I was introduced to the idea of cultural dimensions in my B-School International Business course funnily enough. Our biggest assignment was to act as advisiors to a company and recommend where it should expand its operations to. We were tasked to use four aspects (CAGE Model), one of which was cultural distance to discern what the perfect destination was for a company to take their next steps. The greater the cultural distance between the host and home country the greater the risk of achieveing successful market integration, the lower the cultural distance the lower the risk. However, being introduced to cultural dimensions in the context of this course allowed me to realize that these cultural indicators are not as black and white as they seem. For instance, one of the top destinations for companies to expand to is the Middle East, with a particular focus on the UAE and Saudi Arabia. However, the Middle East and the West are evidently quite culturally distant and many Western companies such as IKEA have fallen victim to unsucessfull market penetration because they were unable to navigate these differences. However, to our suprise when analyzing where, culturally, the Middle East and the West are different we came to realize that they have pertinant differences in one - two indicators wheras they score relatively in the same range for other indicators~which is why the Middle East continues to be sought out by western companies for potential market integration. The Figuring Foureigners Out and Hoftsead articles are making us aware of the most important ways that countries are different and similar to one another culturally. Some of these indicators includes: individualsit vs collectivist societies, direct vs indirect communication styles, feminane vs masculine societies, and high power distance vs low power distance dyanmics. As a Global Studies student, I can't help but mention that these cultural indicators are not present in countries randomly, there are discernable patterns that are at play. FFoor instance, most often than not the indiivudlist socieities are countries in the Global north or those deemed "developed" and more often than not the collectivist soities are present in countries in the Global North or those deemed "developing. Capitalism, the primary system by which the West operates under, is an underlying factor in this pattern as its key tenent is the indvidual. In Ethiopia where both my native tongue and my target language are spoken widely I don't think I will experience any significant quarrales in regards to cultural distance.
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Hi Melale!
I also find the topics that I learn in this class being applied to other courses. For me, most frequently in Anthropology. I watched a documentary on the reciprocity economy within the Gabra people, who are actually related to the Oromo people. Have you heard of reciprocity or the gift economy, and do you think this ties into the trend of collectivism we see in these cultures?