Culture Dimension and Influences Essay

A regular basis of people’s behavior is caused by their cultural background that impacts on the various levels of human life such as the ways of workers’ behavior during the staff meetings, how they perform reviews, how students communicate with each other, etc. Culture as a symbolic structure includes the way people dress and how they decorate houses, what holidays they celebrate. Cultural characteristics play a key role in the communication between people. Being a part of globalized world, everyone should learn how to integrate into this common world and, at the same time, how to save one’s own cultural values.

Uncertainty avoidance as a dimension of cultures indicated by Hofstede includes the way of how people consider themselves being involved in unknown situation. Wursten indicates that “the uncertainty avoidance dimension expresses the degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with certainty and ambiguity” (“Intercultural Issues in Recruitment”). Thus, everyone can consider oneself according to one’s cultural and traditional background.

This issue is many-sided and includes not only personal conflicts but also national. According to EuroAfricaCentral Network, “in essence this cultural dimension measures a country or culture’s preference for strict laws and regulations over ambiguity and risk” (“Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance etc”). One can notice that some of the countries demonstrate higher level of possibility of conflicts than others. This statement helped me to comprehend one idea. Now it is evident why some of the nations always have the conflicts, revolutions, etc., while other countries never face such problems.

Analyzing work of Rapp et al. (2011), I understood that culture is a complicated structure that involves many levels of our life and this issue is significant within the working process. The authors cite Hofstede’s idea that “uncertainty avoidance construct was calculated as a composite score of three separate factors:

1. rules orientation,
2. employment stability,
3. nervousness or stress at work” (Rapp et al., 3).

Many workers face the problems based on cultural backgrounds. In this situation, organisational culture should include the equal attitude toward all workers irrespective of gender, race, nationality, etc. Its major function is to control the working process from the position of law and human rights. Organisational climate and cultural diversity are closely related. Thus, diversity can cause the problems with the organisational climate. Tolerance should be the base of a good healthy climate within every company.

The reading material helped me to clarify that our culture can be considered as system that has an impact on various levels of our life, causing the conflicts. For instance, when I feel myself uncomfortable communicating with the representative of other nation, this happens due to different perception of the world by me and another person which has different cultural background. On the other hand, I comprehend that every conflict based on cultural background can be solved by the process of mutual sharing of information about one’s culture. It is always better to solve the conflicts by negotiations than make the situation worse trying to persuade an opponent.

Analyzing the readings, I found out that dimension of cultures is based on a statement that everyone should acknowledge that, in general, cultural differences should not be causes of conflicts and they can help people to make their own culture richer. As a multi-level structure, culture influences many sides of our life, causing our behavior at work, the way of communication, our symbols, rituals, heroes and values.

Reference List

EuroAfricaCentral Network. (n.d.). Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance etc. Web.

Rapp, J. K., Bernsrdi, R. A. & Bosco, S. M. (2011). Examining The Use of Hofstede’s Uncertainty Avoidance Construct in International Research: A 25-Year Review. International Business Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 3-15.

Wursten, H. (n.d.). Intercultural Issues in Recruitment. Web.