The Culture Map

• mai

  2020-03-05
  Cognitive trust is based on the confidence you feel in another person’s accomplishments, skills, and relia bility. This is trust that comes from the head. It is often built through business interactionsAffective trust, on the other hand, arises from feelings of emotional closeness, empathy, or friendship. This type of trust comes from the heart.
• mai

  2020-03-05
  German companies - power is generally vested not in one CEO but in a small group of senior managers who manage through group agreement. Larger companies have an Aufsichtstrat, or supervisory board, which appoints a Vorstand, or managerial board. The Vorstand has final decision-making responsibilities on company policies, and the chairman of the company therefore has considerably less individual power than in many other countries
• mai

  2020-03-05
  While Americans perceive German organizations as hierarchical because of the fixed nature of the hierarchical structure, the formal distance between the boss and subordinate, and the very formal titles used, Germans consider American companies hierarchical because of their approach to decision making. German culture places a higher value on building consensus as part of the decision-making process, while in the United States, decision making is largely invested in the individual
• mai

  2020-03-05
  a first historical point is that the countries that fell under the influence of the Roman Empire (including Spain, Italy, and, toa lesser degree, France) tend to be more hierarchical than the rest of Western Europe.The second clue.... The countries most influenced by the Vikings consistently rank as some of the most egalixatan and consensus-oriented cultures in the world today. third historical clue relates to the distance between the people and God in particular religions. Countries with Protestant cultures tend to fall further to the egalitarian side of the scale than those with a more Catholic tradition.
• mai

  2020-03-04
  Clear examples of applications-first and principles-first reasoning styles can also be found in the legal systems of different societies. The British and American systems are based on common law, in which a judgment in one case sets a precedent for futurecases-a clear example of applications-first thinkingBy contrast, most European Union states use the civil law system that originated in Roman law and the Napoleonic Code in which a general statute or principle is applied on a case-by-case basis, mirroring the principles-first approach. Interestingly, Scandinavia uses a hybrid legal system that does not fall neatly into either camp.
• mai

  2020-03-04
  Although Aristotle, a Greek, is credited with articulating applications-first thinking (induction), it was British thinkers, including Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century and Francis Bacon in the sixteenth century, who popularized these methodologies among modern scholars and scientists. By contrast, philosophy on the European continent has been largely driven by princes first approaches. In the seventeentH century, Frenchman Rene Descartes spelled out a method of principles-first reasoning in which the scientist first formulates a hypothesis, then seeks evidence to prove or disprove it. Descartes was deeply skeptical of data based on mere observation and sought a deeper understanding of underlying principles. In the nineteenth century, the German Friedrich Hegel introduced the dialect...
• mai

  2020-01-24
  Today, married to a Frenchman and raising two children in France, I have to struggle with cross-cultural challenges daily. Is it really necessary for an educated person to fold lettuce leaves before eating them, or would cutting the lettuce also be acceptable? If my very kind upstairs neighbors kissed me on the cheeks when I passed them in the hall yesterday, would it be overkill for me to kiss them on the cheek the first time I pass them every single day?
• 适兕

  2024-04-13
  知道自己得了什么病，就治好了一半。 ———法国谚语
• mai

  2020-03-03
  The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly.More direct cultures tend to use what linguists call upgraders, words preceding or following negative feedback that make it feel stronger, such as absolutely, totally, or strongly...By contrast, more indirect cultures use more downgrader, words that soften the criticism, such as kind of, sort of, a litle, a bit, maybe, and slightly. Another type of downgrader is a deliberate understatement, a sentence that describes a feeling thespeaker experiences stron...
• mai

  2020-03-03
  One interesting quirk is that in high-context cultures, the more educated and sophisticated you are, the greater your ability to both speak and listen with an understanding of implicit, layered messages. By contrast, in low-context cultures, the most educated and sophisticated business people are those who communicate in a clear, explicit way.