The Culture Map [Review]

It's hard not to be aware of cultural differences, and most of us need to be aware of these differences with students, colleagues and friends on a daily basis.  It's a long standing issue, often bogged down in academic definitions that seek to distinguish multiculturalism from internationalism from cross-cultural competence to inter-cultural competence and so on.   But there’s a big gap between being aware of the range of definitions, and knowing the specific values that underpin these differences in order to develop a range of strategies to draw on when these differences lead to difficulties.

Erin Meyer’s 2014 Culture Map book therefore seems to answer a very important question – the so what? question that always arises when cultural differences need to be worked through.  Drawing on a whole body of research over  decades and scores of countries, Meyer identifies eight dimensions that represent behaviours where the cultural gaps become most obvious, and plots each country’s typical cultural norms according to these dimensions.  What’s most compelling about her work is that these eight dimension are fairly subtly linked, which leads readers to a both a familiar sense of ‘yes I know that’ with the ‘ah, that non-obvious distinction explains something important’.

The eight dimensions are

• Communicating: explicit vs. implicit
• Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback
• Persuading: deductive vs. inductive
• Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
• Deciding: consensual vs. top down
• Trusting: task vs. relationship
• Disagreeing: confrontational vs. confrontation avoidance
• Scheduling: structured vs. flexible

There’s no room to go through all eight dimensions here (here’s a brief explanation but there are other possible conceptualisations here too, and I'll come back to this in a future post) but I’ll instead give two examples – the first drawing on Edmund Hall’s concept of high-context and low-context communication.  This is likely quite familiar: In low-context cultures, good communication is direct, precise, simple and clear; messages are expressed and understood at face value.  In high context cultures, by contrast,  good communication is more sophisticated, layered, nuanced, and much must be inferred by the overall situation.   It'll likely come as no surprise that US, Australia, Netherlands, Germany are are low-context cultures; and China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia are all high-context cultures.  So far, so obvious.  But where Meyer offers new insights is where another dimension is mapped across this familiar one, because it turns out that we can home in on narrower aspects of communication - such as how we communicate negative feedback - and it turns out, for example, that not all high context cultures are the same in this specific and critical dimension. 

Mapping two dimensions across each other is very revealing Source

This plot shows that while UK and Netherlands are both low context cultures, the UK is actually not so direct at all about giving negative feedback directly, tending instead to fall into a much less direct manner seemingly at odds with the notion of straight-talking.  So if might well be that Dutch and English colleagues would communicate very easily, until negative feedback is required, when the potential for confusion and bewilderment is nicely captured by Nannette Ripmeester in this graphic.

Hilarious, yes, but potentially very confusing and upsetting in reality. source

(As a cultural Brit, I blush reading this; and I also wonder what other cultures make of my mannerisms.  And this is in large part the value of the book, really).

A second example comes from looking at leadership styles.   When I initially look at this second plot, below, it's not obvious to me how top down differs from hierarchical.  To my naive mind, they are pretty much synonymous and I expect little difference between cultures in these respects.

The interplay between 'hierarchical' and 'top-down' is illuminating   source

However, once Meyer explains that the horizontal axis is about Attitudes to Authority (from egalitarian to hierarchical), and the vertical axis is about Decision Making (from consensual to top-down) things are clearer.   There is a difference between the rigidity of hierarchical structure and whether or not a boss needs to consult widely.  So in Sweden we can identify two features:

• the boss is pretty well just another employer there, with very little by way of status in the hierarchy. 
• the boss is expected to make decisions consensually, after much consultation

What's really interesting here is to compare Sweden with (i) the US, which differs only in the first respect (ii) Japan which differs only in the second respect, and (iii) China which differs in both respects.

• In the US, while the status of the boss is similar to that in Sweden (public disagreements are fine, and first name terms expected), there is no expectation of consensus, nor much effort to achieve it 
• In Japan, while the boss really is the revered Boss At the Top in terms of status (a subordinate would never disagree with the boss in public or use first-name terms), it's nevertheless a cultural requirement that decisions will be made consensually. The hierarchical structure does not mean that the Japanese boss gets to decide things unilaterally, but once a decision is made, all are expected to fall in line.    
• In China, the boss may ask for input, but it's not a negotiation seeking consensus as in Japan or Sweden, and The Decision is certainly not open to question.

(Here a great video fleshing this out a little bit).

It's not hard to see why people from different cultures might misunderstand each other - especially as there are similarities in some dimensions that might mistakenly be taken to imply similarities in others.  These slightly subtle distinctions and the (sometimes lengthy) anecdotes that accompany them are what makes this book a step up from other books exploring cultural differences; and the real payoff comes at the end of the chapter on each dimension, where the so what? question is explicitly addressed.  So what would I do if I am fairly egalitarian leading a hierarchical team?  So what would I do if my low-context communication style clashes with my boss' high-context style?  Of course there are no simple answers - context is all - but one could not find a better starting point than Meyer's observations.

Books like these are always open to the charge of oversimplification, but to my mind, Meyer avoids the trap of cultural determinism or stereotyping, and readily acknowledges the variation of individuals and sub-cultures. Cultural researcher Geert Hofstede once wrote that culture is like the software of the mind, and I think Meyer would agree that an underlying similarity of hardware is indicated by the very fact that we can identify these eight common dimensions of software; so she's very much aware of basic human commonalities and shared experiences.

Overall, a terrific, very readable book that will repay several re-readings.  Recommended!


References

• Hoftede, G., Hofstede G. J., and Minkov, M. (2010) Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind.  New York: McGraw-Hill Education
• Meyer, E. (2014) The Culture Map. Perseus Book: Public Affairs
• Molinsky, A. (2013) Global Dexterity.  Boston: Harvard Business Review Press