International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
03-1
Module 3: Sociocultural Forces
YOUR CONTENT
Summary
Learning Objectives
Key Terms and Definitions
Content Outline
ENGAGEMENT & APPLICATION
Boxed Text Discussion Questions with Suggested Answers
End of Module Exercises
Critical Thinking Questions
globalEDGE Research Task
MiniCase
Bonus Activities
CONNECT TOOLS FOR ASSESSEMENT OF LEARNING
Connect Content Matrix
Connect Activities
Instructor Guide to Module 3
International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
03-2
YOUR CONTENT
SUMMARY
This chapter examines culture and how it affects the conduct of business. We look at how
cultures reveal themselves through their aesthetics, religion, material culture, language and
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3-2 Identify the ways culture affects all business activity.
LO 3-4 Describe four frameworks for analyzing culture.
LO 3-6 Discuss cautions for using cultural frameworks in business.
KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
achievement vs. ascription
(p. 80)
What a person does contrasted with who a person is
aesthetics (p. 66)
A culture’s sense of beauty and good taste
communitarianism (p. 79)
Belief that the group is the beneficiary of actions
context (p. 74)
The relevant environment
cultural paradox (p. 83)
Contradictions in a culture’s values
ethnocentricity (p. 62)
The belief that your own culture is superior to other
cultures
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International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
03-3
global mind-set (p. 83)
Involves an openness to diversity along with an ability to
synthesize across diversity
material culture or artifacts
(p. 70)
All human-made objects
monochonic (p. 75)
Having to do with linear time, sequential activities
neutral vs. affective (p. 79)
The withholding of emotion contrasted with its expression
particularist (p. 79)
Conditions in which context determines what concepts
apply
polychromic (p. 75)
Having to do with simultaneous activities, multitasking
specific vs. diffuse (p. 80)
Life divided into public and private spheres contrasted with
life undifferentiated.
universalist (p. 79)
Conditions in which concepts apply to all
Instructor Guide to Module 3
International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
CONTENT OUTLINE
The following section provides the flow of information using the LEARNING OBJECTIVES as a
guide, KEY TERMS learners will need to take away from the course, and LECTURE NOTES to drive
home teaching points.
LO 3-1
Describe what culture is.
o Introduction
• What Is Culture and Why Is It Important?
I. Introduction
A. Need for international managers to recognize that “our way” is not the only way or even
the best way.
II. What Is Culture and Why Is It Important?
The sum total of the beliefs, rules, techniques, institutions, and artifacts that characterize
human populations. (Anthropologist)
Culture is learned, interrelated, with shared patterns mutually constructed through social
interaction, and defines the boundaries of different groups.
Ethnocentricity is a common response to cultural difference.
1. International managers can learn to avoid ethnocentric responses.
a. Hall: Lifetime in a culture or extensive training program, including study of culture
and language.
b. Factual knowledge of culture, culture frameworks, language, experience. Experience
is critical.
c. Realize that there are other cultures. This sounds simple, but is not.
LO 3-2
Identify the ways culture affects all business activity.
• Culture Affects All Business Functions
o Marketing
o Human Resources
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III. Culture Affects All Business Functions
A. Marketing
1. Variations in attitudes and values across markets often require different marketing
mixes to reach potential customers.
2. Many costly errors, especially in product design, advertising and pricing.
3. Must remember that we don’t know what we don’t know.
B. Human Resources
1. Which is rewarded, the individual or group? Achievement or social role?
2. How is authority understood? Is manager a patron first among equals?
C. Production and Procurement
1. How change is understood?
2. Culture affects plant layout (linear assembly line vs. more group-oriented patterns)
3. How does firm acquire resources? Based on social relationships or price?
D. Accounting and Finance
1. Accounting controls rest of assumptions about people’s basic nature.
2. Tight controls suggest lack of trust.
3. Loose controls suggest people will act honestly when not closely monitored.
4. Example of U.S. expatriate paying taxes—in NY and Italy.
E. Preferred Leadership Styles
1. Varies by culture.
2. Paternalistic? Heroic? Focused on group or individual?
LO 3-3
Describe how culture shows itself.
o How Culture Shows Itself
o Aesthetics
o Religion
o Material Culture
o Language
o Societal Organization
Key Terms:
• aesthetics
• material culture or artifacts
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IV. How Culture Shows Itself
A. Aesthetic
1. A culture’s sense of beauty and good taste.
2. Expressed in many areas—art, drama, music, folklore, dance.
3. Applies to bodies as well (weight, tattoos, etc.).
4. Incorrect use of folklore in marketing offends public.
a. Marlboro Man in U.S. and Chile
c. Pampers’ use of stork/peaches
B. Religion (Figure 3.1)
a. Christianity: One god, killed by Roman Empire officials, came back to life and
ascended into heaven.
b. Islam: 7the century CE, one god (Allah) whose will is revealed through the Qur’an
and messengers.
c. Hinduism: Oldest of major world religions, began in India, ethically good life achieved
through self-discipline, sharing of wealth, adherence to the Vedas (scriptures).
d. Buddhism: Founded between 6th and 4th centuries BCE in India, based on teachings
of Siddhartha Gautama. Earthly life is the cause of human suffering and nirvana is
reached when we escape the reincarnation cycle and become enlightened.
e. Judaism: Began around 1900 BCE, believes in one god who acts in human history.
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2. Nonverbal communication also reveals a lot about social interactions and values,
especially in High Context cultures (Hall).
a. Gestures and their meanings vary among cultures.
b. Spatial relationships may differ greatly (closed door in U.S. suggests privacy, in
Germany, closed is normal).
c. Conversational distance varies by culture, gender, and level of closeness.
d. Speaking patterns, conversational rules, and sequencing differ by culture.
E. Societal Organization
1. The institutionalized structures of social relationships—kinship/free association.
2. Kinship is the family, and its definition and closeness vary by culture, with the extended
family important is some cultures, less so in others.
3. Free association may be formed by other commonalities—such as age, gender, shared
interests. Social media represent evolving forms of free associations.
F. Special Focus: Gift Giving in Business
1. An often confusing practice across cultural borders
2. A way to acknowledge interrelationships and social obligations (Mauss).
3. The exchange of gifts creates a social bond that requires you to be a giver, receiver, and
holder of an obligation.
4. Learn the patterns of the relevant cultures.
LO 3-4
Describe four frameworks for analyzing culture.
Framework
o Hofstede’s Six Dimensions
o Trompenaars’s Seven Dimensions
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V. Culture Frameworks
A. Remember that your own culture functions as a reference point, and the frameworks are
just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg.
B. Frameworks are sophisticated stereotypes.
C. Hall’s High and Low Context
1. High Context (HC): Much of the communication is conveyed by the context. (Japan,
China, many other Asian, Latin American, African cultures). Social ties are long-
standing and close, communication tends to be implicit and indirect.
2. Low Context (LC): Most of the communication is carried in words. (U.S., Canada, other
Anglo cultures, Germany, Scandinavian cultures). Social ties are of shorter duration,
communication is explicit.
3. (See Figures 3.3, 3.4)
cultures tend to be polychronic, with several activities going on at once.
1. Classification system for cultures based on five universal problems:
a. What relationship should people have to nature? That is, how should they
think about their activities with regard to nature?
b. What sorts of relationships should exist among individuals?
c. What are the preferred forms or modes of human activity?
d. What is the best way to think about time?
e. What is the basic nature of humans?
(See Table 3.2)
5. Builds on Hall’s work.
Hofstede’s Six Dimensions
1. Unlike Hall and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, Hofstede’s framework is empirical.
1. Individualism–Collectivism
a. Measures the degree people of the culture are integrated into groups.
b. Individualist cultures include U.S., Canada, U.K., the Netherlands, Australia,
New Zealand.
c. Collectivist cultures include China, Japan, West and East Africa, Ecuador,
Guatemala, Indonesia.
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Instructor Guide to Module 3
2. Power Distance
a. The extent to which members of a culture expect power to be distributed
unequally and accept that it is.
b. Similar to inequality, but defined from below, and suggests the inequality is
endorsed by followers as well.
c. Small power distance countries include the U.S., Austria, Israel, Denmark,
Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Germany.
d. Large power distance countries include Malaysia, the Philippines, India,
West African countries, India, Singapore.
France, Spain, South Korea.
d. Weak uncertainty avoidance cultures include Jamaica, Singapore, Sweden,
Denmark, U.S., Canada, Norway, Australia.
d. Masculine cultures include Japan, Austria, Venezuela, Italy, the Philippines.
e. Feminine cultures include Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Costa Rica, the
Netherlands, Finland.
6. Pragmatic vs. Normative (modification of earlier Confucian Dynamism)
a. Measure of how people deal with the unexplainable in their lives.
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b. In normative societies, strong desire to explain and know the Truth
(Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia).
c. In pragmatic societies, ultimate understanding is not so much a concern as
to live a virtuous life in an environment where truth is contextual. Saving
and perseverance are important (France, China, Japan).
Trompenaars’s Seven Dimensions
1. Like Hofstede’s framework, Trompenaars‘s work is based on data. Unlike
b. Universalist cultures apply rules across the board (Anglo cultures (U.S.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). Rules are more important than
relationships.
c. Particularist cultures consider context when they apply rules. Relationships
are more important than rules.
2. Individualism vs. Communitarianism
3. Neutral vs. Affective (Unemotional vs. Emotional)
a. Addresses how members of a culture express emotion.
4. Specific vs. Diffuse
a. Describes how a culture differentiates between private and public/work
c. Diffuse cultures carry work relationships over to other areas of life (East
Asia) (see Table 3.4).
5. Achievement vs. Ascription
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b. Ascription cultures value a person based on who he/she is, family lineage,
age, or other attributes.
c. Achievement cultures value what the person does; they are meritocracies.
6. Attitudes toward Time
a. Where is the primary focus (past, present, future)? East Asian cultures tend
to be past-focused, while U.S. economic culture tends to be present-
focused. The EU cultures tend, in some aspects, to be future-focused,
seeing a better world evolving.
b. Are actions sequential (monochronic) or synchronous (polychromic)? Low
context cultures (Hall) tend to be monochronic, while high context cultures
tend to be polychromic.
7. Attitudes toward the Environment
a. Do we try to live in harmony with nature or try to control it? Similar to
Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s relationship to nature.
b. In internal direction cultures, people believe they control nature.
c. In external direction cultures, people believe that the natural world
controls them and they need to work with their environment.
LO 3-5
Describe the global mind-set and the MBI model.
o When Does Culture Matter? The Global Mind-Set
Key Terms:
• global mind-set
VI. When Does Culture Matter? The Global Mind-Set
A. A global mind-set helps to figure out how culture matters in specific situations. It
matters all the time, but in different ways at different times.
a. Global mind-set is an openness to diversity and an ability to synthesize across
diversity.
b. Creates a willingness to deal with complexity and is enhanced by experiences in
different cultures.
B. Map-Bridge-Integrate model (MBI) can help manage across cultures and develop a
global mind-set in that it helps synthesize across cultures.
3. Integrating is managing the differences.
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International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
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LO 3-6
Discuss cautions for using cultural frameworks in business.
• Going Forward: Cultural Paradoxes and a Caution
o Rules of Thumb for Managers Doing Business Across
Cultures
Key Terms:
• cultural paradox
VII. Going Forward: Cultural Paradoxes and a Caution
A. As your tacit knowledge of culture builds, you’ll encounter paradoxes or times when your
expectations, based on the frameworks, are contradicted by experience.
a. U.S. culture individualistic, yet U.S. has world’s highest rate of charitable giving.
1. People in Costa Rica, a high context culture, prefer automated tellers to real/people
tellers.
2. Japanese have low tolerance for ambiguity, while the U.S. has high tolerance for it.
Yet U.S. contracts are specific, while Japanese contracts are vague.
3. Awareness of paradoxes suggests that you are building your knowledge of cultures.
They are complex systems, and our knowledge of them lags reality.
a. Frameworks are only an aid. They are at best sophisticated stereotypes.
VIII. Rules of Thumb for Managers Doing Business Across Cultures
A. Do your homework and be prepared when you approach a foreign market. Find a mentor,
know history, folklore, some of language, read local papers, etc.
1. Slow down. Low Context people may be seen as hurried, unfriendly, arrogant, and
untrustworthy in High Context markets.
2. Establish trust. U.S. business-style relationships may get you nowhere.
3. Understand the importance of language.
Instructor Guide to Module 3
International Business, 2e
Geringer, McNett, Ball
Instructor Guide to Module 3
03-13
ENGAGEMENT & APPLICATION
BOXED TEXT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS WITH SUGGESTED ANSWERS
IB IN PRACTICE: Cultural Misunderstandings Engulf BP’s Disaster
British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig exploded on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico,
killing 11, injuring many, and allowing oil to gush from the wellhead for three months. This was
1. Do you think the U.S. public’s response to the disaster would have been different had the
company been more localized, for example, with a U.S. PR firm and U.S. executives?
2. Do you think that BP should have had someone like Dudley in charge of the response from
the beginning? Why or why not?
3. What role may our common use of English have played in BP’s decisions to have CEO
Hayward manage the public aspect of the recovery?
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Geringer, McNett, Ball
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GLOBAL DEBATE: When in Rome, Should You “Do as the Romans Do” . . . and Feel
Comfortable about It?
The global debate issue here is to what degree you follow local practices when these practices
may violate cultural or moral values of your home culture. Should a Saudi woman studying in
the U.S. localize and not cover her hair? Should an American in Amsterdam feel comfortable
1. Are all actions that conform to local customs morally defensible? Explain your reasoning.
2. If the competitive environment includes legally marginal activities, and you can distance
yourself from those activities, should you follow them in order to compete successfully?
3. Recommend an approach to resolving ethical issues in the international arena.
GET THAT JOB! FROM BACKPACK TO BRIEFCASE: Mallory Wedeking: Attitude Is Everything!
Mallory Wedeking describes her beginning international experience, the challenges she faced,
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