Lesson 6: Cultural Dispositions

Cultural Dimensions and Dispositions

How would you define culture? What components make up one's culture? Being able to identify what culture is and is not continues to be a somewhat troublesome question. If culture is made up of a society's traditions, values and mores, then culture would constantly change as society changes through interactions with other cultures and societies. One view of culture states that culture is who we are, what we do, and how we do it. If this is the case then it becomes important to understand the world and interactions from the perspective of other cultures. Jawaharlal Nehru, a former prime minister of India said, "One has to recognize that countries and people differ in their approach and their ways of living and thinking. In order to understand them we have to understand their way of life."

While entire courses and programs of study could be and are devoted to learning about and understanding cultural dimensions and dispositions, this lesson is an attempt to provide a brief introduction to culture. It will define culture through cultural frameworks presented by several researchers. It will briefly describe how those cultural frameworks may be used to better understand international team members and their cultures. Finally, it will discuss ethnocentrism and methods to counter negative aspects of cultural interactions.

On a global virtual (GV) team understanding the culture of all the team members enables one to know how to better communicate. It fosters a greater understanding of how and why team members do things. Since team members remain in their own culture while interacting with someone in another culture, understanding the frameworks and subtle cultural differences become critical to team interactions.