A compendium of current news and headlines with commentary providing unique cultural insight into global affairs, business and daily life around the world.

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Check out CultureWizard Digest #29 here!

* New TV Show: OUTSOURCED
* Global Leadership
* Advertising to Muslims
* “For rent in China: White people”

CultureLinks
+ Push and Pull in Learning Technology
+ Women’s Economic Opportunities
+ Legal Outsourcing

CultureTips
+ Panama

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How do food and customs surrounding the acts of eating and drinking inform culture (and vice versa)? How is one’s awareness of culture developed through cooking, eating, buying and talking about food? Below is something my colleague, Grayson Leverenz, told me about how she likes to tie gastronomy into her travels:

Whenever I visit a new city, I search for an authentic eating experience. On a recent trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania I discovered a Philly Cheese Steak as the culinary choice of locals. Jim’s Steaks has been serving the classic cheese steak sandwiches since 1939, and with its prime location on South Street, I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

Cooks prepare sliced beef and onions on a grill, slather a hoagie roll with Cheese Whiz, and top it with the meat and onions. Hot and delicious, it goes well with Yuengling, a local PA beer. John Denver, an American folk singer popular in the 1970′s folk singer, said it best in his autograph on Jim’s wall (pictured below): ‘I’d be a vegetarian if it wasn’t for your cheese steak.’

An authentic Philly Cheese Steak

A cheese steak is a truly cultural representation of Philadelphia and of an American innovation: “cheese whiz”.

Personally, I like to visit grocery stores and food markets when I travel to new places, which reveal a lot about an area’s history, society and, of course, typical cuisine. When I’m find myself in new cities and countries, I ask questions like: do you bargain for food? Do you bring with you to the market your own bags to take food home? Do people eat a lot of street food? Do people prefer to eat in their homes? With whom can you share food? Questions lead to more questions, all of which paint an appetizing cultural portrait.

How do you think about food when experiencing new peoples and cultures? How much can you learn about a culture from it’s food and drink? Please share your stories and tell us about your favorite gastronomical experiences!

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

Outsourced is a new show on NBC, which will air on September 23 in the US. The show is a comedy based on the cross-cultural interaction between an American manager and his Indian staff in a Mumbai call center. If you haven’t heard of the show, watch the trailer below to get a sense for the humor, which amounts to serious yet hysterical intercultural disaster (you’ll have to wait for the obligatory ad to play first).

The cultural faux pas and critical misunderstandings laden throughout the show are unfortunately so common to most everyone who has experienced outsourcing in India, they’ve called the attention of the US mass media.

How do you see this show impacting viewers’ cultural awareness? Is comedy an effective way to disseminate cultural perspectives and values? Do you predict the show will be popular or offensive?

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

+ Panama City is the capital of Panama and is purported to be one of the most modern cities in Central America. The skyline is reminiscent of major cities in the US, while the old part of the city has narrow, cobblestone streets and colonial buildings.
+ If you were to think about the most important cultural attributes that you will see operating in business in Panama, they would be:
- A hierarchical structure
- Group-oriented interests
- The importance of interpersonal relationships
- An indirect form of communication

+ Panamanian society and business are highly stratified and vertically structured. People respect authority and look to those above them for guidance and decision making. Rank is important and those above you in rank must be treated with respect.
+ When greeting one another, women often pat each other on the right forearm or shoulder, rather than shake hands. If they are close friends, they may hug and kiss on the right cheek. Men shake hands until they know someone well, at which time they progress to the more traditional abrazo, a hug and back slapping.
+ Panamanians do not require a great deal of personal space when conversing. If you back away, you may give offense or the person may step forward to close the gap.

- from RW3′s CultureWizard® Country Profiles

RW3 CultureWizard

The Economist intelligence Unit (EIU) released the Women’s Economic Opportunity Index in June, which measures women’s access or lack thereof to a number of economic and other opportunities in 113 countries. Here are a few excerpts from the report, which is available by clicking on the link above.

At the start of the 21st century women are not just enfranchised and fully engaged in the workplace, but leading global corporations and countries of every size. Germany’s Angela Merkel, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi are three among many.
…
Women, on average, earn 75% of their male co-workers’ wages, and the difference cannot be explained solely by schooling or experience. In many countries, women have fewer educational and employment opportunities than men, are more often denied credit, and endure social restrictions that limit their chances for advancement. In some developing countries women still cannot vote, own property or venture outside the home without a male family member.

While culture is mentioned only a few times throughout the report, it pervades the roles applied to women in any country. An understanding of the cultural context within which women act seems important to an understanding of the immense challenge associated with developing gender equality in countries with severely restricted economic opportunity for women. See below for the way the report defines this and a summary of the countries on both ends of the spectrum.

Women’s economic opportunity is defined as a set of laws, regulations, practices, customs and attitudes that allow women to participate in the workforce under conditions roughly equal to those of men, whether as wage-earning employees or as owners of a business. The result is a new ranking of economic opportunity for women in 113 economies. Sweden, Belgium and Norway occupy the top spots in the Index. These countries have particularly open labour markets for women, high levels of educational achievement, and liberal legal and social regimes. However, the index tells other stories as well. Hong Kong (China) performs best in the Asia region, ranking in the top 25% in most categories. Mauritius is Africa’s best finisher; its labour policies are among the most favourable to women in the region. Excluding Canada and the US, Brazil edges Chile and Mexico for the best score in the Americas. Eastern European countries, especially Bulgaria, have particularly balanced labour-law protections, although retirement ages for men and women are often different. Tunisia comes first in Northern Africa, and Sri Lanka in Southern Asia.

What part does culture play in this complex picture?

RW3 CultureWizard

According to the New York Times, outsourcing legal services to India has grown in the past few years, and is poised to expand at an even faster rate in coming years.

Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more.

Legal outsourcing firms are also hiring experienced lawyers from Western countries to handle more complicated projects, something many lawyers would not consider in prior years based on a general aversion to outsourcing legal work and relocation to India. The article highlights the challenges of moving to India and working with Indians:

Moving to a legal outsourcing firm, especially in India, is not for everyone. About 5 percent of Western transplants cannot handle it and move back home, managers estimate.

Some find it hard to adapt to India. Other times, the job itself does not suit them — after spending years working nearly independently as a litigator, for example, it can be hard to transition to managing and inspiring a team of young foreign lawyers.

Cultural preparation is supremely important to living and working in a new culture. While many people are inherently suited to assignments in countries around the world, the vast majority of people won’t be equipped with the skills to succeed without sufficient intercultural training. How will this new trend impact internal needs for cultural training? The article predicts legal outsourcing will climb to over $1 billion in revenue by 2014. What are organizations doing to support global initiatives like this? What are the challenges of virtual, global teams that span time zone differences of 10 hours or more and cultural, linguistic and religious barriers?

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

The Harvard Business Review interviewed Mansour Javidan, dean of research at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, who also wrote an article for the same publication called “Managing Yourself: Making it Overseas.”

According to this article, employers frequently assume “that a good track record at home is a predictor of success in the global arena, and that exposing high performers to new cultures will set them on the path to becoming effective multinational leaders.” While international assignments are certainly an important developmental tool for potential leaders, an individual desire to learn and know about different cultural perspectives and people with a certain intellectual curiosity, among other qualities, are vital to success abroad.

This mind-set has three main components: intellectual capital, or knowledge of international business and the capacity to learn; psychological capital, or openness to different cultures and the capacity to change; and social capital, the ability to form connections, to bring people together, and to influence stakeholders—including colleagues, clients, suppliers, and regulatory agencies—who are unlike you in cultural heritage, professional background, or political outlook.

RW3 CultureWizard’s Global Leadership Development Tool, developed in collaboration with Dr. Paula Caligiuri, is an assessment which identifies a leader’s strengths and abilities in working with and managing people from other cultures. It enables leaders to examine their readiness for global leadership and the areas in which they may need to develop. Specifically, the tool can:

+ Assess the scope of your global leadership activities
+ Create an awareness of your intercultural behavioral style and experience
+ Suggest approaches for enhancing your global leadership skills
+ Direct you to learning resources to maximize your global leadership effectiveness

What do you think are the key skills global leaders need? What is your experience with leaders moving between domestic and international contexts?

Grayson

RW3 CultureWizard

With a title like “A Distressing Virtual Reality: 40 Percent of Dispersed Teams Underperform,” Chief Learning Officer raises awareness of an issue that potentially affects many of us. RW3 CultureWizard’s Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010 is the base of the argument targeting virtual work as something we must learn to be good at, and not something we can easily compare with face-to-face interaction.

Click here to read an article in ASTD’s Training + Development magazine about RW3 CultureWizard’s Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010—The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams.

Learn about the shortcomings of virtual work, and how to support virtual teams with the training they need to succeed despite the lack of context face-to-face interaction provides.

RW3 CultureWizard

A commercial about shampoo sans hair. Unilever

A New York Times article details the culturally aware techniques Western companies are using to sell their brands to non-Western audiences, in this case women who wear tudungs, a traditional head scarf used by Muslim women in Malaysia (the shampoo product in the ad specifically addresses the effects of the tudung on hair and scalp). In the past, many companies would enter new countries and offend consumers through advertisement and marketing that lacked sensitivity to societal and religious norms. Now, marketing experts know “rule No.1 is to avoid causing offense.” Furthermore, the global Muslim population is over 1.5 billion, and John Goodman of Ogilvy & Mather says there is no excuse for not considering culture when building brands and marketing campaigns:

It’s like being in 1990 and telling people that China doesn’t matter. Twenty years ago you might have said that, but now you’re being foolish.

A lack of cultural knowledge is clearly unacceptable to consumers in any market, but how can we learn to sell to and interact effectively with people from around the world? How do we develop and sustain cultural competency in a world that is constantly changing?

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

Chief Learning Officer published a story highlighting the increasing importance of “pull” technology for organizational learning, which is “a mechanism that allows people to find and access relevant resources at the point of need.” On the other hand, “push” technology has been the standard training method in the US and in many other countries, where learning is pushed to individuals from the institution through scheduled, formalized training. The drawbacks of the latter are heavily based on the fact that forecasting needs and demand for information is challenging.

‘In a world of pull, it’s about helping people to develop the capabilities to become leaders in their own context so when they’re confronting an unexpected challenge they have the initiative and the questing disposition that will make them want to embrace that challenge and find creative ways of overcoming it and addressing it, and in the process learning from that experience,’ [John Hagel] said.

Online learning platforms like CultureWizard are examples of technology that allow individuals to pull or search for information they need. The material is accessible whenever and wherever through an internet connection. Even a simple Google search, which most professionals use several times a day, is reflective of the approach many are accustomed to taking to learn.

However, according to the article, organizations looking to integrate a “pull” learning strategy should beware:

Cultivating a proprietary knowledge stock is bound for failure. Instead, organizations should focus on creating effective knowledge flows that allow people to learn faster and replenish knowledge stocks at an accelerating rate.

How do you feel about formal, classroom training in comparison to “pull” learning? Do you see the “pull” approach becoming the new standard?

Charlene

RW3 CultureWizard

In China, according to the CNN video above, companies hire Caucasians to pose as employees or even business partners, which effectively bolster the “face” or reputation of the company. In the video, one man posed as an Italian jeweler for a Chinese jewelry company producing pieces inspired by Italian design, which in the eyes of the Chinese customers made their products more authentic. However, the man was in actuality an American actor. In another case, a young Caucasian male was hired to sit in an office that faced the street to visibly show passersby the company had people from the West working there.

The employment of Westerners in this way is less surprising considering the importance of face in Chinese culture. How does this strike you as an approach to the marketplace in China?

Is this way of marketing and doing business unlike advertising of the 21st century where illusion and exaggeration play a key role?

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

Listen to The American Entrepreneur radio segment “Crossing That Cultural Chasm: ‘The International Capitalist’ Talks With Two Experts” (be sure to click on the second clip), in which David Iwinski interviews RW3 CultureWizard’s CEO, Michael Shell, and EVP, Charlene Solomon. Below is a blurb from the show’s website:

So how do you take your business global? “The International Capitalist” David Iwinski has some answers, as he takes over the hosting reins on American Entrepreneur Radio to discuss that very topic. He’ll talk with the authors of two of the hottest books on the market when it comes to globalization. First, Charlene Solomon and Michael Schell discuss how to effectively manage when your people are scattered around the globe, as covered in their book, “Managing Across Cultures: The Seven Keys to Doing Business With a Global Mindset”.

RW3 CultureWizard