Reflective Log

Hofstede’s 4 dimensions
Power distance: Society can accept and expect that power is distributed unequally in the organizations and institutions. Power distance has different between large and small. People with large power distance will great acceptance of unequal power, but people with a small power distance want power to be shared equally. Some Asian countries are large power distance and western countries are small power distance.
Uncertainty Avoidance: When a society has threat from ambiguous and uncertain situations, they try to through providing a safe job, setting up more formal rules and beveling experts’ assessment to avoid uncertain situations. Using weak or strong to describe uncertainty avoidance. Strong uncertainty avoidance is characterized by intolerance for behaviours and ideas that deviate from the norm.
Collectivism vs Individualism: The extent to which people define themselves as autonomous individuals or members of groups. An individualist society is a loose organization of social structure. People just care about themselves and their immediate families. Collectivism societies are characterized by a strict social structure. People have their own group and want to get help from group, at same time members put emphasis on groups and be loyal to group.
Femininity vs Masculinity: The distribution of emotional roles between the genders. A masculine society has social values such as competitiveness, assertiveness, self-confident materialism, ambition and power. A feminine society has different social values such as nurturing sympathy for the disadvantages, quality of life, friendship and harmonious environment.
Time orientation: First called “Confucian dynamism”, it describes societies’ time horizon.
Long term oriented societies attach more importance to the future. They foster pragmatic values oriented towards rewards, including persistence, saving and capacity for adaptation. In short term oriented societies, values promoted are related to the past and the present, including steadiness, respect for tradition, preservation of one’s face, reciprocation and fulfilling social obligations.
Trompenaars’ 7 fundamental dimensions
Relationship with other people
Universalism vs. particularism: describes how person judge other people’s behavior. The universalism believe what is right is always right for everybody in every situation. People strict follow the rules. They always fair everyone is equal no matter family, friends or strange and don’t rely on relationship. The particularism believe what is right in one situation may not be right in another. Everyone is treated as unique. People in such societies treat their family, friends and members of their group as best they can.
Collectivism vs individualism: This is almost congruent compare to Hofstede’s dimension. People work with group or individual. People in collectivism culture believe that the group is more important than the individual. The group provides help and safety, in exchange for loyalty. The group always comes before the individual. People in individualism culture believe in personal freedom and achievement. They believe that you make your own decisions, and that you must take care of yourself.
Neutral vs. affective: This is about people how to express their feelings. In a neutral culture, people make a great effort to control their emotions. Reason influences their actions far more than their feelings. People don't reveal what they're thinking or how they're feeling. The emotions they show are often need others to guess. In an affective culture, people want to find ways to express their emotions, even spontaneously at work. In these cultures, it's welcome and accepted to show emotion.
Diffuse vs. specific: This is talk about how people separate their private and working lives and expressed at the level of an individual affected by a particular situation or action. People who live in specific culture are more open in the public space but very closed in the private one. They can separate their life into different fields and each field does not have any connect. People who live in diffuse culture are more closed in public space but are very open in private space. They connect every field in their life, so each field has relationship with others. For them that everything is personal.
Achievement vs. ascription: whether judge an individual performance results from his religion, origin, sex or age. In achievement cultures, respect someone is based on his or her knowledge and skills. These cultures value performance, no matter who you are. In ascription cultures, people believe that you should be valued for who you are. Power, title, and position matter in these cultures and these roles define behavior.
Relationship to time
Monochronic vs. polychromic: How people in different cultures manage time. Polychromic time management events have a past, present and future, which is interrelated, so that ideas about the future and memories of the past shape present action. People in polychromic culture often work on several projects at once, and view plans and commitments as flexible. People in monochronic culture place a high value on punctuality, planning and staying on schedule. It is rude for them to be few minutes late because the whole day’s schedule is affected.
Relationship with nature
Inner- directed vs. outer-directed: we control our environment or are we controlled by it. The first of these orientations is called Inner- directed. People believe that they can control nature or their environment to achieve goals. This includes how they work with teams and within organizations. The second is outer-directed. People believe that nature, or their environment, controls them. They must work with their environment to achieve goals. At work or in relationships, they focus their actions on others, and they avoid conflict where possible. People often need reassurance that they're doing a good job.

I was come to Canada two years ago. This is my first time go aboard. I’m born in China and grow up in China. Before I came to Canada, I didn’t really know the culture in North America. When I came to Canada in first year, I live in a homestay with an elderly couple in Sarnia. I learned a lot of different between Chinese culture and Canadian culture. First, in China, you can’t call people name directly if they elder than you, especially same age or older than my parents，but when I talk to my homestay, I can call them name even they elder than my parents. This is a power distance. In China, youth should respect older. Children must respect their parents and follow parents’ rule. In Canada, everyone is equal, no matters how old are you, parents and children should be treated equal to each other.
Second, A few days before I leave Sarnia, I ate dinner with my homestay at restaurant, I found something interesting. My homestay told me they will pay the dinner for me because I am going to leave. This dinner is a farewell dinner. They invited their son and daughter joins the dinner too. I think my homestay will pay the bill for this dinner. However, when we finished dinner, they just separate bill and their son and daughter pay their own bill. It is surprised me. When we have meal get together China is a collectivism culture. We more focus on group. In China, if a family goes to restaurant, it must be one person pay the bill for whole family because we are family, like a group and we don’t need to separate bill. Canada is an individualism culture. Everyone is independent, even between parents and children, everything will be separate.
Ultimately, I noticed North American always open gift immediately when someone give it to them. First time I noticed that was my homestay’s birthday. After dinner, I gave my gift to my homestay. She is so happy and open gifts one by one. She told me she should open each gift and shows it to everyone after dinner. This is very different in China. In China, it is better open your gifts when you go back to home or find some private place to open gift. We think gifts are personal stuff. Person who give you gift also don’t want to you open gift in public, it is private as well. In addition, even if you really don’t like that gift, we still tell our friends we like it or that’s so nice, because if we said I don’t like it, friend will feel you disrespect his or her. On the contrary, North American people, they can tell the truth if they don’t like it. This is about neutral or affective theory. Chinese people don’t like express their feeling directly, so China is a neutral culture. Canadian people will express their feeling directly and of course Canada is an affective culture. When you give suggestion to Chinese people, you should use euphemistic words and can’t direct tell them something have mistake. For Canadian people, they will guess what Chinese real feeling and give advice carefully.
From this course I learn a lot about culture. Different people have different background and group up in different culture environment. The most important theory I learned was how to communicate with people who come from different countries. Nonverbal communication is especially important. If I doing business or work with people from different countries in the future, I think I will have nonverbal communication many times, like gesture, eye contact. Using right nonverbal communication method can show you are a polite person and respect other countries culture. It also shows to your partners that you good faith and really wants to work with them. However, if I made mistake in meeting or negotiations about nonverbal communication, it will be rude for your partners, even loss a good opportunity for business.
In my opinion, for this course, we can have more role play or play some games about different countries and theories. It will be more interesting and easy for students understand different culture.