MEASURING CULTURE

Even though culture is in a big part something intangible, customs and patterns in societies that are created along many years, where a lot of factors influenced those customs as the climate, the geographic location, the language and so on, it can be measure in a qualitative and quantitative way.

Its difficult to generalize the behavior of a group of people because we also have our own culture in smaller groups as the family. Sometimes we generalize about a country behavior but there exist groups that act in other way, that have different way of thinking. So, the tools we have to quantify those behaviors could be inaccurate.

one of the most important topic for me was the controversy between universalism and particularism, which go with the hand with collectivists  and nationalists identity. Universalism as the application of same ethical standards and rules for all humans, more specifically, as a global expansion of values and behaviors in societies. By the other hand, particularism defending a particular condition of religion and locals against a unifying tendency. is difficult to be with one of those theories due to the complexity of the world. both have interesting issues to highlight but today, in my opinion ii is not space for extremist theories or lifestyles. by one side, have universal values is so difficult because we are very different, there are cultures like islam, jewish, Chinese that are so different from us, even the ones that are similar have different behaviors and communication ways as we saw in class. Signs and symbols that can have a meaning to us and other to the rest of the wold.

So, talking about universalism to me sounds impossible, now, particularism from my perspective, i can compared it with protectionism in commerce, today is so difficult to a country protect itself if it want and need something in return, to have rigid barriers does not allow others to treat you with benefits. So is good to have an identity and to know our own principles and religion, customs etc.. defending it because is in what we believe but being open to others, not to change our customs but to understand and respect other´s. Being flexible to adapting to particular situations.

the second importan topic of the class was hofstede. I like what he say about culture and is that is something so difficult to measure due to is something collective but at the same time resides in individuals, in each mind. So he based his theory in individuals way of act and think but counting on a collective cultural tendency of each country. So, based on his 6 dimensions, we can say that even is something generalized and as the critics says, is an old study and those dimensions are few to determined how really is the behavior of a country, at least allows us to have an idea of our differences and more for us as negotiators, let us understand general aspects of those cultures to know how to get into their cultures to have better communication in terms of business.

I think that the most important issues of this measures is the contribution it made to negotiation. For years the most complicated thing to reach an agreement in the whole world is involved with culture. both parties have interests, same or difference but tend to try to get all benefit and be understood but don´t understand others.

So, when negotiate and to have and idea of what we are going to face, hofstede is not a bad option just to have a global knowledge.