Cultural training courses- a necessary part of the integration process or a ridiculous, even harmful attempt to repackage, commercialise and sell 'culture'? This was the topic of debate battled out last week. This week, PROFESSOR MICHAEL MINKOV enters the fray, while NEIL CONNOLLY defends his position, in round two of the cultural clashes sparring match.
Culture, just like intelligence, is one of those wonderfully easy topics on which nearly everybody feels qualified to express a competent view. Few people would venture an opinion on adrenal hyperplasia, unless they are physicians, or on the left-handed chirality of neutrinos, if they are not nuclear physicists, but mention culture or intelligence and opinions will start pouring from all sides. As a result, you will probably end up concluding that the study of social science and psychology is a waste of time, because so many people are experts in those areas without any training.
The June 2-8 issue of The Sofia Echo published an interesting debate on the usefulness of cross-cultural training (or the lack thereof), and on culture in general. The first of these two topics is a matter of personal experience and opinion. The second is not. Culture, cultural differences, and cultural distances between nations, are a subject of systematic scientific study, and there is a vast literature on that. This shows clearly that statements like “Our (Irish) culture is as close to Germany’s as Bulgaria’s is, and as close to Bulgaria’s as to America’s”, made by one of the participants in The Sofia Echo debate, are not based on any objective scientific evidence.
However, the author of that statement is right in saying that you do not learn much about a culture from “business meeting breaks for cigarettes”. Indeed, if you look at such superficialities, you may not see and understand a lot. There are much deeper traits which can be uncovered only by means of structured research and statistical analyses. Once you have done that, you will have a real eye-opener.
Nowadays there is no shortage of reliable research. Back in the 1970s, Dutch scholar Geert Hofstede studied the values of some 110 000 IBM employees in 50 countries. In the 1990s, Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner interviewed over 60 000 company employees from 60 countries. In the same decade, Project GLOBE studied the views of 17 000 managers from 60 nations. In 2002, the Pew Research Center (PRC) researched cultural issues in about 40 countries, using mostly representative samples. And, since 1980 the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study have been studying the values of some 60 nations on an on-going basis by analysing nationally representative samples. For the benefit of those who do not believe in cultural differences, or call their study “pigeon-holing”, this is what WVS leader (and consultant to institutions such as the Swedish parliament) Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan says: “Globalisation seems pervasive. So, one might think, the world’s cultures must be converging into one homogenised global value system. But they are not... We not only find no evidence of convergence – we actually find that the gap between the value systems of rich and poor countries has been growing, not shrinking.”
I believe that many expats might be interested in a sketchy presentation of the core characteristics of Bulgarian culture, and in the way that it differs from the cultures of the West, especially those of northwestern Europe and the United States. Of course, we can only talk about trends and probabilities here, not absolutes. There are many individual exceptions from any cultural rule. But the trends are real and cannot be denied, as they are well documented.
First of all, unlike Anglo nations and northwestern Europe, and a lot like Asian, African and Latin American cultures, Bulgarian society is quite collectivist. This has nothing to do with any preference for, or dislike of, group activities, as some people mistakenly think. It has to with how people distribute favours and privileges: on an individual basis or on the basis of group membership. Collectivists tend to make a pretty sharp distinction between in-groups (friends and relatives) and out-groups (strangers). The former are granted special treatment in many circumstances, whereas the latter are far less eligible for various forms of considerateness. For example, the WVS demonstrates that “tolerance and respect for others” (that is for out-groups) is a value cherished mostly by Western respondents; it is much less prevalent outside the West and is a scarce commodity in Bulgaria, China, and other Third World countries. This explains why a Bulgarian or any Third World driver will hardly ever yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk without traffic lights, why Bulgarians smoke in the presence of non-smokers, and why stray dogs roam the streets (the public space belongs to the out-group, so it is nobody’s business). Traffic rules are not necessarily respected because they are based on the unnatural Western idea that strangers should be shown the same considerateness as friends.
Furthermore, in-group members are required to be nepotistic toward each other; failure to do that is considered as immoral as cronyism is objectionable in the eyes of a Westerner. Agreements with out-group members can be broken at any time, as many a US businessman has learned the hard way in China and elsewhere in the Third World. Communication takes place mostly within in-groups; Bulgarians, just like East Asians, are fairly introverted, although they may be somewhat more open to foreigners from the West. Moreover, communication tends to be more indirect than in Western countries, and things are stated less clearly, except when one has lost one’s temper.
The tendency to strongly distinguish between groups creates stereotyping and racism. According to the WVS, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece have the highest percentage of people in Europe (25-30) who would not like to live near “people of a different race”. However, in 1999-2002 the uncontested world champions in that respect were some Asians and Arabs (Bangladesh – 71.0 per cent, Egypt – 65.8, India – 41.8, Saudi Arabia – 37.7, South Korea – 34.7, Turkey – 33.9). Those percentages are below 10 in the Western world, with the exception of Italy, Belgium, Spain and Ireland, where they are in the 11-16 per cent range. Racism is not a Western phenomenon nowadays, but a trademark of Asia and, to a lesser extent, the Balkans.
Quality management can be a real problem in any collectivist culture, including Bulgaria’s, because quality and good service are reserved mostly for in-group members. A collectivist mentality does not promote the idea of consistent quality for all customers. Some foreigners consider Bulgaria the homeland of yoghurt, but it was only after the arrival of Danone that we saw what consistently good yoghurt means. Many purely Bulgarian businesses are now struggling to achieve Western standards in that respect, but there is still a lot to be desired in many cases. You can be served a stale gyros or an unchewable steak even in Greece, let alone Bulgaria, and this is not due solely to poverty or a lack of sophisticated production techniques.
The WVS, the PRC and Trompenaars agree that Bulgarians, like other East Europeans and most Third World dwellers, are fairly strong fatalists and tend to think that what happens to them is not their own doing. As a result, Bulgarians do not wear safety belts when they drive or helmets when they are at construction sites. Safety measures are hard to enforce in such a culture, as is punctuality. If I am late, it is not my fault. Moreover, because relationships are more important than tasks, as in any other collectivist country, those who are waiting are supposed to excuse the others’ being late.
Differences in national temperament have been studied on the basis of self-reports, as well as medical statistics, since the 1970s. Unlike the Anglo world, and especially Scandinavia and India, and very much like Japan, the Latin world, and the rest of Southern Europe, Bulgaria is characterised by relatively high neuroticism and tenseness. High scorers on these dimensions report higher stress and anxiety levels, are irritable, and tend to be dissatisfied with many things in their lives: jobs, schools, families, personal health and life in general. Bulgaria and Eastern Europe certainly lead the world in terms of such dissatisfaction, but France and Japan are not much better off. For example the percentage of French, Spaniards, Japanese and Bulgarians who report excellent personal health is far lower than that percentage in the United States, Scandinavia or Nigeria. Wealth levels obviously do not have much to do with this issue. Neither does a Soviet-style past. Uzbeks report far higher general satisfaction than East Europeans. It is important to know that these feelings are remarkably stable. Cross-cultural satisfaction rankings and personal health reports have shown only minor fluctuations, and no real change, since the time of the first surveys decades ago.
Neuroticism, tenseness, and anxiety create what Hofstede calls “uncertainty avoidance”. Consequently, in the Latin world, Eastern Europe, and Germany for that matter, there is a strong need for regulation and bureaucracy (remember that Max Weber extolled that form of government as the best one imaginable). Self-organised teamwork, fluid company structures, and matrix organisations, create stress and uncertainty, and tend to backfire. So does management by objectives (MBO), as some frustrated Western CEOs will tell you, especially if you try to implement it in its undiluted American form.
Neuroticism, tenseness, and anxiety also create pessimism and skepticism. Many years ago, I nearly lost my job with an American institution because of my lack of “positive thinking” - a totally incomprehensible notion to me at that time. We, Bulgarians, are negative thinkers and we laugh at those who have too much optimism, believing that they can easily implement real Western democracy in an Arab country, or in Bulgaria for that matter.
When collectivism combines with uncertainty avoidance, the result is a lack of trust. According to the WVS, more than half of all Scandinavians believe that most people can be trusted, but that percentage falls to 10 or even lower in Latin America, Portugal, the Balkans, and parts of Eastern Europe. It is low in Belgium, and France, too. In Bulgaria, it is somewhat high by Balkan standards - somewhat above 20 per cent.
In collectivist countries where people do not trust each other, business is preferably done within in-groups, and there is a feeling that everybody is out to cheat you. Most notably, relations between students and teachers, bosses and subordinates, and government and citizens are often characterised by mistrust, suspicion, and antagonism, although they do not always reach French extremes, mostly because in collectivist/fatalist cultures people are submissive and passive, and lack the initiative to rally for industrial or political action.
Just like Chinese and other Asians, and unlike Africans and northern Latin Americans, Bulgarians do not like to pose as workaholics, but on the other hand they are also fairly indifferent to leisure and free time. If we put the two values (using WVS data) on a balance, we will see that, after all, work weighs far more than leisure in Asia, followed by Bulgaria and much of Eastern Europe. In the West, the two values have equal importance, which is normal for a rich country, where people can afford to rest. But work is considered only slightly more important than leisure in most of Latin America and Africa, which probably explains certain things...
Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, some other parts of Europe and East Asia, are radically different from the United States, northern Latin America, West Africa, and parts of the Arab world, in that the cultures in our group do not promote self-enhancement. Feelings of personal superiority, pride and individual competition are strongly suppressed. In cultures of that kind, people are expected to keep a low profile and discount personal compliments (rather than say “thank you” as is customary in the United States). There is a strong egalitarian tendency; those who try to get ahead of others become the object of bitter envy.
Bulgaria and Eastern Europe resemble Asia in yet another respect. They have what Hofstede calls “high power distance”. This means that there is a high perceived emotional distance between children and parents, students and teachers, employees and bosses, and citizens and government, and relationships between them are based on strong inequality and asymmetry. This makes participative management hard, but also unwanted: employees prefer to be given clear orders by a benevolent autocrat rather than be asked to make autonomous decisions, and - God forbid - take responsibility. Organisational initiative (intrapreneurship) is not encouraged in such a culture; it is actually suppressed. Again, this has little to do with the former regime. French management is also known for its authoritarianism and centralised decision-making. The same situation prevails everywhere in Asia, and elsewhere in the Third World.
I believe that this is sufficient food for thought for those who would like to know the answer to a question such as “does culture matter?” Yes, it does, and it matters a lot, too. Bulgaria’s is clearly not a Western culture, and is very different from that of the United States on almost any important cultural dimension that has transpired from serious analyses. It resembles the cultures of northwestern Europe in its lack of religiosity and self-enhancement but hardly in anything else. In some respects (neuroticism, tenseness, high uncertainty avoidance), Bulgarian culture is like those of other South European nations, but on many other dimensions it gravitates toward East Asia, although it definitely does not reach some Asian extremes.
What might cross-cultural training have to do with all this? Here is my subjective opinion. If my knowledge about American culture had not been limited to externalities such as country music and cowboy films (or even Faulkner and Fitzgerald for that matter), I would not have suffered such a severe cultural shock during my 1990 tour of the United States, when I felt like a total misfit in a society which, in my view at the time, consisted of religious and feminist extremists. I found the core values of American culture hard to digest because I had not been prepared for them. I may still disagree with many of those values but, due to all these years of cultural studies, I have certainly learned to respect them, and even admire them, rather than think and argue than my cultural beliefs are far better.
Michael Minkov is Associate Professor in Cross Cultural Awareness on the University of Portsmouth programmes, International University, Sofia. He is author of What Makes Us Different and Similar - a Journey Through the Cultural Diversity of the Globalizing World, forthcoming 2006, Klasika i Stil, Sofia.
