We start learning by asking questions…….. 

Why is it that in China it is always necessary to arrive on time or early if you are the guest?  In the Muslim world why is Friday a day of rest? In Italy why should we avoid giving anything in a quantity of 17? We often have many such questions to put forth. When we try answering these we see that we land up in the same topic- CULTURE.

What is so unique about culture? What does culture got to do with people? What impact does culture have on human beings?

Where does culture play an important role? Where do you see the greatest value? Where do you feel the biggest challenge?

Who is the most affected person? Who needs to know about culture?

How do we overcome cross cultural barriers? How do we get to know about various cultures?

When will these cultural diversities affect us? When are we supposed to learn about these cultural differences?

I am sure all of us will have these questions in mind. Is culture so special that we need to talk about it?  Its only after attending this course CCM in my final quarter at DoMS did I realize the importance of culture.

Moving on…….

From what I have learnt from the course I feel culture is a set of values, beleifs, thoughts and norms followed by people belonging to a particular community. People behave in a particular way in order to belong to a group. When we are born we tend to learn things from people around us. We see that people around us behave in a certain way and we tend to follow it. However our experiences also influence our behavior.

We feel connected to a particular group because we tend to behave in a certain way, tend to dress in a particular way, and we share the same thoughts towards various things.

When we talk about culture we should also talk about STEREOTYPES. Stereotypes can be defines as  standardized and simplified conceptions of people based on some prior assumptions. We all have stereotypes. All Blondes are Stupid….. All Japanese are untrustworthy…… All Indians are lazy….. These are few examples of stereotypes people have. Stereotypes are contagious disorders that we all have. When this disorder transforms itself into a disease called prejudice, it affects our attitude and behavior drastically. I feel stereotypes are formed in two ways: through experience (good or bad), by learning from others. I have often noticed that stereotypes are formed based on first few interactions between people. First opinion is the best opinion to form stereotypes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjTtFvLD_bE&feature=related,    Isn’t it childish for us to form opinion on others based on few interactions or just because we buy what others tell us. Stereotypes hinder the behavior of people and thus it restricts people’s thoughts and actions. When we don’t like the other person we tend to behave in a different way.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rvPRcq9aEE&feature=related. Through the class one important  thing I have realized is that we need to shed our stereotypes and look at things from a new angle.. Prevention is better than cure! Its better to do away with our stereotypes at an early stage rather than allowing it to develop into a prejudice. When we shed our stereotypes we tend to be more receptive to things and we learn many new things

Like all courses even CCM had various theories and concepts to deal with. The most famous being Hofstede's model and Trompenaar's model and Hall's model. All of them talk about their frameworks for culture.

Hofstede’s model	Trompenaar’s model	Hall’s model
Power distance	Relationship with people	High/low context communication
Uncertainty avoidance	Relationship with environment	Space: physical/personal
Individualism- collectivism	Time	Monocronic and polycronic time orientation
Masculinity- Feminity
Long-term/ short-term orientation

These models give us an outline to classify cultures in a broad perspective. However it is very difficult to force fit cultures into these models. I strongly feel that these can be used as a guide to look at culture; however these cannot be used as strict rules to classify them.

The course I attended was indeed cross- cultural. We had many exchange students in the class and I had good opportunity to work with different people for different assignment. The small group projects helped me in learning how to work in cross cultural teams. I have always had this stereotyped notion that working with exchange students is not all that pleasant experience. But after this course I learnt that its fun working with them. I also realized that having a team that is cross cultural adds a lot of value to the team spirit. We were able to make decisions better and  things progressed well as against the working with our own friends. (Now we know why large companies have cross-cultural teams for major projects!)

We had four guest lectures during the course. The speakers were from the industry with good experience. We learned a lot about other countries and their culture.  The lectures helped us understand the importance of cross-cultural management in the work setup. We had good interactions with the speakers. In a work setting it is especially important to know other cultures because it has many repercussions on the business dealings. For instance Americans usually don’t work on weekends and if you are a team lead working with an American counterpart, sure you would land up in trouble if you schedule meetings on weekends. However Indians don’t mind working on weekends. Such small cultural difference have impact on our relationships with people (be it in work-set up or otherwise). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrJTf97Ev8o, http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=WcEfzHB08QE&feature=endscreen. We can get to know more by reading about different culture. This site gives us a lot of information on different countries which can be used to learn more about other countries and their culture. http://www.cyborlink.com/.

From what I have learnt from the course I fell that culture affects and molds us in every stage of our life. Our friends, colleagues, neighbors, acquaintances are all mostly people from other culture. Thus we can never say that culture affects us only at work.

Each culture is unique in terms of their dressing style, communication, negotiation pattern, relationship building, gestures used etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa_GCK-Czqs&feature=related.  we need to acknowledge the fact each culture has its own individuality and we need to accommodate the values and customs followed by each culture. It is when we don’t concede this difference we land up in trouble. Cross-cultural conflicts arise mainly because we don’t shed our cultural values and we force to fit others into our culture. We need to come out of our cocoon and try to realize that there is lot more to learn from other cultures.  

Flavor for thought…..

 According to me each culture is like the flavor of an ice-cream. We have new flavors coming in and we never lose the interest of relishing the old flavor.  We need to appreciate each flavor. When we start appreciating the subtle differences and recognize that each culture has its own flavor we will surely enjoy the taste of each culture and relish it till the final scoop……. Sound yummy isn’t it………….