Despite years of studies and promotionof cross-cultural understanding, cross cultures remain one of the mostchallenging issues of the 21st century and even become much morecomplicated than before. Back in 1946, a year after the end of the World WarII, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was founded in the U.S. Department ofStates to provide staff training on language skills in response to the need ofU.S. diplomatic corps who would be stationed abroad. The training laterintegrated cultural understanding in the language instruction, thus introducingthe new field of intercultural communication.[i]
Therefore, it could be said that theearly study of cross culture focused on differences between nations. As timegoes by, our world has developed to the stage where traditional boundaries(e.g. states, public-private sectors, business industries, professionals,communities) are blurred by the mobility of people and cross-border activities,adding cobweb layers of cultural differences into human relations.
Why so? If we look at the very microlevel – an individual person, each of us is the manifestation of differentcultures of our family, gender, ethnicity, religion, generation, social class,education institutions, professionals, nations, and many more. With more andwider opportunities for individual to interact, different cultures have morechances to crash. Consequently, cross-cultural competency is not only necessaryfor success in career but also for survival in the today’s multicultural world.
Education institutions then take it asone of their core missions to cultivate cross-cultural competency amonggraduates. Exchange programs are particularly promoted as they provide the mosteffective cross-cultural experiences. Still, there are number of issuesundermining cross-cultural learning and, in the worst case, turning exchangesto nightmares of all those concerned. Revisiting our decades of administeringexchange programs, we find some factors that make different cultures stillcrash.
What You See Is Not What You See
Whatis culture? American anthropologists gave more than 164 definitions of cultureand, until early 1990s, no consensus was made on its nature.[ii] Generallyspeaking, culture issomething we have been consciously and unconsciously absorbed all our livesfrom families, schools, communities, offices, religions, nations, and othersocietal units. Culture has been developed so gradually that we tend tooverlook its existence and impacts on our lives. Such ignorance could lead toserious conflicts particularly when we are challenged by culture opposite whichoftentimes manifested through nonverbal messages.
The ice-berg model effectively explainswhy cross culture matters and why it could become serious. Truly, what we cansee is merely a tiny tip of one culture. There are much more hidden cultural elementsthat we should know and need to figure them out. There are also unknown cultural elements thatwe may or may never discover. In fact, those we can detect might not be what wethink of. For cross-cultural understanding, we have to bear in mind thatsomething seen could be illusive and something unseen could exist.
When East Meets West: Accept the Differences!
Imaginethere are more than one ice-berg in the ocean. Every culture has its ownice-berg and we have slightly idea whether there is a crash underneath and howserious it is. We can however safeguard ourselves from the impacts. A goodstart is to accept that there are always cultural differences and we cannot convertothers’ way of the world to match ours and vice versa. Then, we can try tounderstand the reasons behind cultural differences and later, learn to betterour approaches.
Inregard of cultural differences, Thais and Americans could be good case studiesas they are representatives of opposite cultures – the East and the West. Basedon Fulbright Thailand’s experiences, we found that there are several extremecultural contrasts underlining East-West cultural conflicts. Here, we highlighttwo of them as they are the most influential ones.
Collectivism and Individualism
The agrarian culture of the Eastencourages collectivism. Individual is considered part of the society and well-beingof the whole group also secures individual’s happiness. Emphasis is on group’ssuccess rather than individual achievement. Farming needs teamwork rather than onefarmer with speedy seeding.[iii] Therefore, Easternpeople incline to care for needs and feelings of others, building unity andharmony through interdependence.[iv] Grouprelations are in family-like structure with strong hierarchical system in whichyounger generation has been taught to treasures the elders’ world’s wisdoms.
On the contrary, individualism of theWest focuses on self. Individual well-being ensures group’s success. In fact,being member of any societal groups for individualists is a choice.Self-reliance/sufficiency, self-interest, and self-achievement are the mainfocus while self-independence is highly valued.[v] As we haveobserved, collectivist tends to use collective words such as we or ouridea rather than I and my idea as frequently used byindividualist.
Collectivist and individualist worldviews bring about the issue of, among many others, respect and assertiveness. Thaisprefer not to argue with their seniors in public and quietly try to solveproblems. Americans feel it is their responsibility to raise the concern forattention. Although each has sincere intention, Thais are complained as beingsubmissive and Americans being aggressive and, oftentimes rude. The attentionis then on the massage delivery rather than the massage itself, which make theproblem unsolved and situation dramatized.
Another serious crash is aboutplagiarism. The concept could be based on individualist sense ofself-achievement and the right to protect one’s entitlement. Most of Thais donot know the word plagiarism. In fact, before the word was translated in Thai,we did not have it in our language. Citing or copying people’s works withoutgiving credit to the person is commonly found in Thai schools and universities.Copying homework is seen as sharing and help. Americans have been struggling tointroduce anti-plagiarism concept to Thai students and even Thai teachers. Itis also equally challenging for them to also teach students the correct way ofquoting.
Polychronic and Monochronic
The polychronic perception of the Eastsees time as cyclical and can be attuned to meet our needs. As there is alwaysmore time, we do not have to rush. Deadline is merely a guideline, lateness isnot a matter, plan can always be changed, and interruptions are acceptable. Onthe contrary, in the monochornic time of the West, time is something set. Wehave to adjust our activities to fit with available time in schedules, plans,and deadlines. Time is precious, life depends on schedules, and plans are fixedas agreed upon. Accordingly, this perception finds lateness, interruptions, andchanges intolerable.[vi]
Different views of polychromic andmonochronic societies lead to one of the most notorious cultural crash betweenThais and American. The number one frustration for Americans working inThailand is that they have to struggling blindly without any clues of what isexpected of them, what they can expect, what to do next, etc. Many of them werelucky enough to receive them at the very last minutes. Many of them came to lightafterwards. Thais are not serious with planning and scheduling. We adopt norush attitude and see no reason to be too detailed.
The ideas towards changes are equallyproblematic. Americans also felt uneasy with changes, which seem to beunreasonably normal for Thai colleagues. The situation was even worse whenchanges occurred without notice. Several American teachers waited for theirstudents for more than twenty minutes to find out that the classes werecanceled. For Thai schools, changes happen recurrently and everyone seems toaccept them naturally.
Also relevant to the concept of time isthe issue of lateness. Americans value punctuality as they tend to live byschedule. More time could be a plus point while less time means a loss.Lateness is considered a waste of somebody’s time as well as a bad manner. Americansthen feel very upset when students come to classes late (for any reasons) andcannot understand why Thais are okay to wait or to make people wait.
National Heritage![vii]
It might sound strange but one of themain obstacles for our cross-cultural awareness and understanding is our ownculture. We do not advocate for the uproot changebut wish to revisit some aspects of our Thai-ness with could be adjusted forthe better.
Face and Face Saving
We, as Thais, have been groomed in theculture in which face and face saving are given an exaggerate importance. Thesecould be a flip side of our values on seniority/ hierarchy and result in thedevelopment of egotism and strong self-importance. As a consequence, we areprone not to admit that we lack of knowledge, misunderstand, or make mistakes.We are then blocked from new information, knowledge, and learning. It is,therefore, very hard for many of us just to listen and open mind fordifferences. Worst, this face and face saving concepts also have influences onyoung generations as well.
Egotism and Self-deprecation
Relevant to face and face saving are egotismand self-deprecation. An overdose of both could blind us from natural analysison cross-cultural issues. Egotism exaggerates a sense of self-importance and,therefore, makes us endorse our culture as standard culture. Thosedifferent from ours are wrong. On the opposite side, many Thais have strongself-deprecation and tend to undervalue our own culture in comparing withothers particularly the western one. This could result in parrot-like copyingof culture that might not fit in our context.
Măn-sài (หมั่นไส้) and Krang-jai (เกรงใจ)
Equally problematic are our peculiarfeeling of măn-sài and krang-jai which do not exist in English.In Thai, the two words carry both positive and negative feelings depending onthe contexts and the speakers. Positively, măn sài is a tease in aloving way because the person does something very cute or exaggeratedly saysomething good about oneself. Negatively, the word carries senses of jealousy,dislike, annoyance, or irritation on someone because the person behavesostentatiously or ridiculously or is better at something.
Krang-jai, in apositive way, makes us do or say something against our true feeling because wecare for other’s feeling or think of all the trouble someone might have to gothrough for us. In a negative sense, we also go or say against our own will butbecause the person is at the upper hierarchical level, or we do not want tolook bad in other’s eye, or we are trapped by emotional blackmail. All in all,both măn-sài and krang-jai, in their negative aspects, limit ourlearning experiences, mislead our cross-cultural interpretation, and handicapour critical thinking skill.
Universal Sins
Despite the increasing number of peoplewith international experiences (e.g. study abroad, exchanges, employment, andtravel), the large number of people in the world has not yet direct contactwith foreigners, let alone living in different cultures. Even for those withinternational experiences, they might not have enough opportunities to really learnand understand cross culture. For this reasons, most of us know people of othercountries through second hand sources. Such sources can have powerful influenceson our perceptions, pride, and prejudice.
Patriotic History
Each individual country has its ownhistory, a patriotic one in which it was the winner, the unfortunate defeated,the right, the deceived, etc. We write history from our standpoint and naturallyview other countries as inferiors, competitors, or even enemies. Weunsurprisingly tend to leave out our dark side. We have been programed withpatriotic history since our school days and history depicting national enemyalways play significant role whenever we need to strengthen our patriotism. Weoverlook the fact that our history may differ from those of others who sharethe same stories. The same accounts can be differently interpreted by differentsides.
Movies
The strong patriotic instinct could befueled by movies. While movie producers are fond of presenting nostalgic andromantic stories of national heroes and momentous accounts in the name ofpatriotism, they do inflame people’s hatred towards the so-called enemies. We might also forget that we now live in theinterconnected world in which people from other countries can also consume ourmovies. What would be their reaction seeing their beloved countries portrayedas evil souls? Strengthening patriotism in the expense of national wisdom and long-terminternational relations is more destructive than constructive.
Furthermore, foreign movies also havestrong influences on our perception of the particular countries. For example, mostof us know Americans from Hollywood movies and have already been framed thatthey are white (with blue eyes and blond hair), super smart, superior, rich,and have easy sexual relations. Movies, however, reflect only a glimpse of thecountry and mostly provide dramatized /exaggerated stories and romanticizedmentality. We need to be critical when consuming foreign movies in order toavoid stereotyping and cross-cultural misunderstanding.
Media
Likewise, today media particularly newsreports incorporate lots of subjective criticism and drama. Small accounts areexaggerated and dramatized regardless of how sensitive to the foreign relationsthey are. More and more reporters and anchors step beyond their roles of presentingfacts to become experts sharing their ideas and perceptions on the issues.Oftentimes, they worsen the situations by, among others, miscommunication, notwell-rounded if not wrong analysis, or an intention to make profit from stories.Media plays a crucial role in strengthen and weaken foreign relations as it hasgreat impacts on people’s knowledge and cross-cultural understanding.
Language and slangs
Our language and slangs also havenegative forces. Some proverbs, jokes, and slangs contains a sense ofdiscrimination and we have been absorbed them throughout our lives. Since ourschool days we have developed a discriminating mind by linking names ofcountries and some dialects to inferiority. Indeed, the discrimination can beon nation, race, accent, religious, belief, gender, diet, practices… you nameit. Frequent use of such language andslangs can subconsciously shape our mind toward discrimination and stereotypes.
All in all, by letting these negativeforces develop, we risk ourselves to snap judgment and ethnocentrism – a signof cross-cultural deficit.
Survival Check-list
Having deal with cross-cultural crashesfor more than decades, we conclude that the crashes cannot be completely curedbut can be soften or even turned positive. Every single crash gives us across-cultural lesson though sometimes in a hard way. We just have to acceptthat it is not unusual to have cross-cultural crashes. Americans who have beenspending more than half of their lives in Thailand still confuse/irritate withsome of our cultures. Likewise, a number of Thais living in the U.S. find it achallenge to adjust themselves to some of American cultures.
In fact, we think a small degree ofcross-cultural crashes bring about healthy relations but on condition thatthose involved learn more about others as well as themselves. Our experiencesalso confirm that to healthily survive cross-cultural crashes, we need tocultivate three positive characteristics, namely attitude, adaptability, and asense of humor, all of which have been emphasized among our Fulbright granteesas well as our hosts in any occasion possible.
Attitude
Attitude maybe the most significant oneas everything start from good attitude. With open-minded, positive thinking,and eagerness to learn even from the mistakes/conflicts, one can not onlyhappily benefit from all situations and charm oneself but also promote the sameattitude among one’s community. Attitude determines the grantee’s success orfailure to cultivate from their exchanges. We had placed two grantees ofdifferent years in the same community. One saw difficulties as challenges to betackled while the other saw them as curses. Obviously, their experiences weredifferent.
Adaptability
Adaptability is crucial as we must beable to blend ourselves in the context we live in or else we will be alienatedand/or feel unhappy. Adaptability means respect of social rules and practicesof the place we live in although we may feel that they are unreasonable. Americanfemale grantees who were mature adult in the U.S. felt strange when they weretreated as children here in Thailand. Those who understand and accept the factthat Thais treat women at any age with more care were less frustrated.Similarly, Thais must learn the balanced way to treat Americans adults.
Adaptability also means going out of ourways for a new experience/habit. Americans who used to have plan and activeschedule must learn to live a slower life here. At the same time, Thais should learnto plan in advance particularly for professional improvement. Remember,effective learning occur when both side adjust
A Sense of Humor
Positive attitude and adaptability workwell when backed up with a sense of humor. In recent years, we have encounteredmore and more cases of depression and nervous breakdown. Some cases were soserious that we had to terminate the grants. From the observation, most of thecases happened with grantees who were more serious with life and had less senseof humor than their fellow grantees. A sense of humor, though might be a giftfrom birth, could be nurtured. It also became one of the success factorspersonally and professionally in business.[viii] Particularlyfor cross-cultural learning, a sense of humor helps grantees to see thebrighter side of difficult situation, making them bearable and keeping oneselfsane.
Let Them Crashed, Let Us Learn!
Cross-culturallearning is life-long as people are always changing and the world is always moving.New factors, new actors, and new issues keep emerging. In the recent years, forexample, we have been discussed about diversity particularly LGBTQ andgeneration gaps[ix] as it has great impacts oncross-cultural understanding. The issue itself became complicated. LGBT, forexample, became LGBTQ, later LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual), and maybe LGBTQQIA…XYZ as sexualorientation vary.
Inmanaging education exchanges, it is important that every stakeholder learnsomething. While constantly keeping upwith the world’s trends, we should also explore inside ourselves in order to bemore sensitive, critical, and practical in cross-cultural management. Aneffective way toward being cross-cultural competent is through knowledge andexperience sharing. Successes could be shared for good practices while negativeexperiences and failures have to be discussed with a view to prevent similar stories.Repeated cases reflect accumulated challenges that need particular attention. Althoughwe cannot make an uproot change, we can always adjust ourselves, makingexamples, and share.
Crashor not, we do learn!
Note:
Paper presented at the forth Fulbright Internationalization Forum (FIF) onAugust 20, 2015 at Sasin GraduateInstitute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University co-organizedby Sasin Center for Sustainability Management (SCSM)
[i] Rogers, Everett M., Heart, Billiam B., andMike Yoshitaka. ‘Edward T. Hall and The History of Intercultural Communication:The United States and Japan’. Keio Communication Review No. 24, 2012 available athttp://estudioespanol.eu/Interkulturelles/Edward%20T%20Hall.pdf
[ii] Spencer-Oatey, H ‘What is Culture? ACompilation of Quotations’ Global PAD Core Concepts at Global PAD OpenHouse. Available at hppt://go.wawick.ac.uk/globalpadintercultural
[iii] Cho, Yong Hwan (2015) SamsungMan. (Translated by PattiraJitkasem) Amarin ภัททิรา จิตต์เกษม
[iv] Ibid
[v] Station Information System (SIS), Universityof Southern California. ‘What to Know Before You Go!!’ Available at http://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/
[vi] Ibid
[vii] Based on Fulbright Thailand’s presentationseries in various occasions
[viii] Smith, Jacquelyn. ‘10 Reasons Why Humor Is AKey To Success At Work’ Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/05/03/10-reasons-why-umor-is-a-key-to-success-at-work
[ix] Kanjananiyot, Porntip and Chaitiamwong, Chotima.‘Gen Gappers in Communication: Getting Wilder and Wilder’ presented at theSecond International Conference on Language and Communication on, ‘Dynamism ofLanguage and Culture in Society’, organized by the National Institute ofDevelopment Administration, August 5, 2010. Available at http://www.fulbrightthai.org/ArticlesDetails.asp?id=572&type=articles
Kanjananiyot, Porntip and Chaitiamwong,Chotima. ‘Managing M Exchange’ paper presented at the First FulbrightInternationalization Forum (FIF), November 15, 2012 at Pullman Hotel, Bangkok. Availableat http://fulbrightthai.org/ArticlesDetails.asp?id=775&type=articles
