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3. Hit the Road, Jack(ie) : Tips for the Backpacking Project Manager (part 3 of 4)

Hit the Road, Jack(ie) : Tips for the Backpacking Project Manager (part 3 of 4)

PART 3
At the end of part 2 of this series in the last SIG newsletter, I promised that I would give you some examples of Pluralistic Cultures, Extended Family Cultures, and Community Cultures, and that we would then talk about High and Low Context Communication. 

The behaviour patterns that we dealt with in the last article, looked at in a business context, let us explore the cultures in which you are most likely to encounter them, so without further ado:

In Pluralistic Cultures the following traits and preferences can be found:

• Individualism, e.g. the world revolves around "me myself and I"
• Heavy dependence on large social institutions and abstractions such as university degrees, resume, and other records of personal performance
• Lifestyle diversity
• Personal achievement
• Career orientation, playing the corporate game
• Materialistic/secular: commercialism, technology, affluence
• Social change seen as progress
• Existentialism: you define your own personal truth
• Human rights

Examples: Pluralistic Cultures are prevalent in Anglo-Saxon cultures and can be found in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, UK and the USA

Extended Family Cultures exist throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and India. In these cultures the following are differentiators:

• Social structure is built around the extended family and networks of extended families
• Great importance is placed on where you are from, who you are related to, and who you know
• Family is seen as self identity and a source of social status
• Authoritarian power structure is typically dominated by males
• Doing business within your network of relationships
• Minimal social change from generation to generation
• Gender differences
• Tradition-bound
• Religious
• Limited geographic mobility

Community Cultures can be found throughout Asia. Here the following are typical behaviour patterns and pointers:

• Self identity is derived from group membership: "I am Honda"
• Conformity and loyalty to the group, and conforming to the culture's behavioural etiquette
• Duty, self sacrifice on behalf of the group
• Hierarchical social and work structure
• Paramount importance of the department, division, company
• Importance of seniority
• Economic partnership between business and government

We will now look at High and Low Context Communication. This is a concept developed by Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist considered by many as the founder of intercultural communication study.

Hall described three concepts of cultural differences, namely time, context and space. We will talk about high and low context, which is a concept you may have come across in the PMBOK and other project management literature.

I would like to point out here that societies contain both modes, and that Culture is not high or low context. The concept of high and low context communications however is very useful to describe and understand particular situations and environments, rather than serving as a description of an entire people.

High context means that one relies less on the message and more on the senders and receivers, and therefore relationships are of utmost importance. The major component of communication is in the context and people form close connections over long periods. The following are typical in a high context communication:

• Less verbally explicit communication, less written/formal information
• Knowledge is situational, relational
• Business practices are personalised: who you know is more important than what you know
• Personal characteristics such as age, gender, social class and family standing are vitally important
• Strong boundaries: insiders who belong vs outsiders
• Long-term relationships
• Entertaining and social protocol
• Decisions and activities focus around personal face-to-face relationships, often around a central person who has authority

An example of a high context environment would be the family.

Low context implies that people typically have many connections but of a shorter duration or for some specific reason. Cultural behaviours and beliefs may need to be spelled out explicitly so that those coming into a low context environment know how to behave. Therefore tasks are more important than relationships. Low context can be identified by looking for the following pointers:

• Rule orientated, people play by external rules
• Knowledge is more often transferable
• Separation of professional and personal life due to allegiance to career and compartmentalism of private and professional lives
• Personal performance is more important than relationships and contacts
• Few personal characteristics of people are catered to
• Short-term relationships
• Legal approach to business Task-centred. Decisions and activities focus around what needs to be done, division of responsibilities

An example of a low context environment would be a large airport, where rules are laid out clearly.

Try to think of more examples yourself, and then in the next and last article of this series about cultural diversity we will have some fun.

In Part 4 of this series I will pose you a number of scenarios in our Culture Quiz, and you will have to guess where (in which country) you might be likely to encounter the behaviours described, and the winner .... but let's talk about this in a few months time.

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