Nature of Organizations and the Contemporary Environment

Culture

The first quiz that I took was "Cross-cultural quiz 1." My score was 4/7. The quiz covered a lot of different cultures, so it was interesting to see which ones I had a better feel for. The Saudi question was viewed as wrong, that Tailor should have dealt with the team members individually or in small groups. Talking to 50 people individually would take about a week of Tailor's time, and he clearly has trouble motivating the Saudi workers. I disagree with the assessment -- it is a poor use of Tailor's time. The Saudi manager can do the talking, that way there is no cultural or linguistic misunderstanding and Tailor can better use his time on other aspects of the project. The Korean question was also listed as wrong, but the two answers reflecting that Koreans are unlikely to transfer to this new company are almost identical. We know they are reluctant to transfer, the details of why aren't that important. I didn't really know the Thai one. The whole "face" thing is ludicrous to me and I may never understand it.

The second quiz was Cross-cultural quiz #2. My score was 17 out of 26. However, the quiz was incorrect on a few of those. "British people drink more than 200 million cups of tea per day" is not worded correctly. No person can physically drink 200 million cups of tea per day. Ambiguous wording isn't good enough for a quiz like this. Whether all Arabs are Muslims or not depends on the definition of Arab, something that is quite variable depending on the source. There are Christians in Egypt and the Levant, but they are not always considered to be Arabs. There are no Christians among Arabs on the Arabian peninsula, which is most closely associated with Arab identity. Whether Omanis or Yemenis are considered to be Arabs is also subject to debate -- both countries have non-Muslims among their populations. I can accept the quiz intended to illustrate that there is some religious diversity among Arabic-speaking people, but it misrepresents the complex nature of Arab identity.

The quiz also attested that Arabs can eat kosher meat. This is false. While the butchering techniques of kosher meat are more strict than those of halal, the second criterion for halal meat is that the slaughter must be performed by a Muslim and preceded by an invocation of Allah. Kosher meat must be slaughtered by a pious Jew. Thus, kosher meat and halal meat are mutually exclusive of each other, and kosher meat would be haram for the lack of a Muslim butcher and invocation to Allah. Perhaps it is the writer of the quiz that needs to "brush up a bit more."

I think that my cultural awareness is strong enough to know when the quiz is wrong about something. However, some of my right answers were guesses -- I had a 50/50 shot. So that doesn't really reflect strong cultural awareness, just basic mathematics. With respect to weaknesses, definitely points of etiquette, because I genuinely cannot imagine that such things matter. Most British people do not even realize there is apparently a proper way to eat soup, for example. I am ignorant of such rules and am actually happy to remain so. Same thing with Brazilians and shoes. I gather that they probably do not wear Havaianas to business meetings, but don't know what shoes they wear, don't care, and will wear whatever shoes I feel like wearing that day.

Things like the Thai face issue are more concerning to me, because that type of stuff can actually scuttle a business deal. So as far as learning more about cultures, that is one of those tricky concepts that I would want to understand better. Reading about it, or discussing it with Asian immigrants who can effectively translate the concept to my foreigner's way of thinking so that I understand it better are two techniques that I would use.