workplace – Success Across Cultures

The Double-Edged Sword: Small Talk Across Cultures, A Case Study

5. April 2024by J. WittwerLeave a comment

“How was your weekend?”

“It’s sure hot out today, isn’t it?”

Small talk, the seemingly mundane chatter that fills the gaps in conversations, holds far more significance than meets the eye…or ear.

But even more so across cultures.

In essence, small talk serves as a gateway to deeper connections, offering a glimpse into the values, norms, and social dynamics that shape a culture.

From exchanging pleasantries to navigating delicate topics, small talk can be a subtle yet powerful tool for building rapport and fostering connections.

But it can also be a minefield across cultures.

Let’s take a look at a case study on small talk in a cross-cultural workplace and then explore how different cultures approach small talk.

A Study on Small Talk in a Cross-Cultural Workplace

A compelling case study analyzed how small talk can influence the socialization process of newcomers, exemplified by Anna, an expatriate from the Philippines, transitioning into a Hong Kong firm.

As individuals integrate into new workplace communities, small talk emerges as a pivotal domain fraught with cultural nuances and workplace norms.

Research examining Anna’s interactions with her Hong Kong colleagues sheds light on how ethnicity, social customs, and organizational culture weave into small talk discourse.

From a linguistic perspective, Anna’s small talk with her colleagues subtly reflects Filipino core values intertwined with Hong Kong social customs and local organizational culture.

While small talk can be a conduit for building relationships, it also presents challenges and opportunities for Anna’s socialization journey.

On one hand, it offers a platform for facilitating her assimilation into the workplace community.

On the other hand, discrepancies between Filipino and Hong Kong cultural norms pose challenges, requiring Anna to navigate cultural boundaries with sensitivity.

The Double-Edged Sword

Small talk emerges as a double-edged sword, wielding the power to signal appropriate and inappropriate behavior and the success or failure of socialization efforts.

Not only must a newcomers finesse their small-talking skills, but integral members of the workplace leverage small talk to mold newbies into the organizational culture.

The case study highlights the inherent complexity of small talk as a sociocultural phenomenon.

While it can facilitate socialization and rapport-building, attempts to navigate small talk without cultural sensitivity may backfire, leading to misunderstandings or misinterpretations.

By recognizing the role of small talk as a cultural artifact and facing its complexities with cultural intelligence, newcomers like Anna can find the balance between assimilation and authenticity in their journey toward workplace integration.

Social & Cultural Capital, Part 2: How to Benefit from Each in the Workplace

24. March 2023by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Cultural capital can be considered an important workplace resource, as it often shows a person in a certain light.

Although this type of capital is centered around competence, qualifications, and experience (universal assets), it is specific to each culture, because the values of society set the tone for what assets are most prized.

We talked about social capital last week, which is all about who you know.

But cultural capital is about what you know and can do – the skills and knowledge you bring to the table as an individual.

This can include anything from being a master wordsmith to having an eye for art that’ll blow your socks off.

In that way, you have more control over cultural capital than you do social.

But…cultural capital is like a secret weapon that not everyone knows how to wield.

And that weapon comes in several forms, including embodied and institutionalized cultural capital.

Embodied & Institutionalized Cultural Capital

Embodied cultural capital refers to the skills and knowledge that you’ve acquired through personal experience, training, and education.

This type of cultural capital is highly subjective, as it’s shaped by your unique experiences and background.

Think language skills, artistic talent, physical coordination, social grace, and more.

View embodied cultural capital as the foundation of who you are as an individual.

It’s something that can have a significant impact on your social class, career prospects, and overall success.

Institutionalized cultural capital, on the other hand, refers to the formal credentials and recognition that you’ve acquired through institutions such as universities, colleges, and professional organizations.

Institutionalized cultural capital can include degrees, certificates, and other formal qualifications.

It can also include the prestige and reputation of the organizations with which you’re affiliated.

But it’s not just about what you know and what you can do. It’s also about who you know and where you belong.

Institutionalized cultural capital can give you access to certain social networks, job opportunities, and higher-paying positions.

How Can You Earn Cultural Capital?

Understanding the cultural capital that holds value within your environment is crucial, as certain skills and attributes are prized and can lead to greater opportunities, career success, and social status.

For example, if you want to make it big in a high-wheeling law firm, you’ll need to be able to flaunt your fancy degree and show off your deep understanding of legal culture.

Or if you’re in the tech industry, having skills in programming languages like Java, Python, or C++ will be a game changer.

The bottom line is: You need to know what skills and attributes are highly valued within your environment, and then develop those skills and cultivate those attributes.

You also need to make connections and build relationships with people who can help you advance in your career.

And, of course, you need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in your field.

Who knows, if you build up enough social and cultural capital, maybe someday you’ll be able to cash it all in for a fancy corner office and a solid gold stapler.

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.

Workplace Organizational Structures: The Pros & Cons of Hierarchical, Flat, and Functional Workplaces

23. September 2022by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed how to build the best global virtual team, the challenges of working virtually and cross-culturally, and how to best manage such a team.

One of the cross-cultural challenges discussed was differences in norms regarding organizational structures in the workplace.

Some cultures prefer a hierarchical structure with a clear chain of command. Others prefer a flat structure, which is often more collaborative.

Over the next couple of posts, we’ll discuss various organizational structures.

Knowing about these structures as a manager will help you understand how others might be accustomed to working.

Hierarchical Structure

The hierarchical structure is probably the most common organizational structure in a workplace.

It has a clear and direct chain of command, with a senior manager at the top, followed by various departmental executives, followed by supervisors/team leads, all the way down to general employees.

Those at the highest level – the CEO, for instance – have the final say in decisions.

The CEO’s decisions may, however, require approval by a board of directors.

Each structure has its pros and cons.

Hierarchical pros:

Provides clear career paths
Offers a clear chain of command, thus reducing conflict
Helps businesses streamline processes
Leaves little room for dissent from those low on the chain (which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it)

Hierarchical cons:

May negatively impact employee morale
Can slow decision-making processes, as approval is needed
May stunt innovation and creativity, as fewer are allowed the power to make decisions

Flat Organization Structure

Small businesses and startups typically use a flat organizational structure.

They must often adjust to a stabler structure once they move past the startup stage.

As you may have guessed, this structure is much less hierarchical with fewer middle managers between the lower-level employees and top dogs.

Flat pros:

Less supervision required
More responsibility given to employees
Trust and open communication
Greater employee involvement and ease of coordination

Flat cons:

Potential for more conflict and confusion
Sometimes slows decision-making processes, as people cannot agree
May stunt specified skills or knowledge

Functional Structure

A functional structure involves departments made up of specialized work functions, each with a designated and experienced leader.

The decision-making process is generally centralized in this type of organization, with department heads reporting to upper management.

The team leads communicate with each other to coordinate, and the team members below them typically have little involvement with that process.

Functional pros:

Employees focus on specialized tasks
Each department fosters teamwork toward a joint goal
Is scalable no matter the size of the business

Functional cons:

Coordination can be lacking
Big picture context is lost on lower-level employees
Company processes and strategies can become confused

As you can see, each organizational structure strong and weak points.

The type of structure you choose should be best suited to the business you’re running.

Without a strong structure that supports your business and the type of work culture you wish to promote, you will face difficulties in productivity, coordination, communication, and overall morale.

Next week, we’ll talk about four additional workplace organizational structures.

How Culture Impacts a Person’s Sense of Control (aka Locus of Control)

29. November 201929. November 2019by J. WittwerLeave a comment

Do you believe in fate?

Last week, we talked about how the degree to which someone feels life is directed by destiny dictates their locus of control – that is their feeling of control over their own lives.

Let’s look at how the locus of control unfolds in the workplace.

The Blame Game

When a goal is set and not reached in a workplace environment, the reactions of your colleagues can be very telling.

Sheila blames Jeremy for not delivering the documents in time for her to complete her task.

Jeremy blames Tom for not communicating promptly.

Tom blames his home life for distracting him.

Team Leader Lisa admits she missed the mark and should have taken the campaign in another direction. She apologizes for the part she played in not meeting the goal.

People with an internal locus of control take personal responsibility for their role in a group’s failure, while those with an external locus point at everyone else but themselves, whether they see fault in the “weakest links” of the group or in external factors.

Cross-Cultural Factors

How do cross-cultural factors come into play in the locus?

The locus of control is directly related to personality orientation; however, social psychologists have begun to study the majority locus of control in various cultures and the factors that influence it.

They’ve discovered that quite often the people of any given culture look at fate or self-control in a generally collective manner.

As you may have guessed, individualist cultures generally demonstrate an internal locus of control. They believe they’re the masters of their own fate.

Collectivist cultures – like those of China or Japan – demonstrate an external locus. They accept that things are out of their hands and don’t put weight on the individual’s role in the whole.

To illustrate this, when Americans and Chinese were surveyed about their view of fate, these were the results.

89% of questioned Americans agreed with the statement, “What happens to me is my own doing,” while 65% of Chinese admitted, “Sometimes I feel I don’t have control over the direction my life is taking.”

This aligns with each culture’s dominant traits, with Americans espousing ambition, individualism, and the “American dream,” while China espouses harmony and collectivism.

Next week, we’ll talk a little bit about how the group locus of control can be divided up further amongst ethnic groups and even simply locations in the same country. We’ll also talk about primary and secondary control. Stay tuned.