INTERCULTURAL CONFLICTS

In our 13th class of intercultural management, Heiko, explained to us the importance of finding a common ground in negotiation and in multicultural teams, due to the benefits that this can bring to the final result of any negotiation. Characteristics like leadership, authority and communication are fundamental in the multicultural teams, because those are the ones that will lead the whole team to a successful result.
According to Heiko, a person that does not know their group will be afraid because the uncertainty of how the group will perform the task, and from my point of view this can be directly related with the Hofstede dimension because on team works people might feel that there is a lack of security.

We also saw that there are two different dimensions that are related with the two components of conflict and this is named ''The intercultural conflict style model''

• Discussion: People with this characteristic will have a more direct communication but hiding their emotions. 
• Engagement: People with this characteristic will have a more direct communication and expressing their emotions.
• Accommodation: People with this characteristic will have an indirect communication and also will hide their emotions.
• Dynamic: People with this characteristic will implement an indirect communication but will express their emotions.

 EXAMPLES

Other theory developed by Bruce Tuckman related with the performance, behavior and success of the team work is call ''Developmental Sequence in Small Groups''.
Where four stages will define the good or the bad development of the work team, the four stages are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning

The forming stage is the first one, where all the people in the group are getting to know each other and finally defining the roles.
The storming is the second one where all members begin to express their opinions not just according to the work but also the disagreements that they have in team rules.
The third one is the norming, where people start to crate tools to solve the differences giving a feedback.
Performing is the fourth stage when people start to develop the project and work on their roles and when new members are integrated easily.
The last stage is the adjourning one when is the time to celebrate the success of the team.

From my point of view it was the most interesting topic because with just five statements we can define the success or the failure of a team work.

QUESTION!!!

What does conflict mean into intercultural management?

It can be seen that conflict is the most common problem when talking about cross cultural relations, every country is trying to protect its sovereignty at any cost.

On the other hand into intercultural management when talking about teams, it can be seen that people have always different opinions and feelings making the communication and arrive to a common desision much harder.

• Wooten, L. (n.d.). CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR GRANTMAKERS. Retrieved May 14, 2015, from https://www.michiganfoundations.org/sites/default/files/resources/Conflict Management Strategies for Grantmakers.pdf
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 5) Finding Common Ground - Multicultural Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT Universty, Medellin.

DIVERSIFICATION IN CROSS CULTURAL TEAMS

In my 14th class of intercultural management, we saw a very particular topic that from my point of view is the most interesting one of all topics that we have seen during the semester.

Is fascinating how a good understanding not just about the topic that teams are researching but also the connection that members of the group have to create in order to have a successful result.

Saying this now we ask ourselves way teams some time fail in their objectives or the result is not the expected, this is because there are some facts that teams have to study first to avoid those failures. As we saw in the last class there is a theory call “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups” which say that there are some steps to follow and this will be the success or fail of a team work.

Now getting deeper on the subject, talking about teams with people that share same language, same costumes might be easier to work, but when the team is formed by people with different characteristics the job gets harder, but why? because there is a lack of leadership where nobody wants to take the responsibility to delegate, and nobody wants to follow others. Also because there is a deference to authority where people are afraid to express their feelings and emotions, as well as sometimes there are members who block the other people's work.

Trust and the lack thereof

According to Lencioni ''Trust is a characteristic of all efficient teams, lack of trust one of the most common or important causes for a dysfunctional team''

According to '' The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'' written by Patrick Lencioni, the following are the description of the dysfunction.

Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust

The fear of being vulnerable with team members prevents the building of trust within the team.

• Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict
• The desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles the occurrence of productive ideological conflict.
• Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment
• The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions they will stick to.
Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability
• The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable.
Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
• The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success.
''Negative trust-destroying events are more noticeable and more heavily weighted in impression formation which subsequently propagates or solidifies further distrust'' (Slovic, 1993)

On the other hand what is it needed to build a good team?

According to the proffesor Heiko, first team members have to identify the issues and then set specific goals, and obviously trust in each other.

QUESTION!!!

Should people eliminate fear for a more effective teamwork?

According to the article published by the magazine inc.com ''fear can be the enemy of innovation and effective teamwork, because effective teamwork works best when workplace teams are not afraid to fail or even worse, lose their employment (talking about team works within companies). So, instead of being fearful, team leadership should incent its workplace teams to look at things from a long-term perspective''

From my point of view it is very important to do so, because fear would not let team members to adapt and do what they are suppose to do withing the team.

• Lencioni, P. (2003). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (p. 240). John Wiley & Sons.
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 5) Finding Common Ground - Multicultural Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT Universty, Medellin.  
• 3 Ways to Ensure Your Team Is at Peak Performance. (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/quora/3-ways-to-ensure-your-team-is-at-peak-performance.html?cid=sf01001  

VIRTUAL TEAMS

The topic of our last class of intercultural management was the virtual teams and how them get formed and what they need to do to exist and develop their task during the time that the group exist.

First we have to clarify what a virtual team is, according to Academic Journal of Management perspectives, the authors say the virtual teams are those who ''members are geographically distributed, requiring them to work together through electronic means with minimal face-to-face interactions''

From my point of view this type of team is the most difficult one, because it is essential the communication and the non-verbal communication as well as the importance to be close to the other members and with this the final task is going to be easier to achieve.

On the other hand for some people is better this type of team because it increase the productivity at the time to develop the work of each role of each team member, also reduce costs in other operations.

The other topic that I liked a lot were the steps to have a successful virtual team development which according to Heiko are set goals and have a clearly understanding of them, create trust (as we saw in previous sesions, is the most important fact that a team work must has), According to Sirkka Jarvenpaa and Dorothy Leidner ''Only trust can prevent the geographical and organizational distances of global team members from becoming psychological distances'' but on the other hand they say ''trust allows people to take part in risky activities that they can not control or monitor and yet where they may be disappointed by the actions of others'' this means that trust is an essential part of the human being that can help or harm us if is used in a wrong way.

Other step is the information that the virtual teams should share (this is the most complicated part, because in virtual teams communication is always done through an electronic device with out the face-to-face item which make it harder) and the last step is the preparation and planning, not just of the topic and job that the team must do but also the preparation to be working not just with people with different costumes in some cases with different language and costumes but also with a very restricted communication.

 

This led me to the QUESTION???

Can people trust when they are working into virtual teams?

Giving my opinion I would say that yes, people can trust into virtual teams but not as much as with teams where people can gather together to explode all their abilities and where people can have a personal communication with all the items that this has such as non verbal communication and verbal communication.

According to Cummings and Bromiley ''maintaining that a person trust a gropu when that person believes that the group ''makes a good-faith effort to behave in accordance with any commitments both explicit or implicit; is honest in whatever negotiations preceded such commitments and; does not take excessive advantage of another even when the opportunity is available''

This means that can exist trust but with certain restrictions.

• Malhotra, A., Majchrzak, A., & Rosen, B. (2007). Leading Virtual Teams. Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 21(No. 1), Pp. 60-70. Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.eafit.edu.co/stable/4166287?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=virtual&searchText=teams&searchUri=/action/doBasicSearch?Query=virtual+teams&acc=on&wc=on&fc=off&group=no  

• Cummings, L., & Bromiley, P. (1995). The Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI). In Trust in Organizations (p. 440). SAGE Publications.  
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 12). Virtual Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT University, Medellin. 

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AND THE ARAB CLUSTER

April 17th 2015

On the 11th class of intercultural management, my group did the African and The Middle Eastern cultural cluster presentation, where we highlighted the Gannon and the Hofstede approaches and  metaphors and with a briefly discussion on different facts that make those cultures similar or different.

I want to stand out two specific points that I found interesting, the first one was that religion, rituals, and costumes can interfere on how collectivist or individualists a culture or country is. 

In this aspect was very interesting that both clusters still have very extended families and a lot of rituals that make them collectivist cultures. According to Hofstede African culture has an average of 40 which means that is a collectivist culture, even South Africa being an individualistic country because all the remaining relationships with its colonizers still remain with all the costumes that have characterized that specific culture. Rituals and tribes relations, make them collectivist people.
According to Gannon, in Nigeria hometown associations are made with the specific task to improve infrastructures facilities, also, it is common to pay in a collectivist way for studies aboard of a prominent student with the hopes of that person returning home to implement his or her knowledge. With this we can see that there is a specific need to help the other members of the community and the family; they are always thinking that the blood is even thicker than water, which means that family is first that anything else.

The Middle Eastern cultural cluster with an average of 33,75 also has the same characteristics that the African one, due to the extended family and the roles within it. This not only is going to affect the Arabs way of life but also the business opportunities for foreign people, there are challenges because that collectivist way of life, for example according to Matthew Maclachlan ''... Suppliers and potential customers are more likely to sign contracts with people that they already know and being introduced by agents or third parties.''

The second point that captured my attention was the fact that each cluster have a country a little off of the chart, which means that even having the same religion, language and type of governance, those countries for different reasons were far from the common culture.
African cluster with South Africa, a country that in the most cases was on the extremes according to the Hofstede's dimensions, this is a fact because as I said before, the remaining relations with its colonizers and because of its diversity ''a nation diversity, with nearly 52-million people and a wide variety of cultures, languages and religious beliefs'' also the convenience between races ''Africans are the majority, making up 79,2% of the population; colored and white people each make up 8,9% of the total; and the Indian/Asian population 2,5%. ''Other'' population group makes up 0,5% of the total''

On the other hand Turkey a country from the Middle East cluster as a torn county -a nation with a single predominant culture that places it in one civilization while its leaders seek to shift it to another civilization (Huntington, 1996)- even being an Eastern country has moved its costumes and traditions to the Western culture, and this is the reason why it is different from the other countries of the cluster, however Turkey share a similar position and location.

QUESTION!!!

What is Ubuntu? Does this concept has the same perception and understanding in the Western culture?

''Ubuntu is an African concept of person-hood in which the identity of the self is understood to be formed interdependently through community'' (Michael, 2009). This concept is a little hard to understand for western people because in this culture everybody is thinking of themselves rather than being in the same way of living with the other members and ''...westerns understand self as over and against others''   
In conclusion, the Ubuntu concept definitely has a connection with how collectivist Africa is, ''Ubuntu means person-hood'' which means that everything is surrounded by the community and the health and the well-being of it.


Gannon, M. J. (2004). Understanding global cultures: Metahporical journys throught 28 nations, clusters of nations, and continents. (3rd ed). Sage Publications.

MACLACHLAN, M. (2010, September 15). CHALLENGES OF DOING BUSINESS IN MOROCCO. Retrieved April 17, 2015, from http://www.communicaid.com/cross-cultural-training/blog/challenges-of-doing-business-in-morocco/#.VTFhCdyG9wt

South Africa's population. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2015, from 
http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/population.htm#.VSQm4PmG9Dw#ixzz3WeQRXDTD

Huntington, S. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Battle, M., & Tutu, D. (2009). Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me (p. 166). Church Publishing.

NATIONAL STEREOTYPING AS A MARKETING TOOL

April 17th 2015

Our 10th class of intercultural manager was divided in two parts.
The first one was the presentation of the Germanic and Eastern Europe cultural cluster, where the class mates explained us the importance of have a deep knowledge in terms of knowing how to manage relationships between different cultures, not just because is important when doing business but also is important to understand your own culture, according to the UNESCO "Understanding others makes possible a better knowledge of oneself: any form of identity is complex, for individuals are defined in relation to other people - both individually and collectively - and the various groups to which they owe allegiance, in a constantly shifting pattern."

The class mates did a comparison of those clusters in terms of the metaphors that we saw in class (Gannon, Hofstede) and a very interesting contrast with our Colombian culture.

The second part of the class, Heiko expose how companies use the stereotypes, to do their marketing campaigns, also we saw the differences between a positive stereotype with a negative stereotype.
From my point of view stereotyping is not good even when they are positive; The stereotypes describe judgement made about others on the basis of their ethnic group membership (Lippman, 1992), this led us think that the whole community is going to be judge because of the thoughts of people but no everybody is the same.

Heiko gave an example of a German company named Bank Forum where the company used positive stereotypes of the German people in order to have market access in other country; even being positive stereotypes some people are not going to agree due to the different characteristics.

An other example is the National Express commercial, where an English academy from England is encouraging people to go and study over there, the commercial is about England people on the street talking how the external world think about them and their country, moreover with bad stereotypes, their are trying to show that England in not as bad as they say.

QUESTION!!!
It can be consider that stereotyping is part of human nature?

According to Rebecca Cook, specialist in international human rights and gender, stereotyping is part of the human nature, everyone has been stereotyped or has stereotyped, everybody does that to describe, generalize and judge people very quickly.
For example always women have been seen as a housewives and mothers, rather than men that have been seen as a supporters of the homes.
For example, if men want to stay at home and look after the children society will disapprove that behavior, which means that in society stereotypes are natural.  


Brunsch, C. (2007). Stereotyping as a Phenomenon in Intercultural Communication (p. 32). GRIN Verlag.

Delors, J. (n.d.). Learning The Treasure Within. Retrieved April 17, 2015, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdf

Express English: National stereotypes [Motion picture]. (n.d.).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYJXNkMKgX8

Los estereotipos negativos son una enfermedad social. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2015, from http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/10/07/ls-portada.html

ETHICS - No Easy Choices

March 16th 2015

In my sixth class of intercultural management we talk about a very controversial topic, the ethics, why is it controversial?, because everyone has different perceptions and thoughts  about this subject.

First we have to take into account the definition of ethics in order to have a clear view and an overall knowledge.

According to (Bishop, 2013) ''ethics concerns the moral behavior of individuals based on an established and expressed standard of the group, which is in and of itself a collection of individual value'' 

With this said we can now have an overall view of the ethics, and we can now enter deeper on the subjects that we saw on class.

http://boscobae.blogspot.com/2012/11/calvin-and-hobbes-on-ethics.html


This is an example of how ethics can infer in the normal life and how normal people can have different perceptions of this topic and other example that we can see is that a partner in class said that the word ''unethical'' is a little out of context, because those different perceptions make people see things in different ways, so for some people actions might be unethical and for other people the same actions could be ethical, so the view in terms of the definition itself can vary depending on each person.

After this discussion Heiko presented us the differences between two concepts that helps to measure and judge the concept ethic.
Individualism: in this concept the morality is measured and guide by social and legal standards, from my point of view this is specifically for specific communities for example in Colombia is consider moral let women have an important roll in the society but on the other hand in the Arabian culture is unethical to let women have important roll in society because they have to be at home raising their sons and daughters and looking after the husband, however there is Universalism, where the morality is measures and guide by universal principles and this basically say for example that kill is unmoral everywhere.

With this said we can now talk about a topic that all countries on the world have no matter if is developed, developing, rich or poor; the bribery is a subject that we can see in almost every sector of the social, political and economical sector, basically bribery ''is a specific offence which concerns the practice of offering something, usually money, to gain an illicit advantage and corruption is an abuse of a position of trust in order to gain an undue advantage''.

Bribery can be separate in three categories, lubrication bribery which ''facilitate, expedite or speed up government approvals to which the company would be legally entitled'', extortion “A government official seeking payment for an action or omission to which the company would be legally entitled'' and whitemail bribes which are ''intended to induce someone (usually a government official) to do or omit doing something in violation of his lawful duty, or to exercise his (or her) discretion in favor of the payer’s request for a contract, concession, or privilege on some basis other than merit.''

From my point of view these topics need to be studied for long time before make an affirmation about them and even if they have been studying those subjects people cannot concluded a finally statement, as I said before this depend in a 100% the type o culture and people.

Also I think that the ethics and the morality is a fundamental base for the professional world, this led to the question    

QUESTION!!!

What ethical responsibilities should professionals have?

As professionals, we should have certain ethics to successfully meet the responsibilities, not only because is fundamental at the time to do business but also because with this we can avoid misunderstandings and avoid harming people.

According to The Code of Ethics & Professional Responsibility, there are 7 principles to achieve a good responsible and professional ethics:

Integrity: Provide professional services with integrity. Integrity demands honesty and candor which must not be subordinated to personal gain and advantage.

Objectivity: Provide professional services objectively. Objectivity requires intellectual honesty and impartiality. Regardless of the particular service rendered or the capacity in which a certificant functions, certificants should protect the integrity of their work, maintain objectivity and avoid subordination of their judgment.

Competence: Maintain the knowledge and skill necessary to provide professional services competently. Competence means attaining and maintaining an adequate level of knowledge and skill, and application of that knowledge and skill in providing services to clients.

Fairness: Be fair and reasonable in all professional relationships. Disclose conflicts of interest. Fairness requires impartiality, intellectual honesty and disclosure of material conflicts of interest. It involves a subordination of one’s own feelings, prejudices and desires so as to achieve a proper balance of conflicting interests.

Confidentiality: Protect the confidentiality of all client information. Confidentiality means ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access.

Professionalism: Act in a manner that demonstrates exemplary professional conduct. Professionalism requires behaving with dignity and courtesy to clients, fellow professionals, and others in business-related activities.

Diligence: Provide professional services diligently. Diligence is the provision of services in a reasonably prompt and thorough manner, including the proper planning for, and supervision of, the rendering of professional services.

- Bishop, W. (2013). The Role of Ethics in 21st Century Organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol 118(No. 3), Pp. 635-637. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from JSTOR.

- Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, January 27). Communicating across Cultures. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT University, Medellin. 

- What is Bribery and Corruption? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.anticorruption.ie/en/acjs/pages/

- Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, March 3) Ethics and Aesthetics. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT Universty, Medellin.

- CFP Board, C. (n.d.). CODE OF ETHICS & PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Retrieved from http://www.cfp.net/for-cfp-professionals/professional-standards-enforcement/standards-of-professional-conduct/code-of-ethics-professional-responsibility

HOW TO MEASURE CULTURE?

March 6th 2015

In my 4th class of intercultural management we disused a very interesting and controversial topic, why is it controversial? Because it has a lot of topics and approaches to get into account before arrive to a conclusion and those conclusions can vary depends on the culture and the way people see things.

The first approach or topic that we have to take into account is the barrier on language, how language can affect our relations, business and mostly important the communication by itself across countries and cultures, according to Heiko ''If you don’t speak the same language, effective work and communication are close to impossible (without translator)''. This is in a way true, but we cannot forget that there are a lot of ways to communicate, for example the non-verbal communication, is not as effective as the verbal communication but we can get us understand by symbols and signs, also we can take into account that the language is constantly evolving, there is Jargon that according to the Merriam Webster dictionary can be define ''as the specific language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people'', also there is Argot that according to the same source is ''the language used by a particular type or group of people'' as well as Acronyms that are the contraction of a word for example World Trade Organization, the acronym would be WTO.

After this our professor gave us an example of how difficult would be doing a basic activity (ordering food in a restaurant) if we do not know the language, and I know that this has happened to all of us.

Knowing this we asked ourselves, how do we measure culture? There are a lot of possibilities and methods to measure this but Heiko explained to us the the most efficient, easy and faster way was asking and doing surveys, because with this we can gather information to further analysis.

On the second part of the class, Heiko introduced us Gerard Hofstede, his real name is Gerard Hendrik Hofstede, but he is better known as ''Greet'' Hofstede. He was born in Haarlem (Netherlands) the 2nd of October 1928. He is a social psychologist and an anthropologist, his main study is the cultural dimension theory. This theory has five dimensions, Individualism, Masculinity, Long Term Orientation, Uncertainty avoidance and Power Distance and according to Hofstede, with these tools we can measure culture but it is necessary to do surveys to get into a conclusion.

It was very interesting the fact that in Colombia those measures have been applied also that we already know the score that Colombians have in each one.

• -          Individualism: ‘‘Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: Everyone is expected to look after him/herself and her/his immediate family only.

Collectivism clearly is one of the characteristics that Colombians have and this is why the people is kind and helpful, Colombians like to help others and they have the thought that as more people doing something better is the result.

Colombians always say ‘‘Dos cabezas piensan más que una’’ in English ‘‘Two heads think more than one’’.

According to Hofstede Colombia has a Score of 13 being one of the more collectivistic country of the world

• -          Uncertainty avoidance: “The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations.” (Knapp, 2011)

Colombia has a score of 80 which means that Colombians are afraid of not knowing what is going to happen in the future. From my point of view this fact is more on the side of the nervousness of the change. Colombians do not like to have changes in their life too often, they are afraid to have something unusual happening.

• -          Masculinity: ‘‘Masculinity stands for a society in which social gender roles are clearly distinct: Men are supposed to be assertive, tough and focused on material success; women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life’’. (Hofstede, 2001)
• -          Femininity: ‘’Stands for a society in which social gender roles overlap: Both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.” (Hofstede, 2001)

Colombia has a score of 64; it is a high score which means that in Colombia men has a more success in everything that they do, and women tend to be quiet and do everything tan men say.

I think that this has changed; nowadays woman has a very important role within society in terms of leading important economic, social and political projects.

• -          Long term orientation: ‘‘Stands for the fostering of virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular, perseverance and thrift. Its opposite pole’’(Hofstede, 2001)
• -          Short term orientation: ‘‘Stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present, in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of “face” and fulfilling social obligations.” (Hofstede, 2001)

In this dimension Colombia scored 13 which mean that is more directed to the long term orientation, Colombians are very concern in terms of traditions and norms, they follow them as the absolute truth.

• -          Power Distance: “The extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. ’’ (Hofstede, 2001)

Colombia has a score of 67 which means that the differences between social classes are abysmal, as well as the differences between employee and boss, ruler and citizen and we can see this in terms on the economic differences.

QUESTION!!!

How can we eliminate language barriers in business?

With the globalization the world has been closer and for instance the transportation has made easier the communication between countries, however people from all around the world do not speak the same language, although the international tongue is English people always think that is better to speak in their mother language, making communication and business cross borders harder.

With all this globalization the language barriers can create misunderstandings, but according to (Kate, 2007) ‘‘Language barriers are a common challenge in international business settings—and a two-way process. What native speakers often don't realize is that frequently it is not the other person's accent but their own way of speaking that creates the greatest barriers to effective communication. Use the strategies below to ensure you're not putting up your own roadblocks to effective international communication.’’  

There are some specific ways and steps to reduce these barriers.

• 1     Speak slowly and clearly
• 2     Ask for clarification
• 3     Frequently check for understanding
• 4     Avoid idioms
• 5     Be careful of jargon
• 6     Define the basics of business
• 7     Be specific
• 8     Choose your medium of communication effectively
• 9     Provide information via multiple channels (non-verbal communication)
• 10  Be patient

From my point of view I think that always is going to exist barriers in communication because basically there are a lot of languages and this is going to cause misunderstandings but there are some ways to reduce this problems across borders.

-          Knapp, M., & Daly, J. (2011). Intercultural Prespectives. In The SAGE Handbook of Interpersonal Communication (Fourth ed., p. 800). SAGE.

-          Hofstede, G. (2001). Masculinity and Femininity. In Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations (Second ed., p. 596). SAGE.

-          Dictionary (Def. 1). (n.d). In Merriam webster online, Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jargon

-          Dictionary (Def. 1). (n.d). In Merriam webster online, Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argot

-          Berardo, K. (2007, January 1). 10 Strategies for Overcoming Language Barriers. Retrieved March 6, 2015, from http://www.culturosity.com/pdfs/10 Strategies for Overcoming Language Barriers.pdf

THE IMPACT OF CULTURE

February 16th 2015

In my second class of intercultural manager, our teacher Heiko divided the class in two sections, the fists one was about the class by itself, we talked and discuss about the impact of culture, how the differences between people from different parts of the wold with different language, manners and behavior can gum up business and not only business we got a very interesting example about the Colombian Aviaca flight from Medellin to New York, that because a misunderstanding the plane crashes, there was not enough gas and the co-pilot, the pilot and the air traffic controller did not understand each other and this caused the crash. After have been talking about this misunderstanding we move deeper in terms of cultural identity that according to Jandt Idem is ''The identification with and acceptance into a group that has a shared system of symbols and meanings as well as norms for conduct''; Referring this I would like to highlight how the sensations and the perceptions in different cultures can interfere in negotiations and businesses and how culture´s influence on perceptions.

We can see this with an example that our teacher gave us: In the occidental culture there are six basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple), but in an African culture called Bassa, the organize those colors in two categories the Ziza that are the stronger colors and the Hui that are the weaker colors. 

After this, we saw some chocking images, this was an activity that we did and the reactions were amazing. The images were about the interpretation that people from different cultures give to this images, the first one was a dog with a sad face and the second one was a Chines cooker preparing some dogs to do a meal, this was very impressive because precisely is very different the interpretation according to the culture.
After this first part of the class we did an incredible activity, from my point of view one of the most interesting activity I've ever done.

The second image was about the perception and interpretation that cows have all around the world in some cultures we have them as the base of the alimentation (Protein), and in other cultures they are considered as a religious images.

The activity was basically the construction of a bridge, there were two parties, one The Derdians a community with manners and ways to behave, and the engineers guests that were invited to build the bridge, but with a totally different culture.

When the activity first begun everything was normal the engineers were planning the construction of the bridge but they do not know and do not realize that the Dorians were from other culture with other behavior 

- They couldn't speak in Spanish.

- They had to introduce themselves fist before talk with a Dorian.

- A man couldn't speak with a girl, and a girl couldn't speak with a woman.

- A man couldn't use pencils and a woman couldn't use scissors.

Those are some rules and part of the culture that the engineers had to respect and follow to have a good business and future relationship with this culture.

We can conclude with this activity that for a successful business in other cultures we have first to know the culture by itself, and if we don't get to know those manners and customs in deep we are going to fail in the business, for example the bridge couldn't be build because the lack of time and for instance the lack of communication.

QUESTION!!!

Can perception occur without sensation?
We can begin talking what are each of them.
The sensations are basically the process that is made when all the information that is received from outside arrives to the body and brain, and this process is passive because we do not have awareness of what has been brought to our body.
The perception is the active process that we do when receiving all that information from the outside, this process is made to organize and perceive what the environment is telling us through the senses.
These two concepts have a really strong relation and one without the another can not survive, this is because they exist to crate and identify all the meanings that a feeling can create on us.
Perception without sensation is a concept that is not valid, because the sensations are the firs stimuli that the body has and then this stimuli get processed to understand what is perceived. we can not have perceptions without a stimuli to process.

Bibliography:

- Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, January 27). Communicating across Cultures. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT University, Medellin. 

-Sarah Mae Sincero (Jun 6, 2013). Sensation and Perception. Retrieved Feb 18, 2015 from 

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/sensation-and-perception

COMMUNICATION ACROSS CULTURES

February 11th 2015

During my third class of intercultural manager, we discussed the importance of the communication between cultures and how difficult understanding it is, starting on the activity that we did in the last class (The Derdians) this activity was basically two teams, the first one was the engineers that had to plan the building of a bridge for the Derdian community, and the second one was the Derdians that had to build the bridge with the instructions of the engineers, this activity led us understand the barriers that sometimes people have communicating with a different culture that has different ways to think, completely different manners and norms.

In the class we analyzed all the points that the communication between cultures contain and how barriers in the intercultural communication can affect business across cultures and within it.

At the beginning, the teacher, Heiko Schmidt, pointed the basic model for communication created by David Berlo that is called The Process of Communication, this gave us an idea and a context in where the communication is based on.

The model show us that in every communication must be at least two sides, one the sender that encodes the message through a channel and the other the receiver that decodes the message and get what the sender is trying to communicate, this leads us to understand how cultures takes the misunderstandings; there is basically two ways to understand this: in low context and in high context, Schmidt, explain (and it was very funny) that in some countries or cultures the misunderstanding is because the receiver is fool and does not understand what has been said for example in Colombia, and in other countries the misunderstanding happens in the other way (in this case the fool is the sender)

Now that we are talking about the misunderstanding in communication lets move to the

QUESTION!!!

- Which cultures are in the low context and in the high context and what are the implications about this?

First of all we have to know what is exactly low context communication and high context communication and what are the main differences between them.

A low context culture is one where everything that we said is totally explained and there is not independence in what has been written.

A high context culture is one where everything that we said is not as much as explained as is written or spoken, this means that we have to pay more attention on other non-verbal communication.

The cultures that have low context communications are: Anglos, Germanics and Scandinavians.

The cultures that have high context communications are: Japanese, Arabs, French.

According to Brett Rutledge, world champion of public speaking and executive communication and specialist writes about communication "Japanese can find westerns to be offensively blunt. westerns can find Japanese to be secretive and devious. and French can feel that Germans insult their intelligence by explaining the obvious, while Germans can feel that French managers provide no directions"

With that said, we moved to the barriers in the intercultural communication. There are six aspects that make the communication across countries very difficult: "1) Assumption of similarities, 2) Language differences, 3) Nonverbal misinterpretations, 4) Preconceptions and stereotypes, 5) Tendency to evaluate, 6) High anxiety; These six aspects basically explain why is difficult to communicate with other cultures even if they speak the same language". (Schmidt, H.)

In other hand was very interesting the non-verbal communication because it is the 50% of the entire communication process also because is amazing how people with different culture and language can communicate with their own body or with symbols and signs, but this also has misunderstandings and is very interesting how little changes of personality, history and some Kilometers away, all this non verbal communication that a country has changed.

Bibliography

- Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, January 27). Communicating across Cultures. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT University, Medellin. 

-Rutledge, B. (2011, August 21). Cultural Differences - High Context versus Low Context. Retrieved January 11, 2015, from http://thearticulateceo.typepad.com/my-blog/2011/08/cultural-differences-high-context-versus-low-context.html

https://gwynteatro.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/4-barriers-to-effective-communication-what-to-do-about-them-2/