Compare culture's different - Research Paper Example

This paper is a comparison between the Chinese and the American culture, while focusing especially on Boston’s culture when talking about America. To start with, Chinese culture believes in team work, group collaboration, and collective effort toward achieving goals and objectives, be they organizational goals or personal goals. Group cooperation is valued and encouraged. On the other hand, American culture, as is also seen in Boston, individualism prevails (Markus and Kitayama). An individual here has to rely on his own self for the accomplishment of his personal goals.

American people are self-made as they do not believe in group collaboration, and thus, many of them spend lives living alone. Family system is poorer here in Boston in particular and America in general. Since the Chinese culture believes in group effort, family system there is much stronger. If we talk about business culture, Chinese culture believes in formal, hierarchical structure of social relationships. This means that Chinese people like to know their specific position in a group or an organization, where they know how they have to behave and interact.

On the other hand, American business culture is informal. Social rankings are less important, and people feel comfortable in interacting with each other due to absence of formalities. However, Chinese businesspeople give great importance to building relationships with their partners and stakeholders. They may get very frank, and prefer face-to-face communication. American people give more importance to business dealings rather than building relationships. American is an aggressive business style; while, Chinese is a very careful one.

As for personal and social relationships, Chinese people keep a very small circle of friends, who are reliable, good friends. They are mostly lifelong friends, who would do anything to help out a friend in need. On the other hand, American people, especially here in Boston, people keep a lot of friends, most of whom are only acquaintances. They keep on changing friends from time to time and place to place. This has become a part of popular culture in Boston. Chinese personal relationships are also stronger, and most of them are life-long.

Chinese people keep strong commitments. American popular culture has influenced people to keep short-term relationships. Hence, trust lacks in American relationships. It is interesting to note here that Chinese people expect the obligation in reverse too. When they commit in a relationship, they expect the same kind of commitment from the other person. Contrarily, American people avoid getting into relationships that demand long-term commitment in the first place. Hence, American people show more acceptance toward romantic love rather than life-long commitment in the form of marriage (Fitzpatrick et al.

113-127; Gao 329-342). Pan and Vanhonacker write in their article, that Chinese system is collective, and thus, family is a part of social norms. Chinese people have to get married because for them, family is an extension of society and not of an individual. Chinese people need to create a family in order to be socially accepted. On the other hand, since American culture is individualistic, hence family is considered as an