Culture

Subject: Culture in International Business

Word Count: 1153 words

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction…………………………………………3

Stereotyping…………………………………………6

Culture Shock……………………………………….7

Conclusion…………………………………………...8

Reference List……………………………………….9

Reflection Sheet……………………………………11

Introduction:

Culture refers to the integrated knowledge shared and the sum total of behavior of a large group of people that depends on capability of learning. Culture is socially transmitted from generation to generation. It constitutes the achievement of human beings including their artifacts and tradition ideas. Culture is symbolic communication of values, attitudes, motives, roles, beliefs, religion, etc. The concept of cultures is derived from arts, customs, language, inventions and religious traditions. Culture helps people to influence their expectations of what is appropriate or inappropriate, is learned by them, helps to reflect the values of a society & also provides them with patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and interacting with one another. Culture affects every aspect of daily life of the people - how they think and feel, how they learn and teach, or what they consider to be beautiful or ugly. However, most people are unaware of their own culture until they experience another culture. In fact, people don't usually think about their own culture until somebody violates a culturally-based expectation or they find themselves in a situation where they have the feeling that they as individuals have violated somebody else's cultural expectations, but are uncertain how has that come about. Cultural misunderstandings and cultural issues arise mostly out of culturally based perceptions and interpretations of each other's cultural norms, values, and beliefs. People, while entering into an unknown culture must be very careful to not unknowingly hurt the sentiments of others belonging to that particular culture.

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Dealing with or comparing two or more cultures
Cultural awareness is a skill & a technique that can be adopted & developed at both professional and social levels, and can make a foreign assignment, an international business meeting or intra-cultural negotiation a successful one. On the other hand, a lack of cultural awareness can lead to major miscommunication of the ideas & proposals between the concerning firms, and, ultimately, rejection by host-culture colleagues, clients, acquaintances. Cultural awareness is particularly & mainly beneficial & important for employees who are being sent abroad to live and work in the foreign counterparts of their business firms, organizations, which are planning to merge with or acquire another company, or individuals who work with clients from all over the world. Cross-cultural training programs can guarantee that the employees are well equipped with a set of skills and strategies, which will help them to be successful when they are working in different cultures. The main objective of writing this report is to outline the two main elements of culture; Stereotyping and Culture Shock.

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Stereotypes are the specific characteristics prescribed to groups of people involving gender, race, nationality and other factors. For example, someone who meets a few individuals from a particular country and finds them to be quiet reserved and conservative then he may go around spreading the word that all the citizens from that particular country are quiet and reserved. Stereotypes help us to react with various individuals from different parts of the world in a much better & in a manner which is acceptable by them, as it helps us to reduce our thinking time of how to deal with particular individuals based on their nature and nationality as that is what defines their personal character

Culture shock is described as a feeling of uncertainty, confusion or anxiety which the...