Folks:
The following excerpt discussed differences among high context and
low context cultures and in particular their differing views of time.
Such differences can have an important impact on how effectively we
communicate with colleagues around the world. The excerpt is from
Chapter 2, A MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE:
TRANSCENDING THE BARRIERS OF BEHAVIOR AND LANGUAGE in the book
GLOBALWORK: Bridging Distance, Culture, And Time. The authors are
Mary O'Hara-Devereaux and Robert Johansen. The publisher is
Jossey-Bass Publishers- San Francisco. © Copyright, 1994, reprinted
with permission. References available on request.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: "Supertraits of Excellent Teachers"
Tomorrow's Academic Careers
------------------------ 1,667 words ----------------------
BRIDGING DISTANCE, CULTURE, AND TIME
GLOBALWORK: Bridging Distance, Culture,
And Time by Mary O'Hara-Devereaux and Robert Johansen.
CONTEXT (pp 54-56)
Context is probably the most important cultural dimension- and the
most difficult to define. It refers to the entire array of stimuli
surrounding every communication event - the context - and how much of
that stimuli is meaningful (Hall and Hall, 1989,p.6).
Everyone has automatic filters, learned during childhood, that select
and color what they perceive in the daily course of living and
interacting with others. Cultures vary dramatically as to how much of
the total environment, or context, is meaningful in communication.
High-context cultures assign meaning to many of the stimuli
surrounding an explicit message. Low-context cultures exclude many of
those stimuli and focus more intensely on the objective communication
event, whether it be a word, a sentence, or a physical gesture. Thus
in high-context cultures, verbal messages have little meaning without
the surrounding context, which includes the overall relationship
between all the people engaged in communication. In low-context
cultures, the message itself means everything.
Since context perception is a cultural pattern, most cultures can be
placed on a high / low context scale (see Figure 2.3). China, Chile
and Iraq, for instance, are high-context societies in which people
tend to rely on their history, their status, their relationships, and
a plethora of other information, including religion, to assign
meaning to an event. The totality of all this information, implicit,
explicit, guides their response to the event. This pattern is in
sharp contrast to Norway or Austria, for instance, where people
depend for meaning on a relatively narrow range of objective
information in specific verbal or physical form.
Figure 2.3 High / Low Context by Culture.
High Context
Japanese
Chinese
Arab
Greek
Mexican
Spanish
Italian
French
French Canadian
English
English Canadian
American
Scandinavian
German
German-Swiss
Low Context
Source: Copeland and Griggs (1985, p. 107)
High-context cultures are characterized by extensive information
networks among family, friends, associates, and even clients. Their
relationships are close and personal. They keep well informed about
the people who are important in their lives. This extensive
background knowledge is automatically brought to bear in giving
meaning s to events and communications. Nothing that happens to them
can be described as an isolated event; everything is connected to
meaningful context.
People in low-context cultures, on the other hand, tend to
compartmentalize their lives and relationships. They permit little
"interference" of "extraneous" information. Thus in order to give
detailed meaning to an event, they require detailed information in a
communication. The "context" must be explicit in the message. One
might expect, therefore, that low-context communications are perforce
wordier, or longer, than high-context messages, since they have to
carry more information. In fact, the opposite is sometimes true:
low-context cultures use language with great precision and economy.
Every word is meaningful. In high-context cultures, language is
promiscuous: since words have relatively less value, they are spent
in great sums.
High-and low-context cultures have radically different views of
reality. And the further apart they are on the context scale, the
more difficult it is to communicate between them. This applies not
only to different primary cultures, but also between different
professional and functional cultures within a single primary culture.
Indeed, context differences between work functions can lead to holy
wars.
Consider, for example, the context orientations of marketing people
compared to engineers (see Figure 2.4). The marketing culture is
driven by rapport-building practices that attach high values to
relationships. The best marketing people are good at understanding,
accepting, and blending with the views of their customers. They are
always selling - either themselves or their products or their
clients. Engineers, on the other hand, tend to be driven by
analytical thinking. They value precision and skepticism. To the
engineer, the marketing people look fuzzy and even unprincipled:
"They'll do anything to get a sale - including promising what we
can't deliver." But from the marketing perspective, engineers often
seem insensitive and rigidly boorish.
Figure 2.4 High/Low Context by Profession.
High Context
Human Resources
Marketing / Sales
Manufacturing products
R & D
Technical
Information Systems
Engineers
Finance
Low Context
--------------------------
TIME (pp 60-63)
All cultures have unique concepts of time and ways of managing it.
Americans tend to worship time and manage it as though it were a
tangible and scarce resource: "Time is money." Few cultures - perhaps
the Germans and Swiss - can compete with the American obsession with
time. In most countries, time is more flexible. Being late to an
appointment, or taking a long time to get down to business, is the
accepted norm in most Mediterranean and Arab countries. Cultural time
differences can be categorized according to whether they are
monochronic (sequential) or polychronic (synchronic) and according to
the culture's orientation to past, present, and future.
Monochronic / Polychronic Time. Time can be thought of as a straight
line or as a circle: the linear, sequential march of days and years,
or the rotation of the seasons. Our cultural orientation has a
profound effect on our daily lives and business functions. As Edward
and Mildred Hall have noted, "It is impossible to know how many
millions of dollars have been lost in international business because
monochronic and polychronic people do not understand each other or
even realize that two such different time systems exist." (Hall and
Hall, 1989, p. 16).
Monochronic time is one-track linear: people do one thing at a time.
Polychronic time is multi-track circular; it allows many things to
happen simultaneously, with no particular end in sight. Monochronic
time is tightly compartmentalized: schedules are almost sacred.
Polychronic time is open-ended: completing the task or communication
is more important than adhering to a schedule.
People from polychronic and monochronic cultures have the same
difficulties adjusting to one another as people from high-context and
low-context cultures. In fact, Polychronic time is characteristic of
high-context people and monochronic time is characteristic of
low-context people. Similarly, the first approach tends to
characterize Southern cultures, while the second rules in the North
(with some notable exceptions). Monochronic people tend to sequence
communications as well as tasks. They would not be inclined, for
instance, to interrupt a phone conversation in order to greet a third
person. Polychronic people can carry on multiple conversations
simultaneously - indeed, they would consider it rude not to do so.
Past, present, and Future Orientations. Different cultures function
according to different orientations towards the past, present, and
future. In general, cultures are either future-oriented or
past-oriented. That is, activities in the present are either designed
to influence future events or likely to be influenced by past events.
In the United States, the present is heavily influenced by the
short-termed future. Asian cultures tend to be oriented toward a more
distant future. Mexicans and many Latin cultures, on the other hand,
are more heavily influenced by the past. Part of the difference may
be related to cultural concepts of control over the environment,
which may in turn be related to religious tradition. Mexico, for
instance, is usually viewed as a fatalistic culture where the past is
in control of the present and future. Americans, by contrast, have a
greater sense of control over present and future events.
Table 2.2. Common Time Differences in Business
Monochronic People Polychronic People
Do one thing at a time Do many things at once
Concentrate on the job Highly distractible and
subject to
interruptions
Take time commitments seriously Consider time commitments an
objective
(deadlines, schedules) to be achieved only if
possible
Low-context and need information High-context and already have
information
Committed to the job Committed to people
Adhere religiously to plans Change plans often and easily
Concerned about not disturbing others; More concerned with relations
follow rules of privacy and (family, friends, close
business
consideration associates) than with privacy
Show great respect for private Borrow and lend things often
and easily
property, seldom borrow or lend
Emphasize promptness Base promptness on the
relationship
Accustomed to short-term relationships Strong tendency to build
lifetime
relationships
Source: Hall and Hall (1989)
Business Implications. Like context, time is variable across all
levels of culture - social, professional, and functional. And its
implications in the business environment are almost endless:
management of appointments, agendas, schedules, decision making, lead
times, and much more (see Table 2.2).
Some of the most important time differences have to do with personal
and business relationships. Polychronic people tend to be more
group-oriented in keeping with their high context orientation. They
see relation ships as deep and long term, spanning past, present, and
future. They seek out business relationships that offer this
orientation - even other factors including competitiveness.
Monochronic cultures often value relationships according to more
practical, future oriented criteria - even discard relationships that
don't seem useful to future business goals. Likewise, polychronic
employees tend to value long-term employment relationships, as in
Mexico. Promotions are based on somewhat subjective criteria linked
to one's network of relationships. In contrast, Canadians and
Americans link promotion to achievements in the near past and likely
success in the near future.
Time orientations have great relevance to cross-functional teaming,
where it can become a major source of frustration. Functional
cultures, no less than primary cultures, tend to be more or less
polychronic or monochronic and oriented to past, present, or future.
R&D people typically have a long-term perspective, which is
reinforced by the tendency to measure their productivity by the
frequency of "big ideas." Accounting, on the other hand, must have a
short-term, incremental point of view and a present-tense orientation
or face chaos. People with polychronic-oriented functions, as in
marketing or advertising, are better able to blend into
cross-functional teams because of their ability to handle concurrency
and simultaneity. Monochronic, present-oriented individuals, such as
accounting and information systems specialists, find this challenge
much more daunting.
We may fined that in turbulent business times such as the 1990's,
polychronic-time planning could have unforeseen advantages: after
all, relationships tend to outlive even the most objective data.
Futhermore, the polychronic worker's function with far greater
comfort and assurance in that sea of information which threatens to
swamp monochronic cultures.
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