Question 1

1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use 2 hypothetical but realistic situations - or real ones - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. you may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.

According to hofstedes there are five dimensions:
1. Power distance index
2. Masculinity
3. Uncertainty avoidance
4. Individualism
5. Long-term orientation

I’m only going to center around two of these dimensions:

Power distance index (PDI)
In short words, it’s the distance between the higher ups to the employees, for example, let compared two different cultures, the Australian (also know as an ozzie) and the Japanese, these two have a good commercial relation, but one very noticeable difference between these two cultures is the distance between manager and employee, in the Australian culture is not rare to see a boss with his employee drinking a glass of beer and speaking as they were close fiend, but, in the Japanese culture, there is a respectful attitude with the boss, and speaking to him as he was a very close friend will be considered as a rude and un-respectful gesture toward the boss.

Individualism
It refers to closeness between people and families, in Australia, it’s a more individualism country, they tend to care more about their direct family and they each take care of their one, while in china, there is a lot of collectivism between families, its not weird to see a gathering with second and third cousins. Also, in China people take care of the connections with other people, people can get a job more easily depending of the connections they have, while in Australia, its not accepted to get a job thru connections with people, it can be considered against the law

Bibliography:
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/japan.html
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/australiaasia.html
http://japanwatching.com/culture/92-how-different-are-the-japanese


2. Write a short essay considering the following questions:

- Do you think there is a corporate culture in every organisation?
- If we assume there is: Can it be modified?

Geert Hofstede said "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another".

There is a corporate culture in every organization; each company has a set of values, regulation and methods to act.
Organizational culture is different from the objectives and goals that the company has, the organizational culture is how to act and work along side with your coworkers and how to interact with the managers and bosses, each company has their own culture, the culture can be modified but not immediately, fast results in this case are not appropriate in order to improve, you have to start with little changes and this will lead to the big changes, but is very difficult to achieve in the first try, if not done right, workers can have a difficult work relations between them, it will be a very stressful environment and there will be confusions.

One of the reasons for an organizational culture is to create a long term relation and a collective mentality in the company, to increase the loyalty of the workers to the company, the little things that some times you don’t see at the first glance, and how they do certain things, are the things you want to look for to see the organizational culture that the company has, and, when you are the new guy in the company, noticing these details will help you to get used to the work and with your co-workers.

Robert Kohls sais "Culture is an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of any given society. Culture refers to the total way of life for a particular group of people. It includes [what] a group of people thinks, says, does and makes—its customs, language, material artifacts and shared systems of attitudes and feelings".



Bibliography:
http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/japan.html
http://www.coach-englisch.net/html/culture_quotes.html