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 ...