Page 447 - Cultures and Organizations

412 IMPLICATIONS

Markets for services support globalization even less than the markets
for goods. Services are by their nature personalized toward the customer.

International companies in the service field tend to leave considerable mar-
keting discretion to local management.
Any traveler in a new country can attest to the insecurity about how
to relate to personal service personnel: when to give tips, in what way, and

how much. Tipping customs differ by country; they reflect the mutual roles
of client and service person. The giving of tips stresses their inequality

(power distance) and conflicts with their independence (collectivism). 33
Chances for globalization are relatively better for industrial marketing,
the business-to-business arena where international purchasers and interna-
tional salespersons meet. Technical standards are crucial, and participation
in their establishment is a major industrial marketing instrument, in which
negotiation processes, as described previously, become paramount.

International Politics and
International Organizations

Glen Fisher, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, has written a perceptive
book called Mindsets on the role of culture in international relations. In the
introduction to the chapter titled “The Cultural Lens,” he states:

Working in international relations is a special endeavor because one has to
deal with entirely new patterns of mindsets. To the extent that they can be
identifi ed and anticipated for particular groups or even nations, some of
the mystery inherent in the conduct of “ foreign” affairs will diminish. 34

Different mind-sets must have played a role in the history of nations

as long as there have been nations. Dutch sociologist Cornelis Lammers
(1928–2009) demonstrated this fact in a case study from the early eigh-
teenth century in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium). After
the departure of the Spanish overlords, during a period of some ten years
(1706–16) the territory was occupied partly by French troops, partly by
British, and partly by Dutch. From the available records, Lammers com-
pared the different regimes established by the three different occupying
nations. The French tried to reform obsolete institutions and to estab-
lish a French style of centralized, rationalized authority. The English and