Managing Cultural Conflicts

Introduction

In the Global Communication Course, we have been talking abou how to manage cultural conflicts. This is a very important topic to address since we are living in a global village where multinationals are leaders of the buisiness wolrd. Employees sometimes have no choice but to accept the job they are offered in another country that is far much different than their own.

Different countries, means different languages, habits, ideologies, and hence, diffrent cultures.

In this regard we have talked in class about the low and high context culture and the individualist and collectivist cultures.

High Context vs Low Context

A high context cultures are the ones where people put the meaning in the context. Generally they are very implicit and Polychronic (they have no notion of the time and think they can perform many tasks in one time slot). In low context cultures, however, people tend to put the meaning in the message; consequently, they always say what they mean and mean what they say. In addition to this, they are Monochronic, and therfore, very punctual.

Individualis vs. Collectivists

As far as the individualist and collectivist societies are concerned, I have done a small research about this.

According to Raymie Stata (1992), “Collectivism holds that the group---the nation, the community, the proletariat, the race, etc.---is the primary unit of reality and the ultimate standard of value.” This view does not reject the individual but actually defines its role within a society via his/her relationships and interactions. Oppositely, individualism views the individual as “the primary unit of reality and the ultimate standard of value. This view does not deny that societies exist or that people benefit from living in them, but it sees society as a collection of individuals, not something over and above them.” Raymie Stata (1992).
In collectivist societies, ties between family members and friends are much stronger than in individualistic societies. The definition of keeping a good relationship with each other from a collectivist point of view differs from the individualist’s perspective. The former one requires knowing everything about each other, and sharing intimate information. The latter one, however, is more about interacting without argument.
From the aforementioned definition, and being Moroccan myself, I classify Morocco in the collectivist category. According to the Morocco Project Team Website, as shown in the following graph, Morocco is the collectivist one compared to the United States that depicts the perfect example of an individualistic culture. “The lower the ranking the more a country promotes individualism: independence”, and “The higher the rank, the more collectivist the country is” (Morocco Project Team).

assignment2: Globalization

Globalization nowadays means that business is enlarging from developed countries to reach emerging ones. The best proof to this is that a number of companies from emerging markets appear in the Fortune 500. This shows that globalization is no more a synonym of Americanization. The size of consumer markets in emerging economies with a rapid growth rate is much more than the old one in less populous economies. This globality is causing American consumers to be more alert leading to a slower growth of emerging economies. In addition to this, emerging countries are going to have to deal with consumers asking for lower prices, the lack of managerial experience, and the cultural differences that impose itself after they are going to hire international employees.

chapter III: Globalisation

Marshall Mcluhan :

v He is a Canadian media theorist. “He published the Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man”. In this book he analysed the impact of media technology on society.

v According to him, a global village was born out of the free flow of information. In addition to this, he suggests that the printing technology participated in the emergence of nationalism, industrialism, universal literacy.

v His analysis was based on Harold Innis’s radical thesis developed in the late 1940s early 1950s: the state of technology.

Summary: Muclahan created the notion of a global village, and discussed the impact of media technology on society.

Daniell Bell:

v He is a sociologist. He wrote the book “the coming of the postindustrial society” on 1973.

v Information society is a term originated from japan in 1960’s and U.S.A gave it support

v The main elaboration of Daniell Bell was about the move from industrial to information society.

Manuell Castells:

v He is a Spanish socioligt based in California.

v He wrote the trilogy “Information Age”. It is an analysis of the emerging trends in global conditions.

v In his first book he talks about what characterizes this new society. According to him, it is network, not industry nor information. More than this, he suggests that internet helped to move from information to a network society.

v He talks about the impact of network on business, culture, and politics. According to him, there could be no information society without network and he prefers the term knowledge than society.

v Third book: “millennium world and identity”. It talks about the power of identity over the state which is caused by globalization.

Discourses of Globalization:

The difference between Americanization and Globalization:

v The term globalization is often used widely and loosely; sometimes it signifies structural and economic changes.

v For some writers this means more or less Americanization. Latin Americans do not agree with this and suggest that it should be called U.S-ization.

Arjun Appadurai

v He wrote a book called “Modernity at Large” explaining what does globalization means for him. He studied five spaces:

o Ethnospaces: it illustrates the idea of flow of people (tourists, immigrants)

o Technospaces: it is mainly about technology transfer

o Finanspaces: it illustrates the international movement of money

o Mediaspaces:

o Idospaces: it regards ideological contours of culture

Globalization:

v a set of processes that embodies a transformation in the spacial organization of social relations and transactions, generating transcontinental or interregional flows of network of activity, interaction and power.

Globalizm:

v Beck terms the neo liberal ideology of rule by the world market ‘globalism’ as different from globalization

Globality:

v every event is a global event (last stage of globalization)

Chapter II : Theories of International Communication

A- Background

There are three paradigms in international communication:

- Modernization:

o under which there is the free flow theory and modernization theory

o found in capitalist, and wetstern societies

o according to Daniel Lerner, international communication is he key for modern society

- Marxist: under which we there is the dependency theory, hegemony, critical and public sphere theory

- Globalization: under which there is the information society, network society, and discourses of globalization theory

what is a theory?

It is an attempt to explain or represent a phenomenon of reality.

It helps to answer the how and why questions

It is socially constructed

How can we evaluate a theory?

It should be logically consistent

It should be testable

When you have a theory, you have your own standpoint

B- Free flow of information:

a. information should not be controlled by the state

C- Roger’s theory: diffusion of innovation (modernist)

a. Defined diffusion as a process where an innovation is communicated to a mass of people via a communication channel ; in other words, he describes the process of domestication

D- Dependency theory (Marxist):

a. It came in Latin America as a response to modernist theory where it was under dictatorship

b. It provides another paradigm alternative to free flow of information

c. Media globe player (exp: CNN) control over the developing countries

d. Countries in the north were controlling global communication because of trade but now they are importing information from south

E- Structural imperialism:

a. Johan Galtung: published an essay on 1971 on structural imperialism

b. To illustrate this theory we take the example of the French and Spanish colonization to the south. After the decolonization period, they went out from the door and came back from the window because they actually left their blueprint especially on the education system and laws. There are three types of imperialism: economic, political and military.

c. When the capitalist system emerged, the modern world included Holland, England, spain, and france. Because of the colonization, these nations exported their capitalist system to the south and the world adopted the capitalist system.

d. The world got divided into three parts: the core which is the U.S, the peripheries and the semiperipheries

e. The world moved from the feudal system to the capitalist system to the the Russian Soviet Union but then the capitalist system prevailed over the socialist one.

F- Hegemony:

a. This theory is associated with the Marxist Gramshy (Italian)

b. It suggests that the dominant social group in a society (bourgeoisie) has the capacity to intellectual and moral leadership

c. There are three important institutions that contribute to the social order: educational schools, religion and mass media

d. An example to illustrate this idea is the U.S who is leading the world by its intellectual and moral power such us democracy, for instance.

G- There are three dimentions of Global Communication

a. International media coverage (exp: CNN)

b. Comparing between media events

c. Communication for development

H- Critical theory

a. Three german jewish people read marx and borrowed the concept: commodification

b. Commodification: commercialization of culture. The best example of this is the fact that people are making money out of painting and traditional objects which is part of their culture and according to critical theorists this should not be done.

I- Public sphere

a. Jurgen habermas is a german philosopher from the Frankfurt school (critical theory school)

b. This concept was raised in france and England when people gathered to discuss political issues .

c. At this time it was argued that church should be independent from the state and started to be so.

d. La bourgeoisie had economic power but no political one.

e. The public sphere came out of the feudal system

J- Libertarian:

a. Found in democracies, but not all of them. It is found in U.S for instance

b. In this system, the media acts as a watchdog, to wach the behaviour of the government and convey it to the public sphere.

K- Authoritarian:

a. The media is in the hand of the government just like the case of china

b. The media can not criticize the government and there are many ways to prevent her from doing so (censorship, and political taboos)

L- The soviet model:

a. There is a total control over information

b. Mass communication is used for propaganda purposes for the party

c. Actually the authoritarian model is a softer model of the soviet one

M- Social responsibility

a. Media ownership is both in the hand of the public and private sector

b. Media should serve the public who are financing media through taxes

N- Developmental

a. Media serves not only the party but the public and the national development as well

O- Democratic participant:

a. All people should have equal access to the public sphere (where ideas compete)

b. Media is used for the participation in the political process

P- Revolutionary process:

a. Small media is used to trigger big political events

Chapter I : Following the historical paths of global communication

Geography of space is important for the formation of culture

We can differentiate between three types of societies:

a- traditional societies: chracterized by geopgraphy of space

b- modern societies: communication technologies helped the easy communication through space. The same idea goes for postmodern societies as well.

c- postmodern societies: service oriented economy, not based on industry but ideas and knowledge

Manuell Cassell:

Nowadays we moved from geography of space to space of flows

Geography of space used to hinder communication; now however, telecommunications made the flow of information possible. This is the idea of the death of geography and distance

Frances Caimcross:

Theasy communication facilitated interaction as well

The work that can be done from a computer can be done from anywhere. This explains the rise of many phenomena such us outsourcing and offshoring

Map makers in the medieval World

Having your own maps makes you powerful in the internal system because it is about political power.

Maps make the invisible visible.

If you have a map, you have information.

The printing press

Johannes Gutenburg invented the first printer

This invention lead to religious transformation and nationalism

Benedict Anderson:

Because of communication, the printing press, mass media, we have a nation state

Colonialism is a dimention of globalization

The Era of News agencies

Reuters: National News agency created in the ninth and early twentieth centuty

At that time and even nowadays, writing lead to political dominance and the british government helped the promotion of these writers

In the past, it was the british who dominated the information system, but now it is the the USA

Reuters factor: if you have information or easy access to them, you have political power

The relationship between money and communication is that the more the supply of information is, the higher the supply of business

Radio and international communication:

Configuration: Elias (1939)

World system theories wallstern (1975)

Radio was used a lot in second world war:

- British Broadcasting Corporation was founded in 1927 as a non-profit public monopoly

- Nazi Germany used radio for propaganda

- 1938: BBC in Arabic was launched to fight Nazi Germany in Egypt and communicate with Arabs

- De Gaol used radio to reach the Frensh against Nazi

- To recapitulate Radio was used for two main reasons:

o Management of public opinion at home

Propaganda abroad directed at allies and enemies alike.