As we think about nurturing our knowledge, we’ll look at five different dimensions used to help understand and measure cultural difference: time, context, individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. Many more exist, but these are the most helpful ones for nurturing knowledge cultural intelligence, particularly for short-term mission trips.
Event Time vs. Clock Time
In his book A Geography of Time, Robert Levine explores the role of industrialization in how a culture views time. According to Levine, industrialization promotes an ethos of producing and consuming. As a result, people in those cultures live by “clock time.” Punctuality and efficiency rule the day. In contrast, less-industrialized cultures are far more interested in emphasizing the priority and obligation of social relationships. Levine refers to these cultures as “event-time” cultures. Events begin and end when all the participants feel the time is right rather than artificially imposing clock time.
What’s the time orientation of people in the culture you’re visiting on your short-term trip? Understanding alone can’t prepare you for all the challenges that might come with opposing views of time, but it’s a good start. If you’re going with a team of people, spend some time anticipating how your approach to time might frustrate the locals who host you. How might their time orientation frustrate you?
High Context vs. Low Context
One of the most common categories used to describe cultures is high-context versus low-context cultures. High context refers to places where people have a lot of history together. Things operate in high-context cultures as if everyone there is an insider and knows how to behave. Written instructions and explicit directions are minimal because most people know what to do and how to think.
Low-context cultures can be easier to enter than high-context cultures, because even if you’re an outsider, much of the information needed to participate is explicit. Many of our connections with particular people and places are of a shorter duration, therefore less is assumed. Therefore, extra attention is given to providing information about how to act.
Spend some time thinking about how your short-term trip will be affected by whether you’re headed to a high-context or low-context environment.
Individualism
The next three areas come from the work of Geert Hofstede, a researcher who studied the cultural differences of 100,000 IBM employees spread out over 50 countries. The first of these areas is individualism.
The United States scored 91 out of a hundred points on Hofstede’s scale of individualism. Cultures that score high on the individualism scale are places where people are most concerned about the life of the individual. Decisions are based upon what the individual deems is best for his or her life.
In contrast, countries that score low on the individualism scale are called “collectivist” cultures. In these places, people view themselves less autonomously and more as members of groups. They’re concerned about the effects of actions upon the group as a whole, and decisions are made by consensus rather than individualistically. This isn’t to say people living in collectivist cultures are purely unselfish. Rather they’re programmed to think about the goals and needs of the groups of which they’re a part rather than to consider their own individual needs first.
Power Distance
Power distance refers to how “far apart” leaders and followers feel from each other. Countries that score high in power distance—such as Mexico, India, and Ghana—offer a great deal of formal respect to leaders. Titles and status are revered, leaders and followers are unlikely to socialize together, and subordinates are not expected to question their superiors.
Americans score much lower on the power-distance scale than many other cultures do. In our context, followers feel at ease socializing with their leaders and addressing them as peers. Students feel free to question their pastors, teachers, and parents, and they expect to have input in the decision-making process.
Uncertainty Avoidance
Finally, the uncertainty-avoidance dimension measures the extent to which a culture is at ease with the unknown. Cultures that score high on uncertainty avoidance are places where people have been programmed to have little tolerance for the unknown. They focus on ways to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity, and they create structures to help ensure some measure of predictability. Cultures low in uncertainty avoidance are not as threatened by unknown situations and what lies ahead. Open-ended instructions, varying ways of doing things, and loose deadlines are more typical in countries with low scores in uncertainty avoidance.
Excerpted from Serving with Eyes Wide Open (Baker, 2006) a division of Baker Book House Company. Used with permission.
