Page 457 - Cultures and Organizations

422 IMPLICATIONS

other than what they try to teach. Writing from extensive experience in
Hong Kong, Michael Bond has warned against using Western procedures
46
with Asian audiences. The occupational culture of the emerging profes-
sion of intercultural trainers and consultants is built on the use of Western,
mainly U.S., practices.
Using ideas from U.S. counseling expert Paul Pedersen and from

Geert’s five-dimensional model, Gert Jan has developed a method of group
training in exploring cultural variety that can be used with a wide variety
of participants and for an equally wide variety of practical applications. It
asks participants to identify with a choice of ten synthetic cultures, “pure”
culture types derived from the extremes of the dimensions described in
this book (except indulgence versus restraint, which had not yet been intro-
duced). Participants then play their culture in a simulated problem-solving
situation. They learn from their experience and develop intercultural skills
in a “safe” environment. 47
Self-instruction is also possible. A classic instrument for this purpose
is the Culture Assimilator. This is a programmed learning tool consisting of
a number of short case descriptions, each featuring an intercultural encoun-
ter in which a person from the foreign culture behaves in a particular
way. Usually four explanations are offered of this behavior. One of these is
the insider explanation by informants from the foreign culture. The three
others are naive choices by outsiders. The student picks one answer and
receives a comment explaining why the answer chosen was correct (cor-
responding to the insiders’ view) or incorrect (naive). Early culture assimi-

lators were culture-specific toward both the home and the host cultures.
They therefore were costly to make and had relatively limited distribution,
but an evaluation study showed their long-term effects to be quite positive.
Later on, a General Culture Assimilator was published, incorporating the
main common themes from the earlier specifi c ones. 48

Cultural sensitivity is subtle, and bias is always looming around the
corner. When children of Vietnamese refugees began attending regular
schools in small towns in the United States in 1976, the U.S. Offi ce of
Education issued an instruction for teachers, On Teaching the Vietnamese:

Student participation was discouraged in Vietnamese schools by liberal doses
of corporal punishment, and students were conditioned to sit rigidly and to