cooperation – Success Across Cultures

Social Value Orientation & Culture: Does Your Social Predisposition Outrank Your Cultural Values?

27. October 2023by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Social interactions are influenced by the exchange between an individual’s cultural inclinations, be they horizontal or vertical individualism and collectivism, their inherent traits, and the surrounding context.

One pivotal trait at the center of this dynamic is the individual’s Social Value Orientation (SVO).

SVO represents a person’s general predisposition towards competition (proself) or cooperation (prosocial) in the realm of social exchanges.

This study, encompassing 1032 participants, explores the relationship between SVO and an individual’s personal cultural tendencies of horizontal/vertical individualism and collectivism, within the backdrop of two distinct cultural settings: the United States, characterized as a vertical individualist setting, and South Korea, marked by its vertical collectivistic backdrop.

The researchers’ hypotheses centered on the alignment between an individual’s value orientation and their corresponding personal cultural tendencies, accounting for the cultural setting.

They posited that each value orientation would correspond with the congruent personal cultural tendency in a given setting, and this association would be context-specific, with SVO playing a more prominent role in settings where cultural themes were less dominant.

Let The Games Begin

A decomposed games measure identified whether individual participants were prosocial, individualistic, or competitive.

The behavioral measure consists of nine “games” through which this assignment is made.

The study also measured the participant’s inclination toward horizontal/vertical individualism and collectivism.

For example, participants were asked to rate their feelings about statements like “I enjoy being unique and different from others in many ways” (horizontal individualism) or “I enjoy working in situations involving competition with others” (vertical individualism).

Likewise, they rated prosocial statements like “The well-being of my co-workers is important to me” (horizontal collectivism) and “I would do what would please my family, even if I detested that activity” (vertical collectivism).

After collecting data from these games and questionnaires, this is what the study found.

The Findings

The findings highlighted intriguing patterns.

Across both settings, proself individuals exhibited a stronger endorsement of vertical individualistic values, while prosocial individuals leaned more towards horizontal collectivistic values.

However, the influence of SVO diverged across the two cultural contexts.

In the United States, prosocial individuals exhibited a more robust inclination towards horizontal collectivism compared to their proself counterparts.

In contrast, in the South Korean context, prosocial individuals displayed a lesser affinity for horizontal individualism.

These outcomes bear significant theoretical implications and open avenues for further exploration.

What This Means

Delving deeper into these revelations makes it more apparent that individuals are not solely products of their cultural inclinations or personal traits; rather, it is the dynamic give-and-take of these factors that ultimately shapes their social interactions.

The results of this study underscore the coaction of cultural tendencies, dispositional traits, and context in shaping social behavior.

They also highlight the significance of context-specific considerations in understanding the nuances of human behavior, emphasizing the need for a more holistic and multifaceted approach to comprehend the exchange of cultural influences, personal traits, and context in shaping our interactions.

Individualism & Social Capital: Does Autonomy Actually Require Dependence?

1. April 2023by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Have you ever thought about how your independence and individuality can make you more dependent on society?

Social scientists have been pondering this fascinating oxymoron for quite some time.

But as we’ve discussed in previous posts, individualistic societies often depend more on social capital, and here’s yet another study to explain why.

When discussing the cause and effect, research by Juri Allik and Anu Realo at the University of Tartu concluded,

“Individualistic values appear to be conducive to social capital and social capital appears to be conducive to individualism (see also Inkeles, 2000).”

But why?

The study, which is a reanalysis of previously published data, delves deeper to find out.

Individualistic States Have High Levels of Social Capital

On one hand, some experts believe that as modernization takes hold, individualism will run rampant, putting the unity of society at risk.

However, others argue that autonomy and independence are necessary for developing cooperation and social solidarity.

Data on individualism and collectivism were reanalyzed in the United States and across 42 countries.

The study found that states in the US with high levels of social capital were also more individualistic.

This capital comes with a higher degree of civic engagement, political activity, and interpersonal trust.

Moreover, these states have a strong system of social networks based on voluntary cooperation and mutual trust, and people in these states prefer to live alone, be self-employed, and vote for the Libertarian political program.

This association held true across many different countries as well.

Except China.

China is an Outlier

China‘s interpersonal dynamics often puzzle outsiders as it defies the stereotype of a collectivist culture.

While China scores low on individualism, it ranks high on trust between individuals, even those outside of the in-group.

This is surprising given the country’s strong emphasis on family and kinship ties.

Scholars attribute this unusual phenomenon to the limitations of simplistic measurement tools and suggest a more nuanced understanding of the Chinese social fabric.

Despite the need for further exploration, China remains an exceptional case that challenges our preconceptions about how culture shapes interpersonal relationships.

Autonomy = Dependence

Although China broke the mold, these results lend support to the theory of Emile Durkheim, who believed that as individuals become more autonomous, they actually become more dependent on society.

So the question remains: how can we balance being our own unique selves while still staying connected to the larger community?

Social & Cultural Capital, Part 1: How to Benefit from Each in the Workplace

17. March 2023by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Your success on the job often relies on the type of capital you possess.

We’ve been discussing social and cultural capital over the past few weeks, and these two types of capital are what matter at work.

To review, social capital is all about the strength of relationships and connections within a group, whereas cultural capital is the shared values and goals that bring a group together.

Social capital can help you achieve more or reach objectives more easily at work.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at social capital and see how to assess and build upon it.

Assessing Your Social Capital

Maybe you don’t even know where you stand with your social capital.

After all, it’s not exactly something tangible that you can measure.

The following questions might help you identify where you’re at with your social capital:

Do I carry influence? What is my reputation like? Do others see me as strong or weak, reliable or flakey, positive or negative? Do they want to work with me?
How strong are my relationships within my team and without? Do I build connections with others across departments? Do I network?
Do I build strategic and enduring relationships or just transactional ones?
Do I have the energy and influence to mobilize resources and colleagues to support and achieve my goals?
Do I keep abreast of important news and developments within my workplace and industry?

Improving your social capital can enhance your job performance, satisfaction, and career prospects.

To do so, networking with peers and colleagues in your industry, cultivating relationships based on mutual interests and values, and offering help and support to others are paramount to banking more social capital.

Aggregate Benefits

Not only does social capital improve individual success and potential, but the entire workplace improves.

Successful workplaces cultivate social structures in which everyone benefits.

This happens through social intercourse, empathy, fellowship, compassion, consideration, and most importantly, trust.

If the social structure benefits only a small group within the workplace, the organization’s aggregate benefits from their social capital decrease.

It feeds into a negative company culture, in which trust is lost, along with the sense of community.

When none of these things are there, those in the social structure can’t rely on each other and cooperation and society collapses.

If you look at your workplace and you cannot identify its values, then that’s a problem.

It means you’ll have a hard time personally building social capital there…as will the workplace, itself.

Building your cultural capital, which relates to your knowledge, skills, and understanding of cultural norms and practices, is also important for career success.

We’ll talk more about that next week.

The Rice Field Analogy: Negotiation Tactics Across Cultures

21. August 202023. August 2020by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Cultures have codes.

The past few weeks, we’ve discussed how to tap into these codes by using analogies constructively.

So can they be used to tap into negotiating with other cultures.

Innate Analogous Terms in Negotiation

Negotiation is a game.

In each culture, this game has different rules.

Strategy in negotiation requires understanding the game you’re playing.

Language used in negotiation is, of itself, analogous.

Negotiation is sometimes likened to going to war. Rules are minimal. Often, sports jargon is used, such as “fair play,” which is:

“in sport, the fact of playing according to the rules and not having an unfair advantage.”

Negotiations are something to be “won.”

These analogous terms used in negotiations naturally extend to cultures.

Framing a foreign culture’s negotiation tactics in the form of an analogy will help drive the correct strategy to “win.”

Cultural Analogies in Negotiation

In negotiation, Russians are “playing poker”; Germans are “playing chess.”

These are pretty straight forward analogies, easily understood by Westerners.

But what about the Chinese?

Chinese negotiations can be an enigma to foreigners.

You might feel mutual confidence, trust, and cooperation one day and, the very next, feel tricked into accepting something you hadn’t discussed.

The “pattern” is not like poker; it’s not like chess.

It’s variable and inconsistent.

To understand this seemingly random give-and-take, a friend provided me a succinct analogy: Chinese negotiations are like working in a rice field.

Rice is, without a doubt, an important part of Chinese culture.

It provides the people sustenance every single day from childhood to old age.

Cultivating this crop necessitates much more cooperation within a village than do crops in Europe or the U.S.

The rice field terraces in the countryside are flooded with a common irrigation system. The water irrigates one field to the next, and this requires that the entire village collectively working together.

Focusing on your land, alone, won’t work.

Instead, you must both hold your own and cooperate with others in equal parts.

This is what negotiating in China requires.

View it as working together on these rice terraces: you must hold your own while using the same irrigation system as that which feeds your business partner’s field. And your business partner is doing the same.

In order to be successful, you must support and cooperate with your business partner while playing defensively and cleverly, seeking your own advantage and ensuring that your partner doesn’t exploit his.

When negotiating with Chinese partners, you aren’t playing poker, neither are you playing chess.

You’re working in a rice field together, both supporting and competing.