you be dndvous tes une bte - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Title: you be dndvous tes une bte


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you be dnd! vous êtes une bête
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Diplomats as cultural bridge builders

• February 2004
• Geert Hofstede

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Differences between countries
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CULTURE in the anthropological sense

• Collective programming of the mind distinguishing
  the members of one group or category of people
  from another
• group/category can be nation, region,
  profession, organization, department, gender,
  generation

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Manifestations of culture
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Values

• Values are strong emotions with a minus and a
  plus pole
• Like evil-good, abnormal-normal, dangerous-safe,
  dirty-clean, immoral-moral, indecent-decent,
  unnatural-natural, paradoxical-logical,
  ugly-beautiful, irrational-rational
• Values are learned before age 10 and often
  unconscious

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When you are a kid, you dont have much variety
of experience You live with your parents and
thats all you know. You grow up thinking
whatever they do is normal
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• Culture is in our guts, not in our minds
• What is like our culture is normal, good,
  moral
• What is unlike our culture is evil, stupid,
  immoral
• perfidious Albion
• the evil empire
• the
  axis of evil
• a lack of moral fibre

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Ive got nothing against foreigners, some of my
best friends are foreigners, but these foreigners
are not from here !
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The role of diplomats

• Permanently living in, or dealing with, alien
  cultures
• Success depends on credibility with superiors at
  home and access to leaders in host country
• Socialize with culturally variegated diplomatic
  community
• Opportunity to become cultural experts and
  bridge-builders

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Towards a science of diplomacy

• Diplomats turned social scientists
• Lord Acton, Britain, 1890
• Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
  corrupts absolutely
• Johan Kaufmann, The Netherlands, 1968
• Conference diplomacy
• Glen Fisher, USA, 1988
• Mindsets The Role of Culture and Perception
  in International Relations

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Research into national culturesInhabitants of
the world, William Darton, 1790
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Research into national culturesCultures
Consequences, Geert Hofstede, 1980, 2001 5
independent dimensions

• Inequality more or less? Power Distance large
  vs. small
• The unfamiliar fight or tolerate? Uncertainty
  Avoidance strong vs. weak
• Relation with in-group loose or tight?
  Individualism vs. Collectivism
• Emotional gender roles different or same?
  Masculinity vs. Femininity
• Need gratification later or now? Long vs.
  Short term orientation

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Dimension scores for gt 70 countries from IBM
subsidiaries around 1970, and extensions

• 6 major replications on different populations
  (elites, employees of other corporations, airline
  pilots, consumers, civil servants)
• Results very stable even if cultures shift,
  countries shift together so relative scores
  remain valid
• Validation of dimensions against results of other
  cross-national studies over 400 significant
  correlations

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SMALL PD, WEAK UA
LARGE PD, WEAK UA
NORDIC COUNTRIES ANGLO CTRS, USA NETHERLANDS
CHINA INDIA
LATIN COUNTRIES MALTA, MUSLIM CTRS
JAPAN, KOREA EASTERN
EUROPE
GERMAN SPK CTRS HUNGARY ISRAEL
SMALL PD, STRONG UA
LARGE PD, STRONG UA
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COLLECTIVIST,FEMININE
COLLECTIVIST,MASCULINE
THAILAND, KOREA COSTA RICA, CHILE RUSSIA,
BULGARIA PORTUGAL, SPAIN
CHINA, JAPAN MEXICO,
VENEZUELA ARAB WORLD
GREECE
MALTA
FRANCE NETHERLANDS NORDIC COUNTRIES
CZECHIA, HUNGARY POLAND,
ITALY GERMAN SPK CTRIES ANGLO COUNTRIES, USA
INDIVIDUALIST, FEMININE
INDIVIDUALIST,MASCULINE
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• LONG TERM ORIENTATION
• CHINA
• JAPAN
• KOREA
• BRAZIL
• INDIA
• NETHERLANDS
• NORDIC COUNTRIES
• FRANCE
• GERMANY
• USA
• BRITAIN
• AFRICAN COUNTRIES
• MUSLIM COUNTRIES
• SHORT TERM ORIENTATION

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Implications of dimensions - Significant
statistical relationships

• Examples (out of 400)
• Power Distance large more perceived corruption
• Uncertainty Avoidance strong stress on law and
  order
• Individualist, not collectivist higher Human
  Rights rating
• Feminine, not masculine higher welfare budgets
• Long term, not short term orientation higher
  savings rates

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Can research into national cultures help
diplomacy ?
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Diplomats professional culture

• National cultures are rooted in values
• Professional cultures are rooted in practices
• Practices can be learned at any age
• Same professional culture unites diplomats from
  very different countries

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Diplomats versus politicians

• Very different professional cultures
• Diplomats see two sides of a problem and
  withhold judgement
• Politicians hold strong opinions and express
  them for the benefit of their own constituency
• Basically complementary roles
• Ideal team is politician and diplomat listening
  to each other

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The price of being a diplomat

• Social isolation from home country society
• Loss of identity, especially for family
• Maintaining home base is essential to emotional
  health
• Diplomats children syndrome

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• McGraw-Hill, New York 1997
• New edition in press 2004
• (Hofstede Hofstede)
• Translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech,
  Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Japanese,
  Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
  Spanish, Swedish
• Older book in Italian
• New edition forthcoming in Russian
• Website www.geerthofstede.nl

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• Scholarly text
• 600 pages
• Sage Publications,
• California 2001