Cultural Differences and People Management: Reflective Diary - Essay Example

Coming from another culture, I get to compare it to the culture of my host country. I also have the opportunity to share how I adapted to another culture. “…the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another… the interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influences a human group’s response to its environment.” Personally, the word collective programming brings to mind a scene from a strange movie I have seen on brainwashing a number of people to do things whether they like it or not.

My strange fantasies aside, I know that culture is an unconscious learning of a certain group’s inherent practices, and behaviors, and it forms the group’s identity that sets them apart from other cultures. According to Hofstede’s definition, culture is a human characteristic that can be identified, categorized and compared. This classification of culture makes it possible to establish and attribute variations in behavior to a rooted cultural identity, which is useful when analyzing international management issues.

I am certain that whoever I ask, with a strong cultural affiliation, will be able to supply me with examples of his or her cultural hero, ritual, value or practice. The examples may not necessarily be originally from one’s particular culture, but may have been adopted by that culture due to its strong impact. Hofstede’s work has provided a seminal framework for understanding cultural value orientations and their effect on the workplace. His efforts, summarized in Culture’s Consequences (1980/1991/2001), culminated in a mass study that established typologies of over 50 countries, evaluating attitudes towards power distance, uncertainty avoidance, societal orientation, social gender and time.

These five areas are statistically independent. Each country tested has a numerical score