Page 423 - Cultures and Organizations

388 IMPLICATIONS

ing. It usually confirms each group in its own identity. Members of the
other group are perceived not as individuals but rather in a stereotyped
fashion: all Chinese look alike; all Scots are stingy. As compared with the
heterostereotypes about members of the other group, auto stereotypes are fos-
tered about members of one’s own group. Such stereotypes will even affect
the perception of actual events: if a member of one’s own group attacks a
member of the other group, one may be convinced (“I saw it with my own
eyes”) that it was the other way around.
As we saw in Chapter 4, the majority of people in the world live in
collectivist societies, in which, throughout their lives, people remain mem-
bers of tight in-groups that provide them with protection in exchange
for loyalty. In such a society, groups with different cultural backgrounds
are out-groups to an even greater extent than out-groups from their own
culture. Integration across cultural dividing lines in collectivist societies

is even more difficult to obtain than in individualist societies. This is the
major problem of many decolonized nations, such as those of Africa in
which national borders inherited from the colonial period in no way respect
ethnic and cultural dividing lines.
Establishing true integration among members of culturally different
groups requires environments in which these people can meet and mix
as equals. Sports clubs, universities, work organizations, and armies can
assume this role. Some ethnic group cultures produce people with specifi c
skills, such as sailors or traders, and such skills can become the basis for
their integration in a larger society.

Language and Humor

In most intercultural encounters the parties also speak different native

languages. Throughout history this problem has been resolved by the use
of trade languages such as Malay, Swahili or, more and more, derivations
from English. Trade languages are pidgin forms of original languages,
and the trade language of the modern world can be considered a form
of business pidgin English. Language differences contribute to cultural
mis perceptions. In an international training program within IBM, train-
ers used to rate participants’ future career potential. A follow-up study of
actual careers during a period of up to eight years afterward showed that
the trainers had consistently overestimated participants whose native lan-
guage was English (the course language) and underestimated those whose