We’ve learned a lot this semester about cultural dimensions and in general how to interact and work with people from cultures all over the world.

One topic we haven’t touched on is conflict. Both current conflict and historical conflict can play a role in how a people act towards others. Although a culture may as a whole be summarized with certain characteristics, they may all be thrown out the window when it comes to another group they have a history with.

For example, we can discuss doing business in Africa and point to some strong economic growth and potential:

Looking at this data the prospects for doing business in Africa looks good. One could analyze the cultural dimensions for each country and come up with a game plan for how to manage a team in Africa and hopefully be successful.

However, sticking with Africa as our example, we can see that current conflicts are ongoing and a serious consideration:

 

Layering on some of the recent conflicts:

 

This is a region of the world that’s had a lot of conflict in it’s recent past. Although knowing that Angola has a power distance score of 83 is important (Hofstede), knowing that Angola recently gained independence from Portugal is also important. If you’re Portuguese, will the people of Angola have hostile feelings towards you? How about American, Cuban, or Russian citizens, as those three countries all took sides in the civil war that followed independence in 1975 (Gascoigne, 2001).

Every country in the world has a deep history and the people in that country may have prejudices that you’ll need to be aware of before traveling there. “In the real world, relations between most groups have a history; they are often influenced by complex socio-cultural factors that extend their influence over long periods of time” (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p. 182). So although a country may have a conventional attitude that will help you best guess how to interact with its citizens, knowing a little bit about the history and conflicts of a region will also be a valuable tool.

 

Bibliography

Gascoigne, B. (2001). HISTORY OF ANGOLA. Retrieved December 6th, 2015, from History World: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad33

Hofstede, G. (n.d.). What about Angola? Retrieved Dec 5th, 2015, from The Hofstede Center: http://geert-hofstede.com/angola.html

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences. New York: Routledge.