin, 2005). This means that they tend to face-saving and sustain harmony through backing from third party and solid personal relationship. Individuals from the collectivism culture are less insulting and always shun conflicts, compared to the people in individualistic culture. Collectivism has also been revealed in the solid long term commitments and accountability for direct families and international trade center. According to Reisinger (1997), Indonesians avoid conflict by engaging into indirect non-verbal statement and purposes not to cause shame to people. According to (Hofstede, 1980), the trade amid Indonesia and Australia value $14.9 billion in the year 2011-12. Australia venture in Indonesia added to $5.4 billion and an 8.3% increase was realized as of the previous year. On the other hand, Indonesian venture in Australia rose from 11% to $454 million the same year. Australia support to Indonesia mainly focuses on effective governance, education and justifiable development. Current programs have incorporated Islamic school improvement, construction funding, Indonesia groundwork initiative, intended to advance sanitation, transportation and improve water. A part from humanitarian struggles to reconstruct the tsunami-affected zones and fighting poverty, development platforms have included economic improvements and political domination in backing up anti-corruption actions in electoral institution and parliamentary. Figure 1: Monthly values (A$ millions) of Australian imports from Indonesia since 1988 The awareness of work-related behavior has been important to cross-cultural dissimilarities and has always focused on conceptualization, and not on statistical methods and methodological engaged to derive the guides. Indonesia being a heterogeneous land, it has different norms, beliefs and values, causing differences in behavior among the Indonesians. In terms of languages, ethnicity and population, Indonesia has been the most diverse compared to Australia. The country has the most heavily populated Muslims globally with the population of 220 million people. The country has more than 200 tribal groups with 500 languages being used. These tribal groups have different norms and values that are likely to cause conflict in the country. On the other hand, Australia addresses heritage, creative industries and the fundamental role of arts in cultural manifestation and includes the organization, enterprises and individuals engagement. They strongly focus on inclusive and creative culture which has enhanced the productivity and the life standard of Australian people. A compressive and strong legal outline exists between Indonesia and Australia that has developed the commercial ties and boosted the growing economy of Indonesia. The establishment of agreements such as ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) reduces the tariffs dramatically and enhances the business among the involved countries. Other negotiation has been initiated to encourage more foreign venture in Indonesia, liberalize mutual trade and capacity construction in mining, agriculture and the energy sector. This agreement has increased the production and improved the standard of living of the Indonesians. Australian businesses are well known for their contribution to programs such as social responsibility and the quality work. The Australia government utilizes all the opportunities and seeks to adjust the remedies and tariffs to encourage more of regional trade. Culture has been one of the external factors that influences or impact the consumer. Culture has always appeared complex for marketers to understand due to the inherent aspect. For instance, the cultural norms of Australia may be violated by the citizen of Indonesia without being informed of it and people from these two different cultures get uncomfortable to each other. Figure 2: monthly value (a$ millions) of Australian merchandise exports to Indonesia since 1988 Australia has a creative policy that plays an important role in the economic and social life by ensuring the entire citizen share the abundance of cultural life. This policy contains great values and priorities that will support and sustain Australia as a cultural rich country. Apart from building the good work, the creative policy highlights stimulating areas for future development. It also aims at equity, by ensuring that all the Australian access the benefits of the policy and mainstream creativity as an element of Australia’s economic and social life. Economically, Australia has been much better compared to Indonesia , thus enabling the Australian government to provide policing, welfare, infrastructure and education, better than the Indonesian government. Economic differences that made Australia more approachable to an independent PNG, has caused criticism from other countries for the destruction of PNG culture and maintaining that it’s also responsible for the social problems. On the other hand, Indonesia has the chances of exploiting resources from Irena Jaya without much return. The fact that Indonesia is considered to be the third world country, social infrastructure and economic growth is not expected from it. There have been rare cases of marriage between Chinese and Indonesian unlike Australia where in the second or third generation; Chinese identity has been wind-swept. In Indonesia, majority of the people are Muslims, which increases the chances of conflict when Indonesia gets liberals from Australia. Being the Muslim country, Indonesia always scowl upon homosexuality, show of flesh by females and the consumption of alcohol. In contrast, Australian people accept homosexuality, have gay politicians and even consume a lot of alcohol. Approach to Social Relationships Indonesia has been the most important country to Australia such that, if social relationship was not natured, developed, and gotten right, the whole web of foreign relations could be incomplete. During the governance of President Suharto, the new order emerged with the realization of prosperity and stability. These planned developments brought most important benefits to Australia and its expanse. Subsequent meetings used to be organized between the two countries, which lead to the signing of a security contract, responding to common matters jointly, and obligating parties to look up matters disturbing their public security. $8.8 million was provided for the programs intended to relive problems caused by unemployment, increasing food prices and drought. This was done during the Asian economic crisis when the Australian government also supported Indonesia with $1 billion loan. The dealings between the two countries reached a low point after the East Timor’s withdrawal in the year 1999 from Indonesia. Indonesia and Australia are the neighboring countries that share wide-ranging relationship including security, political, cultural links and commercial (Cheryl, 2009). These countries co-operate well on global and regional challenges such as, transnational crime, people smuggling, climate changes and counter-terrorism. The strong point of relationship is revealed when the countries exchange ministers, prominent people and leaders of both countries. Compressive plans of partnership have enabled ministerial official visit between Indonesia and Australia to share and liberate on the way forward. This has shown a high degree of mutual commitment to neighbor’s prosperity, security and progress. Australia has always supported Indonesia in a wide range of economic and technical. It has been a priority for Australia to provide high quality, effective and predictable assistance to Indonesia in addition to the national priorities. On security matters, there has been a close collaboration, addressing non-traditional and traditional security problems. The strong commitment and beneficial engagement has enabled the authorities investigate several terrorist occurrences in Indonesia. This support has enhanced and affected the Indonesia security, giving them the ability to disrupt terrorist network and plots. Counter-terrorism collaboration has developed significantly and it comprise wide-ranging establishment with Indonesia agencies, particularly in the following areas: criminal justice, law enforcement, defense, security of chemicals and explosive materials. This initiative has helped strengthen and boosted cooperation among law execution officials and networks in the region. It has also addressed other problem such as terrorism, money laundry and people smuggling. Approach to Power Distribution In the power distance dimension, Australia received the lowest mark of 36 compared to Indonesia that had the highest mark of 78. In this lower mark; Australia people are likely to lessen the imbalance power in making decision within business and utilize consultancy to moderate that authority. For instance Australians don’t prioritize other people due to position, gender and age. However, they do not call their managers or other people by their official titles. In contrast, the Indonesian people who have the highest power distance culture, show the high grade where the less powerful persons receive the dissemination of imbalance authority in businesses and their subordinate obey them. Workers are more expected to call their bosses by their official titles, like doctor, professor, and many others. Some cultures arehierarchical or great power distance, where some individuals have more authorities and effect than others. Approach to Uncertainty and Social Control The other cultural differences that have been demonstrated between the two countries are masculinity and uncertainty avoidance.In Indonesia, the second highest mark was uncertainty avoidance while in Australia masculinity was the second highest mark with a score of 48. Though Indonesia scores highly in uncertainty avoidance, it was still a low performance compared to the average of Asian 58 and the global average of 64. This performance shows that communities in Indonesia are almost not aware of threat produced by undefined condition and thus unable to dodge that condition (Hofstede’s & Geert, 2001). Another essential cultural aspect that has influenced the attitude of persons and cultural standards in the two countries is the prevailing religious belief. In some cultures, individuals understand themselves as conjugate to the natural surroundings while others strive for live in agreement with nature. Indonesia which has dominated in Islamic education, belong into subjugation-harmony humanity. While Australia which is a western civilization, fall into the category of the master people. The former people deliberate that politeness opts to be customary in communication for the first instance.On the side of Australian people, brashness has been considered important in communication because it’s part of frankness. They always believe that every individual should be in control of one’s own action and decision. On the other hand the Indonesians believe that external surroundings influence the action/decision of someone and that politeness is essential at all time. The bigger population that has been mostly of Islamic background and some three hundred tribal groups makes the country extremely religious. It’s with this respect that Indonesia has been considered different from Australia. As a result of European settlement, the country shares the inheritanceof western cultivation that makes them stand the historic consequences of being considered as “distrustful” by the other group of people who are conservative. In the past, the healthy relationship between the two countries was measured by the military and political climates. However, it’s true that the private sectors can enhance their development without the intervention of politics. For example, people between the two countries used to trade their goods and services peacefully before Indonesia gained independence. There after independence, communication between Australia and Indonesia was distorted and unfavorable issues were aired in the media (Minkov & Michael, 2007) In business, communication has been the most fundamental factor that has enabled dealings and effective operation with other countries. In the case of professional who work internationally and interacting with people from different countries or dealing with other companies abroad, need the awareness of cultural differences. That’s so because, what may be normal and perfectly acceptable in one country, may result to be offensive or even be confusing in another. Communication problems have always been caused by the cultural dimension such as; etiquette, verbal and non-verbal. (Trompenaars, 1993) Conclusion A strong, inclusive and creative culture builds up values and it’s an important factor that shapes and enhances the productivity of any nation. Generally the Australian culture accepts disagreement with rational argument and incase of dislike, one need not to resist. For the Indonesians ‘cultures its considered important to call individuals by their official titles.Cultural variances are still important today and uniformity tend to increase. Therefore, there is need of awareness of the cultural differences for respect and understanding to prevail amongst people. In addition, despite the indication that individuals or countries differ from each other on cultural issues, it’s true that inside all individuals are alike. The model of Hofstede has shed light on the variation of cultures between countries and it has been used to give overview and understanding of other beliefs or cultures. This will enhance the behavior and expectation of countries amongst themselves. References Anderson, B. R O’G, 1983, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Colin, S 2005, Organization Psychology in Cross Cultural Perspective, Sage Publications, Beverley Hills. Cheryl, N 2009, Beyond Hofstede: Culture Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management, Palgrave MacMillan, NY. Hofstede, G 1991, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work Related Values, Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Hofstede, G. 1980, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Hofstede, Geert 2001, Culture's Consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.), SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Greetz, C 1973a, The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Culture of Man. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books. Hofstede, GH 2012, Geert-Hofstede.com. Retrieved on 10 Sept. 2012, from: http://geert-hotstede.com/australia.html Minkov & Michael2007, What makes us different and similar: A new interpretation of the World Values Survey and other cross-cultural data, Klasika y Stil Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria. Trompenaars, F 1993, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business, Brealey Publishing Ltd, London. Read More