A thorough, thoughtful look at cross-cultural understanding from an experienced expatriate author.
An exploration of cultural competency and the skills that make it possible to live and work in foreign countries.
In this business book, Wittwer (Talking through Pictures, 2016, etc.) shares advice for understanding and fitting into new cultures, particularly in the context of international business relationships. The title comes from the book’s central metaphor: a monkey struggling to understand the behavior of zoo visitors outside its cage. The book examines not just how cultures differ around the world, but why, offering psychological, sociological, and ethnographic explanations of a population’s dominant behaviors. It also provides resources for responding to these behaviors while adapting to life in a new country. Wittwer’s expertise on the subject is drawn not only from his years as an international business executive, but also from his experience as a Swiss citizen who grew up in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. The text is informative and knowledgeable, drawing on anthropological and ethnographic research without getting caught up in excessive jargon. It explores some examples of cross-cultural misunderstandings at length, such as one in which an English teacher gets upset because her Arab pupils share answers to a test, while others serve as springboards to more general discussion. Wittwer has an eye for details that will specifically capture the attention of American readers: “I ate my first peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich at the age of 34 when on an expat assignment in America.” However, he also has a tendency to repeat examples, such as one regarding an African president’s favoritism toward his hometown, and linguists will take issue with his analysis of the quantity of Koyukon words for snow. But these minor shortcomings are outweighed by his competent, coherent explanations, which include resources for further reading.
A thorough, thoughtful look at cross-cultural understanding from an experienced expatriate author.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5089-3358-8
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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