As the United States (and other parts of the world) emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re all aware that things are going to be different from pre-pandemic times. We know that since early 2020, we’ve changed many of our behaviors, work-related processes, and social interactions. As interculturalists, we’re clear that the Pandemic will have some lasting impact on our cultural behaviors. But we wonder how long-lasting these behaviors will be?
National cultures are formed by historic events and natural phenomena. Geography, climate, religion, and inherited traditions shape our cultures, and usually culture is slow to change. However, cataclysmic events, such as COVID-19, accelerate cultural change.
To get more perspective about how consequential events change culture, we can gain insight by studying past events. For example, European culture was dramatically changed as a result of the Bubonic Plague, where 30-60% of the population died during the Pandemic. The resulting diminished labor pool created more opportunities for survivors and eventually eliminated Serfdom in those societies. With fewer people available to work, labor became more highly valued and gave rise to greater social mobility. Peasants were able to pursue opportunities, dealing the death knell to feudalism in Europe.
Rapid cultural changes aren’t necessarily caused by negative events. You can see this by how rapidly cultures have been changed by the Internet, the mobile phone, and social media. In addition, you can see the cultural flexibility brought about by global corporations establishing unique corporate culture standards throughout their world-wide organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the way we live our lives, the way we behave and interact with each other, our expectations of leadership, and the way we view our governments. In essence, that's exactly what a culture shaping event is, and it behooves us to consider how the behavioral changes imposed on us by the Pandemic will change our cultures.
More importantly we can speculate how the behaviors we've been practicing for the last 18 months will impact more deeply rooted values. How will the world be different as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
In order to examine and hypothesize how it will likely impact cultural values, we’ll use the RW3 CultureWizard Intercultural Model©. The Model identifies observable behaviors (referred to as “dimensions”) and defines how different societies exhibit those characteristics. The Cultural Model identifies eight dimensions: Hierarchy, Group, Relationships, Communication, Time, Change, Formality and Motivation, all of which describe patterns of behavior along a spectrum. We speculate that Motivation, Hierarchy, Time, Relationships and Communication are dimensions that will be affected, long-term.
Impact on Motivation (Work-Life Balance): When Personal Issues and Work Become Merged
Traditionally, there was a difference between cultures that “live-to-work” (where status was measured by long work hours and achievement) and those that “work-to-live” (status was achieved by significant family/personal time and non-work activities). We call this Cultural Dimension “Motivation,” i.e. what motivates you in your life?
Historically, some cultures had clearly defined distinctions between work and personal time, while others were comfortable blurring those lines. In other words, in some cultures work-related activities would not intrude on social or family time and people would leave work in the office and not interact with colleagues during the evenings or weekends.
On the other end of the spectrum, people regularly brought work home and might sacrifice weekends to do work projects. COVID-19 has had a distinct impact on the Motivation dimension, regardless of which end of the spectrum people are on.
Researchers have found that during the Pandemic, work and personal time has become blurred and people working from home expanded their workday while accommodating personal requirements during the time that would have previously been considered work time. Societies that had clear distinctions between work and personal lives found it impossible to keep those boundaries. It isn’t uncommon to see children walking through a workspace during office zoom meetings. In addition, people needed to adjust their workday activities to accommodate other personal issues, such as caring for family members, going shopping at specified times, and fulfilling other non-work obligations.
Once the separation between work and personal life is blurred, will that division ever be as clearly defined again? We need to ask ourselves how months of balancing work and personal life and finding time for families during what would otherwise be the workday, will carry forward into our cultural value system.
Impact on Formality and Hierarchy: How Physical Distance Changes Perspective
Geert Hofstede, the Dutch psychologist and anthropologist who pioneered the original model of cultural dimensions, defined Hierarchy as “power distance,” which literally indicates the amount of power one person has over another’s life. In hierarchical cultures, physical space often indicates the power differential between people of different positions/stations in society. Traditionally, more hierarchical cultures provided more physical distance between people. Furthermore, many hierarchical cultures avoided physical contact and used bowing and other limited contact as a greeting. On the other end, people from egalitarian cultures shake hands, hug, and even kiss, as a form of greeting.
We can speculate about the impact of lack of physical proximity that people needed to observe during the Pandemic. How will the prolonged absence of physical contact during COVID-19 alter hierarchical or egalitarian behavior in the long term? Will it make people from egalitarian cultures more formal, status conscious, even hierarchical? Will cultures that hug and kiss upon greeting return to that behavior?
Interestingly, cultures that typically did not have physical contact upon greeting each other—who bow as a greeting and did not shake hands--are also those that have been wearing masks for decades. Is there a reason for us to question whether the required social distancing during COVID-19 will drive the more egalitarian cultures to behave in a more hierarchical, formal fashion—at least upon greeting?
It’s logical and understandable that the physical contact of hugging--and even handshaking--is an egalitarian behavior. You can speculate whether the social distancing upon greeting could modify the egalitarianism in a society. At the very least, people will probably assess their relationship with another person before hugging or handshaking.
Impact on Time and Relationships: How Meeting and Collaboration Platforms Altered Connections
Time and Relationships are other cultural dimensions that will likely be affected. Traditionally, fluid-time cultures are more flexible with schedules and more tolerant of looser deadlines. Fluid time cultures are also typically relationship-driven where people tend to prioritize establishing trust and likeability over strict adherence to time and schedules. It takes time to build trusting relationships, so people from these cultures dedicate a significant amount of effort to getting to know someone.
For example, one of the side benefits of in-person meetings is the opportunity to interact and develop rapport. So, if a meeting started late, the people who were present would use that time to learn more about each other.
Online meeting platforms, such as the widely used Zoom, have clearly defined time slots and “waiting rooms” where people cannot see or speak to each other, eliminating the ability chat and further build relationships while waiting. They require strict scheduling and transactional interactions.
Moreover, in the meeting itself, people cannot have individual side discussions because others in the meeting will not be able to hear if several people are talking at the same time. In addition, you can’t glance at someone “across a table” and gesture that you understand or indicate a subtle response. You cannot even smile directly at an individual in a meeting.
So, we can easily see how cultures that need to invest time for relationship-building and have a more fluid attitude towards time have made substantial modifications to their preferred personal cultural styles. The question is: Once people have learned to accommodate this more transactional style, will they revert to their traditional behaviors or is this a permanent cultural change?
Impact on Communication: When Isolation and Social Distance Shape the Way We Interact
The Communication dimension explores the way people send and receive messages—the amount of context and detail they need to be understood; the way facial expressions and body language are used to understand and send a message; and how direct or indirect they are.
Many elements of communication are dramatically changed when you cannot see each other in person. This is exacerbated when facial expressions are hidden by masks and social distancing further muffles the message. In fact, research has shown that a significant part of a message is non-verbal—gestures, tone-of-voice, and facial expressions.
During the Pandemic, the quality of communication between individuals was severely impacted, taking a particularly heavy toll on people from cultures that rely on facial expressions to communicate a full message. The quality of communication has further been inhibited by the inability of people to have normal physical contact, such as shaking hands or touching each other during a normal conversation.
While communication has been severely hampered in this way, we have every reason to believe that cultures which shook hands, hugged and kissed will return to that behavior, as life returns to normal. While zoom meetings will continue to impact business interactions and have a continuing influence on meeting behaviors, we believe that traditional behaviors will return upon face-to-face interactions.
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