Culture Counts! “It Is Not What You Said, But How You Said It!”
Fatimah was astounded and discouraged when Anthony sent her a message that said, “Your idea is not logical” and then proceeded to suggest another idea—“Option A is a better one!” It was not his rejection of her idea that upset her—after all, in a team, it is totally acceptable for diverse ideas to be brought up—but rather how he said it, snappishly and curtly, with only a few words. “If I were to respond,” she thought, “I would say it this way: your idea is good, but there are lots of ways that we can think about the project and its options. We should consider Option A as it has the lesser cost. Perhaps, it would be better if we started by weighing each of the available options to understand the cost and benefit?” Looking back at Anthony’s message and the way she herself would have responded, she chuckled. One had an elongated manner with padded words, whereas the other was concise and straight to the point. She began to understand the true influence of culture in a global virtual team (GVT). Even when people were working at a distance, words were an important bridge between team members, but different cultural backgrounds gave them a different sense and aura, altering the working climate. What a shame that she failed to understand the cultural nuances!
Throughout this book, my standpoint, based on my research findings and other related studies, has been clear: culture does matter. Culture influences the way that people work, communicate, and collaborate across geographical distances and time. Multinational organizations, especially their GVT leaders, need to pay attention to cultural differences when building a team structure. The readiness of an organization to fully employ the GVT work structure is directly dependent on their ability to develop GVT leaders and teams that are culturally competent. What makes the GVT work structure more challenging is that team members are asked to collaborate with strangers in a virtual space, across geographical boundaries and time zones. Organizations need to nurture leaders who have the right capabilities and competencies to deal with the challenges of working in a virtual collaborative environment. GVT leaders need to develop and hone their skills in all three areas: (1) cognition, (2) emotion, and (3) behaviors—the CAB model (refer to Chapter 15 on the intercultural competence model) when they begin to work with and manage teams in the virtual workspace.
Two key questions were asked and answered: (1) how do we develop culturally competent global leaders who are capable of confronting and dealing with multicultural virtual teams? and (2) how do we encourage global leaders to be open to the many idiosyncrasies, the differing emotions, and the unpredictable patterns of thought that may arise from divergent, culturally rooted behaviors? The current challenge for multinational corporations (MNCs) is to build leaders who are wide open in mind, heart, and behavior, as well as competent in their field—they must be willing to embrace all the possibilities inherent in cultural complexity. MNCs must take steps to educate their employees at both the managerial and team-member level, to develop competencies for both leaders and individual contributors in understanding the unique demands and benefits of a team that is composed of people from different cultural backgrounds and working together at a distance. In particular, in order to be successful and effective, GVTs need the guidance of leaders who fully understand the different cultural ways of working in terms of cognition, emotion, and behaviors.
The deeper questions that arise are why does culture matter, and how does culture matter? Multinational organizations need to address these two fundamental concerns when assigning leaders to high-performing GVTs. Not only team leaders but also team members need to fully develop competencies in all three areas—cognitive, affective, and behavioral (refer to Chapter 15) when they manage team members in the virtual workspace. Cultural values influence all three aspects in various manners due to the GVTs’ heterogeneous composition.
For myself, having had the experience of more than 10 years as both a student-expatriate in a Western learning context and a corporate-expatriate in the Middle Eastern working environment has resulted in such an enduring long-term life-learning journey. Hence, cultural competency was built over the years as it grew difficult and challenging—more than I could have ever imagined. When I first arrived in the United States to begin my PhD journey, the exhilaration and the feeling of joy has managed to overcome my fear of living abroad. It was proven that, over the years, my daily face-to-face encounters with cultural diversity have given me golden opportunities to understand why and how people communicate and relate to others. With such deep experiences in the expatriation process, this book offers rich insights into the understanding of how culture impacts online communication. Despite—or perhaps because of—the astounding advances in computers and communication technologies, people still encounter cultural diversity at a distance. Culture still matters.
In essence, people from different cultural backgrounds use different strategies, approaches, and mannerisms when they communicate. But what is most interesting is that both high- and low-context cultural behaviors showed signs of switching—of adaptation or acculturation—in this new GVT environment. Each of the cultural groups seemed to maintain their cultural values and intercultural communication styles, but, at the same time, they also adapted to the cultural values and intercultural communication styles of others. In the cross-cultural and international management literature, many studies have noted that before managers were sent abroad for international assignments, they would be given cross-cultural training to help them better adapt and acculturate to the unfamiliar environment that they would be entering (Zakaria 2000; Adler 1997; Kim 1991; Berry 1990). However, in the case of Civil Society participants, no prior training was given to them because they participated voluntarily. This, and the fact that they came from different parts of the world and belonged to different organizations, made it more challenging to offer any form of cross-cultural training prior to their participation in the WSIS. In this respect, they are purer examples of cultural influence on communication because they did not receive any formal cross-cultural training. Yet, over time, they learned to tolerate, be sensitive to, be aware of, and respond accordingly to cultural differences that are encountered during their WSIS participation.
Global leaders need to accustom themselves to the different cultural environments that they encounter and attune their behaviors to take into account the disparate cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses of others. Thus, global leaders managing GVTs need to educate team members to become adaptable in their behavior (flexible and mutable), open their minds (nonjudgmental), and be receptive in their emotions (sympathetic, passionate, and tolerant). In other words, inculcate switching behaviors when necessary to reduce culture shock at the individual level and be understood by managers at the organizational level. If full cultural understanding can be achieved, GVT members will celebrate the cultural diversity among them rather than taking it as cultural challenge, thus enhancing rather than impeding their cohesiveness.
In a nutshell, the key purpose of this book was to present a rich description of how different cultural orientations impact communicative and collaborative behaviors, using examples from a study on the WSIS Civil Society decision-making process. By using Hall’s high-context versus low-context cultural dimensions, fleshed out with other related cultural dimensions such as individualism–collectivism (Triandis 1988; Hofstede 1980) and task versus relationship oriented (Hall 1976), the preceding chapters, I hope, provide valuable insights and a concrete foundation for the understanding of multidimensional cultural variables as applied in a globally distributed environment.
Misunderstandings stemming from cultural differences will not be alleviated unless and until people learn to be tolerant, appreciative, and aware of and to respond appropriately to such variations. Cairncross (1997) argued strongly that the death of distance is the inevitable outcome of computer-mediated communication, whereas Olson and Olson (2000) believe that distance still matters and will continue to pose challenges in a globally distributed collaboration. Barsoux and Schneider (1997) also challenged the myth of the melting pot or global village—i.e., the death of culture. As discussed in this book, there is clear evidence that neither the death of distance nor the death of culture is a reality yet and that differences still exist even in the wired world. What matters, then, is whether these cultural differences will promote or inhibit intelligent, useful, and productive collaboration and communication.
References
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Cairncross, F. 1997. The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Hall, E.T. 1976. Beyond Culture. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books/Doubleday.
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