The Human Condition And Intercultural Management

Table of Contents

Prelude

Origins of Culture

The Cultural State of Man and the World

The Dynamic of Consciousness behind Cultural Processes

Conquest and Ownership of and Leadership from the Innermost Centre

Towards a Transcultural Frame of Mind

The Dawn of an Intercultural Metascience
An Epistemological Blue Print for 360° Transcultural Synergy

Global Culture Systems Analysis: Sustainability and Accountability

The Integration of Intercultural and Transcultural Interfacing Perspectives

A Universalism of Ethics

Third Millennium Axiology

A Universalism of Ethics continued

Postlude

Bibliography

Prelude

What man calls culture is but variations

of the symphony of life.

Its diverse keys, modulations and

instrumentation

can only be understood with reference to the

theme of the symphony of life.

To understand it in its totality the spirit of a

virtuoso or composer is required

who understands the symphony as a whole

and can therefore creatively improvise on it

and conduct human diversity with the baton

of his gift of insight harmoniously.

The charisma of a wholistic understanding

is similarly the prerequisite for managing

interrelated human themes of life as a whole.

Copyright © Gebhard Deißler 2011

Origins of Culture

The term CULTURE is etymologically derived from the Latin root word CULTURA. This Latin term means “tilling the soil”. The word CULT has the same Latin origin. While the modern word culture refers to the refinement of the human mind and spirit through art and science, aimed at the development and cultivation of civilized and sophisticated conduct, its use in social anthropology refers to the “collective mental programming” of diverse cultural groups. This definition is based on G. Hofstede, the Dutch pioneer of modern intercultural research. It is one of some two hundred definitions of the term and it essentially deals with differences among humans. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner therefore aptly refer to it as “patterns of difference” with regard to their diverse approaches to “problem solving and dilemma resolution”. The root word CULTURA, however, suggests the following interrelated variables:

1. Man
2. The Soil
3. The Cult
4. Human Conduct

These components seem to be implied by the Latin term CULTURA. Therefore it covers the totality of human relationships and their variation among different groups of people such as

1. Those with the physical environment
2. Those with the metaphysical environment
3. Those with the human environment and
4. Those with oneself

So culture is essentially about human relationships. Life is relationship, within and between organisms in connection to their overall environment and culture studies look at life from a relationship angle. As the physical and psychological relational environment varies across time and space, with climate, food, topography, religious ethnic and other differences among the diverse human groups, they have also developed differing relational profiles. And with man’s spreading across the entire earth the diverse relational patterns have been steadily increasing. What we call culture is therefore the sum total of relational variables. What results are variable cultural profiles of diverse cultural groups in their respective locations. These cultural profiles sum up cultural conditioning, which is above all about adaptation in the best possible way, for the sake of human survival and its enhancement, with regard to the major relational determinants of life. Culture is a life science and as the living environment differs in time and space cultures have to adapt to those specific differences in order to optimize their conditions and chances of survival and its enhancement.

Depending on where human beings are born and grow up they will receive different information about the best possible way to adapt relationally. This information is passed on transgenerationally. The relational environment reinforces it more and more, so that after generations culture has become the key reference for the identity of the members of a given cultural group in a particular cultural space with its specific relational history.

Culture has changed from a means for assuring and enhancing survival to a set of absolute value preferences that now play the dominant role in peoples life, where it provides order, predictability, a set of criteria for decision making and identity; a reference frame for problem solving in the diverse spheres of life. It is therefore an invisible script recorded in the collective subconscious that guides human relational matters from the cradle to the grave.

Life is the relationship within and between interrelated systems of relationship. As life is characterized by relationship most existential issues are about relationship as well. That applies to the joys as well as to the pains of life.

Among individuals and groups with identical or similar conditioning, profiles and scripts, assumptions, expectations about and actual behavior, relationships are likely to be more predictable and less fraught with uncertainty and the relational stress that accompanies uncertain relationships therefore decreases. Unpredictable relationships unsettle the mind and its peace in the same way as predictable relationships based on identical of similar cultural profiles reinforce that peace of mind. It does not involve any problem solving due to the uncertainty about relationship associated with greater cultural distance.

The primacy of relationships in man’s affairs has been diagnosed very early in his evolution. And according to his state of insight and evolution he has designed different models of human relationships. The relational question and its ordering through its reconfiguration has been the object of all revolutions as well as the religions. And one has been trying to establish new social orders by means in line with man’s evolution ranging from naked power and violence via various forms of social conditioning to democratic and educational means in the socially more advanced cultures of our days.

The biological, physical, organic as well as inorganic world, in fact the entire known universe, of which the social world is a part of, is characterized by internal and external relationships. Social scientists have, aware of this fact, been trying to identify the parameters that seem to determine relationships. In biology and physics there are specific parameters which have been found empirically in the history of those sciences. They look outward at the material world has been privileged for millennia. Only once the most elementary external conditions of survival were assured, man turned his analytical gaze at himself in order to identify categories that determine specifically human relational behaviour in the social domain. Due to the priority of survival there is a discrepancy in the development of technical and social intelligence. That is man’s epistemological heritage.

The social scholars that pioneered modern intercultural research in the second half of the 20th century benefitted from the entire edifice of human social and religious thought. They were simply extracting what they considered the key variables and tried to support it statistically for business purposes. Obviously, life being determined by 360° complex internal-external relationships in all its manifestations, this business-minded simplification of complex, wholistic and dynamic matters may have a price with regard its unconditional validity and usability.

The problem arises on the basis of what is specific of all life which is, as we have seen, relationships. Yet, the isolation of the dimensions of cultural difference along with their business orientation violates the law of life which is of relational nature par excellence. It is deprived of its holistic organicity and is therefore not representative of life. When a cat has been cut in two, it no longer is a cat, it is no longer life, while it may still meet certain physical and chemical requirements of life. Our intercultural research is comparable to a social autopsy and does not carry the life force required for the management of vital, living relational issues. It is an autopsy because it results from a fragmentation of life. And the fragments do not carry life as little as the parts of the cat carry life. Intercultural research is based on a social autopsy. It may look coherent as the parts of the cat may scientifically also appear absolutely coherent. But the data obtained from the parts of the dead cat cannot be used for its revitalization and only conditionally for the healing of the living cat as little as the data of the social autopsy can be used for the management of existential vital social phenomena, cultural and beyond.

The business-determined reduction and the culturally conditioned reduction to a set of some presumably relevant categories frozen into fixed abstractions has no life and can therefore give no life either. Yet an alternative approach is challenging, because it requires a human mind with a much wider horizon, willing to go beyond a fashionable quick business fix made possible by quantitative social research approaches. State-of-the-art intercultural research shares these methods. It is dead cat interculturalism. And if the same operations are replicated on diverse cats the same principle still applies, irrespective of the assumed validation of the research by its replication. It cannot guide living cultural phenomena to their solution. Frozen, fragmentary and deficitary residues of real life in its interconnected internal-external relatedness are not representative of life, cultural or other.

To revitalize intercultural assumptions the definition of life – as far as this is humanly possible – as internal-external interconnected wholeness has to be met.

By increasing the parameters one may produce the illusion of greater wholeness as one may have the illusive impression of revitalizing a dead cat by reconfiguring its parts. They are no longer internally nor externally related. But life precedes its parts and it cannot be engineered bottom to top. The living cultural reality cannot be engineered either by assembling its supposed, arbitrary and relative parts.

Culture as a phenomenon of life – as life per se – precedes its manifestation as parts of a whole. The question therefore arises whether there is any other approach at all possible than working from the social autopsy perspective. That would require an investigation into the source of social life and to have oneself carried by the flow of social life from its supposed source and to navigate cultures and cultural problem solving from there.

So, what is the source of social life? If we cannot identify it, we work with aspects of life that may no more incarnate life and therefore not be able to solve vital problems. Dead problems are no longer problems and do not require a solution except the understanding that they are beyond solution. What is the source of life? Can one know it? We are aware of our experience of life, physical and mental. We have more or less acute consciousness of life as it unfolds and sustains itself. So we have an overall awareness, a consciousness which experiences social, physical and psychological life as a whole. An integrative consciousness presides over and integrates all social and physical experience. This consciousness along with the sensory data of life and living processes are an approximation to live itself which transcends its experience. As long as it remains whole at the source and at the consciousness level it keeps its integrity. It maintains a self-regulating dynamic. It remains whole as long as the mind does not interfere with it and intervenes in its natural flow and the holistic consciousness thereof. As soon as there is intervention the integrity is no longer there.

As long as one works against the background of interrelatedness with the wholeness of life one is carried by its stream and does not lose its life enabling and sustaining quality. The problems encountered are solved through its resourcefulness form its source. When a disconnection occurs the source with its resourcefulness can no longer do its integrative work. When we prioritize a construct of the mind for example we get disconnected from the source and the flow of life. When interconnectedness ends the vital energy problem resolution is not there. The problem may be described and understood but it cannot be solved sustainably. When the connection to the source is maintained its mental artifacts are integratable through the source from which they emerge. The source ensures that the cat is not cut into pieces. As long as this is ensured the problem cannot get disconnected from the source and remains soluble and integratable. With the disconnection form the source, the a-priory life dies and the forms of the cat become a problem because they cannot be enlivened and solved. The solution is life. The problem is its absence. Connection to the source is life, disconnection is dead, a problem beyond solution. The work with the forms of life is often at a dead angle to life itself. And the more one focuses on the form the more life itself eludes. The parts of the cat and the mental socio-cultural constructs are similar in the sense that they are devitalized. The cat cannot be reengineered to life and similarly the socio-cultural constructs. They remain in a world where problem solving life cannot flow because they have occurred as an irreversible consequence of their being severed from the flow and no river can be made to flow backward uphill – as a rule – due to the law of gravity. Similarly the flow of consciousness and life are irreversible. One must let the parts go and restart with the wholeness of life and not let it slip out of awareness, for then the disconnection occurs and with it the non-relatedness, the lack of flow which is the dead cat phenomenon.

Similarly interculturalism, the disconnected and devitalized dimensional interculturalism, is a dead corpse which cannot be enlivened. But if one starts with the oneness and wholeness of the source of consciousness of life as close as one can get to it and remains in the awareness of its source and flow one can use dimensionalized flow of cultural life as branches of the river of life. And then the branches and arms of it are no dead waters. So, our new interculturalism needs to be planted by the waters of life. There alone it generates a cultural energy that can be preventative, problem solving and integrative due to its connection to the source which is the actual cause and therefore the cure for any cultural situation.

To sum up, the parts of the dead cat are comparable to the dimensions of cultural difference; their aggregated clusters are a quantitative change but not one in quality. The living cat with uniqueness with regard to flexibility and versatility, enabled by the flow of life can be likened to an approach to culture from the perspective of the wholeness and the flow of life from its source as one can approach it in consciousness. This endless resource is the regulator and solver of all cultural issues from the integrative resourcefulness of its origin. It casts off the disconnected dead cultural waves of dead waters and replaces them by the interconnected solution of and to the spring of living water.

The Cultural State of Man and the World

Neither church, nor state, nor science, nor the educational system seem to be able to solve human problems apart from more technical issues. The source problem of man himself remains insoluble, because man’s animal nature is unmanageable by any mental approach. He returns to his millennia old behavioural pattern after regular illusions of a fundamental change. He is caught in a maze of a “programming” of his own nature and his own making individually and collectively. One can observe this if one has a look at the history of the world and of cultures which is an endless spiral between peace and conflict that increases in intensity despite all human efforts to the contrary. And the battle ground may be transferred from hot war to various types of cold war, economic, social etc., but the principle of the cyclical conflict pattern seems to remain irreversible. And at the individual level the same battles are also raging unchangeably.

If there is any programming within human nature at all, it is this fact, connected to human nature and his seeming inability to change it sustainably. This universal conditioning of man is universally reinforced as soon as the young person enters the web of socialization to be caught in it, because the guides in the diverse institutional environments subconsciously and consciously transmit their competitive, inhuman nature of the universal conditioning of man. They cannot change and “reeducate” it because they have not been “reeducated” themselves and one can only give what one has. That roundabout is perpetuated from generation to generation without a perspective of stopping it. Man’s nature and the seeming impossibility to change it are the true conditioning, the true programming. It is cynical to reduce human conditioning to the culturally modulated cosmetics of conditioning while the fundamental conditioning is not addressed. Psychological man walks about naked – completely bare of human characteristics – while one discusses cultural fashions here and there. Whatever the fashion en vogue in whatever place, man will always tear it to pieces and return to his naked state of a psychological savage physically and mentally, grossly or more subtly. The cultural modulations are fairly insignificant in the face of an all engulfing ocean of his nature that knows neither identity nor integrity but simply the law of an all devouring program of all shapes and forms of cultural and other waves in the perennial abysmal sea of its primary nature.

The nature of man and the nature of culture are irreconcilable, because man’s nature cannot be conditioned. It is the ultimate conditioner of life as a whole which cannot be relativized by any institution or artifact until a change occurs in the fundamental nature, a revolution that stops and progressively reverses the universal nature of man - with regard to his destructive tendencies - of whatever cultural background. No revolutionary, no philosopher, no scientist or politician, nor even the founders of religions and religious systems since the dawn mankind, have been able to change anything about this untamable logic except perhaps perceiving it and saying “do not do this”.

As the more fundamental constitutional mental software seems to be relatively unchangeable history keeps repeating. No analysis, scientific or ethical, has so far been achieving a time enduring sustainable change. If you ask me to specify these more fundamental tendencies with their torpedo potential, I will answer by a symbolical example: I just heard in the news that the Pakistani Minister for Religious Minorities has been shot in his pursuit of an amendment of the law on blasphemy. In an interview he gave in Castelgandolfo in September of the past year he stated that the remedy for fanaticism was a “change of the heart”. And that is the positive driving force that can conquer the restraining forces in force field analysis terms. He wanted to promote a more tolerant policy towards religious minorities, peaceful coexsistence… This shows how even any attempt to improve on negative driving forces like fanaticism will be punished and tighten the straitjacket of those forces. It also shows that the problem of over-identification is an important negative driving force which results in all sorts of individual and social havoc. And yet, due to the duality in which the human architecture seems to be cast, strong identification positively channeled towards humane finalities may also lead to outstanding performance of the positive kind.

The problem of the ego and identification may have a neurophysiologic basis and mechanism as the cardiologist and scholar Dr. Th. Brosse has hypothesized. Due to the biological substratum of such phenomena they may therefore not easily be manageable mentally and analytically alone. A change of the heart, as the Minister stated, seems to play a key role. The integration of the mind and the heart can lead further as the heart can encompass the sacredness and wholeness of the infinitely diverse interrelated world and integrate the dualistic mental constructs. Rather than giving too much attention to negativity which all humans are intuitively aware of as well as of the good, which is also part of the most fundamental and universal endowment of man - although it may be culturally coloured – I rather would like to point to the six stages of psychological evolution, located in the Transcultural Profiler, p. 19, at levels D 4 Ethics 1-6 and Level D 5 Evolution which chart the development towards non-destructive attitudinal and behavioural patterns of the higher integrative dimensions of the psychological-architectural metaphor. On reaching the universal stage of psychological evolution the constraining psychological forces have been superseded by the constructive driving forces which also speed up the progress on the intercultural development model from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism and beyond. Allocentric and altruistic attitudes of the Level D 4 Ethics provide their own thrust to evolution, so that man can, based on his divine gift of discernment of good and evil, make the right decision towards ethical and cultural development, which represent the complementary two sides of the same coin and continuously make all necessary efforts - in spite of human weakness, which also is part the fundamentals referred to which may impede his efforts - to conquer the duality inherent in his fundamental endowment, with the help and grace of his Creator one is tempted to add in the light of such formidable enemies that need to be tackled and integrated.

Cambridge scholar and culture specialist Charles Hampden-Turner seems to subsume this discussion in a subordinate clause centered on “moral evolution”. The scientifically sound and practically relevant systematization of the issue seems to transcend scholarliness. All one can do is to point things out and chart culture-contingent paths of development to integrate fundamental human nature that is culturally modulated. The two are complementary programming and should be looked at in their interactivity. Consciousness as charted in the Profiler can integrate the two based on a multidimensionally derived logic. The integrative function of the levels/dimensions of the cupola and lantern of the architectural model of the psychological infrastructure play a role in the process.

Man is the product of millions of years of evolution and conditioning by its own standards which cannot be reconditioned in centuries, not even millennia. Sticking to cosmetics of conditioning is therefore cynical in the face of the fundamental conditioning and bypasses the human question altogether by focusing on trivialities which will be relativized by his nature whatever the cultural make-up that a group has put on its social face to hide its state of nakedness – the irreversible fundamental conditioning that rages under the cultural apparel, while intercultural scientists are not able to lift the veil of true conditioning and are therefore caught in superficialities that have no permanence and little consequence in view of a core cultural change management that can bring longed for peace to humanity, which is closer to the positive pole of that human conditioning – the actual condition humane – if one may consider the primary conditioning underlying cultural conditioning as a continuum from destructive to constructive motives and patterns.

An intercultural approach that ignores the totality of conditioning cannot pretend to study human conditioning thoroughly if it disregards the most fundamental perennial form of it. It focuses on a false problem. And false problems are not soluble because only real problems have real solutions. False problems have only false solutions. The intercultural problem largely is a false problem with false solutions. Therefore it tends to exacerbate the problem it pretends to solve, i. e. the human relational challenge. The instant coffee, quick fix business-driven quantitative, rather than qualitative interculturalism is unethical because it produces business solutions at the expense of deeper cultural solutions to the impact of perennial human conditioning. The required depth transcends the earnestness and the human commitment of a limited approach as it would reveal that its own motives are those very motives which are maybe part of the primary conditioning that causes and exacerbates the arduous human travail with its own nature. Is the acclaimed culture guru fashion a misleading fad, similar to Ivan Illic’s medical nemesis that similarly produces the problem which it pretends to solve. Is this sort of interculturalism challenging a cultural nemesis, because it pretends to a pseudoscientific universalism that is not representative of the actual vital problem of human conditioning in its entirety? Why are these things not more clearly dealt with by the scholars in question, at least by formulating the deeper questions in view of more fundamental answers and therefore more effective solutions to the problem of human conditioning without becoming Jack of all scientific trades?

If one removes the universal programming or conditioning from the cultural through analysis, the latter reveals its cosmetic nature without substantive relevance because it is not the real driving force but only a channel through which the actual forces find an outlet that provides a colouring and a peripheral shaping of more fundamental forces of human nature. One confounds the source with the conduits of that source and one ignores the nature of the primary conditioning which seems to cause the actual human condition.

As long as we cannot put civilizing clothes on naked man, metaphorically speaking, his cultural apparel is a mere carnival without consequence, a sham. If man finds a way of clothing his psychological nakedness the cultural apparel will reveal its true nature of a peripheral apparel.

This dichotomy between superficial cultural waves and the understanding of the timeless human undercurrents again require holistic understanding in view of a sustainable solution of man’s state of conditioning with its consequences.

First and foremost a cultural understanding and reengineering of cultural man requires a perceptual integration of the peripheral and the fundamental nature and conditioning of man. They have to be interconnected and interrelated. For in their actual state of an intercultural disconnect of peripheral and fundamental cultural man, the peripheral cultural and intercultural approaches remain as inconsequential for human affairs as the waves of the surface of the ocean are for the ocean itself. It is necessary to interconnect the whole field in perception, observe the relationships of the parts and define the priorities for a problem solving intervention.

Cultural diversity is dwarfed if one connects it to and integrates it in the whole field of human culture, the continuum of the socio-cultural and universal cultural man. Intercultural approaches reveal their superficial cosmetic nature and true culture appears as the timeless programming of human nature. That is the more fundamental human culture in the sense of a seemingly inexorable programming or software suggested by a critical historical analysis. In the light of a more differentiated understanding of human conditioning as a source of human behavior one might therefore proceed to a redefinition and reformulation of dimensions of cultural difference to make it more complete and thereby more effective for international management (which is also a part that requires integration in a wider framework) and beyond this application of choice of intercultural management research.

State-of-the-art intercultural differences should therefore be complemented by deeper layers of human dimensions of difference that define his more fundamental nature. As the millennia old conditioning is hardly changeable in the short term unless there is an active awareness with its allied fundamental quantum cultural effect one can nonetheless define categories that describe the range of his fundamental tendencies as well as the means to manage them. The latter I have attempted longer ago already in the shape of a superordinate set of variables such as evolution and ethics that modulate the expression of cultural value preferences. And beyond that one can trace the source of all human behaviour to its root in consciousness as an ultimate wellspring of human culture. On reaching the source one can look at the downstream behaviour of the flow of the source and intervene in it by correcting the deviation of consciousness into counterproductive ramifications of the mind along with its culturally modulated expression. From the position at the source the entire psychological landscape can be overseen and monitored. Interculturalism confounds the modulation of conditioning with actual conditioning. Therefore it limits itself to superficiality and fundamental irrelevance.

The post-intercultural era will address the human cultural questions more comprehensively and therefore more effectively. Only the fundamental cultural layer can be said to possess a culturally quasi irreversible DNA, not the more changeable superficial culture. Only the time- transcendent programming, rather than its time-space relative colouring can metaphorically be conceptualized as a DNA. The supreme cultural DNA is life itself with its two arms of its biological nature and consciousness nature which may in turn be considered an interconnected, complementary whole. The tree of diversification goes on from there as the flow of life descends downstream.

On its itinerary, as a child away from home, it does no longer have the care of the mother of integrative source consciousness and is victimized by numerous perils on its way through that which it encounters which are but the co-created artifacts with other rivers of involving movements of consciousness. When it gets lost in that maze the only salvation consists in reconnecting to the mother of consciousness, the source itself and to redefine and readjust its trajectory. Without this reconnection any cultural and psychological work remains transient.

That is what the true religious leaders have been trying to do and have been dying for: to reconnect man to the source and panacea of man’s woes and thereby realizing the actual meaning of religion, whose root meaning is to reconnect, i. e. to reconnect to the one source, because this is by definition the key to the many phenomena in which the relational issues and problems arise.

The three levels of relatedness impacting sustainable management of human relationships intercultural and beyond have been interrelated by me und the governing principle there of identified. This monitoring from the source can diagnose the deficits and map the path for culture - change - management of a fundamental nature from the root. It involves the following three interrelated levels of perception and analysis.

1. The Source
2. Dimensions of universal human difference
3. Dimensions of cultural difference

Diversity is nothing but the diversification of the one life and the one consciousness. As soon as the ONE is reactualized from its diverse potentialities they are reintegrated. Understanding the one with its interplay with the many is required. Technically it can be called a potentialization – actualization principle between the one and its diverse manifestations. I have modeled this existential micro-macrocosmic phenomenon in which cultural phenomena are logically embedded in the shape and form of the transcultural profiler that follows and which is subsequently explained by a detailed and a more interpretative reading of it:

THE TRANSCULTURAL PROFILER

OR

DOME 12 D TRANSCULTURAL MANAGEMENT MODEL

OR

12 OCTAVES TRANSCULTURAL MANAGEMENT MODEL

illustration not visible in this excerpt

LEGEND OF THE TRANSCULTRAL PROFILER

D1

Cosmics: The Cosmic environment interconnection. The biological and mental roots of life.

D2

Noetics: The highest psychological control, subordination and integration function.

D3

Operationalization: (Potentialization) – Actualization process

D4

Ethics: Altruistic-allocentric, sustainable approach that thinks and acts in terms of each players long-term interests.

D5

Evolution: Phylogenetic development stages 1-6/Intercultural Development stages 7-12

1 sensory level: human developmental stage of perception
2 active level: human developmental stage of action
3 affective level: human developmental stage of affection
4 analytic intellectual level: human developmental stage of the intellect
5 synthetic intellectual level: human developmental stage of the Ego and the social group
6 universal level: human developmental stage that goes beyond Ego and synthesis
7 stage 1 denial: unable to identify cultural differences
8 stage 2 defence: recognition of cultural differences but tendency to evaluate other cultures negatively to one’s own
9 stage 3 minimization: recognition of superficial differences (objective culture) such as customs and habits, while holding the view that all cultures are essentially the same
10 stage 4 acceptance: Recognition and appreciation of cultural differences in behavior and values; considering them as logical and coherent solutions in different contexts.
11 stage 5 adaptation: development of communicationskills that facilitate intercultural communication; cybernetic thinking
12 stage 6 integration: internalization of abicultural or multicultural perspective; intercultural facilitator. (section based on Milton Bennett and Dr. Thérèse Brosse).

D6

ICP The Individual culture profile: Individualization of one's mental software by these variables

1 family
2 religion
3 education
4 language
5 profession
6 class
7 gender
8 race
9 generation
10 neighbours
11 friends
12 region.

D7

NCP National Culture Profile: Acquired through primary, secondary and tertiary socialization

1 Power distance: indicates the extent to which a society accepts the unequal distribution of power in institutions and organization
2 Uncertainty avoidance: refers to a society's discomfort with uncertainty, preferring predictability and stability
3 Individualism/collectivism: reflects the extent to which people prefer to take care of themselves and their immediate families, remaining emotionally independent from groups, organizations and other collectives.
4 Masculinity/femininity: reveals the bias towards either masculine values of assertiveness, competitiveness, and materialism, or towards feminine values of nurturing and the quality of life and relationships
5 Long-term orientation: refers to the extent to which past, present or future oriented attitudes, thought patterns, bahaviours and values are preferred' (Hofstede 5D-model, source: Bartlett, Ghoshal and Birkinshaw, Transnational Management 2003)
6 Universalism-particularism: seeks to discover one's prime allegiance to rules and rule-bound classifications or to the exceptional, unique circumstances and relationships
7 Individualism-communitarianism: measures the extent to which managers see the individual employee and shareholder as paramount, their development, enrichment, and fulfillment; or to what extent the corporation, customers and the wider community should be the beneficiaries of all personal allegiances
8 Specific-diffuse: measures the tendency to analyze, reduce and break down the field of experience or to synthesize, augment, and construct patterns of experience
9 Neutral versus affective: this concern the legitimacy to show emotions while at work
10 Inner-directed - outer-directed: concerns the 'locus of control.' Is it inside each of us, or outside in our environments to which we must adapt?
11 Achieved-ascribed status: refers to whether status is conferred to people on the basis of what they have achieved or because of what they are
12 Sequential-synchronous time: has to do with whether one sees time as passing in a sequence or coming round again and again' (THT 7D-model, source: Trompenaars, Hampden-Turner, Managing People Across Cultures 2005).

D8

Communication styles profile

1 High context-low context: is information in the explicit code or is it implicit in the person?
2 Controlled-free information flow: must be informed versus are already informed
3 Monochronic-polychronic: one thing at a time versus many things at a time
4 Private space-public space: privacy and territoriality versus open space, supportive of networking
5 Concise-elaborate: not talkative versus loquacious
6 Context-centered – person-centered: relevance of speaker and role relations between the parties versus relevance of speaker and the bridging of the communication gap
7 Direct-indirect: cooperativeness. say briefly and clearly what is true, relevant and needed versus indirectness and circumlocutions
8 Affective-neutral: appropriateness versus inappropriateness of expressing emotions in a professional context
9 Abstract-concrete: refers to how concrete one can be in communicating one's ideas?
10 Private-public information space: how healthy is it to give access to personal information in building business contacts?
11 Linear-circular: how linear can you be in conveying your point?
12 Intellectual-relational: the intellectual style can confront ideas but deals with relationships delicately, whereas the relational style deals with relational issues directly, and ideas more indirectly. (Based on Hall and Hall and N. Ewington, TCO London and Univ. of Cambridge).

D9

Corporate Management Profile: further conditions the national and individual culture profile

1 Specialist job: different functional environments condition different perceptions and attitudes
2 Level of hierarchy: attitudes and bahaviours differ on the board compared to the shop floor
3 Training: the professional ethos of an engineer and a business manager differ
4 Orgnizational culture: either Hofstede's UAI-PDI matrix based classification of implicit organization models as tribe/family, pyramid, machine and market: Alternatively THT's classification as Guided Missile, Eiffel Tower, Family and Incubator organizational patterns based on the dimensions equality-hierarchy and person-task
5 Operating field: depending on the availability of resources and supplies companies may be more or less centralized and controlled
6 Scale of operations: big companies tend to be more formalized than smaller ones
7 Institutional environment: In different societies ownership is either personal or by impersonal, shifting shareholders (1-7 are based on Hickson and Pugh, International Management 2001)
8 Leadership style: exploitative autocratic, benevolent autocratic, participative, democratic (Hodgetts and Luthan, International Management) alternatively, situational-contingent leadership: directing, influencing, collaborating, delegating based on the task-relationship orientation matrix (Hersey, Blanchard, Situational Leadership)
9 Management style: factual, intuitive, analytic, and normative
10 Motivation: based on Hofstede's UAI-MAS matrix this typology exists: Achievement of self or group and esteem, achievement and belongingness, security and esteem, and security and belongingness
11 Stages of corporate development: N. Adler's multinational, global, international, transnational stages, alt. Ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric and geocentric
12 Cultural distance: CAGE analysis: cultural, administrative, geographic, economic distance.

D10

Intercultural management competencies (3-12 based entirely on International Profiler, WorldWork LTD, London 2001)

1 Altruism: altruistic behaviour as a source of creativity and integration of dilemma
2 Transcultural mindset: holistic perspective of culture and the mind
3 Openness: new thinking, welcoming strangers, acceptance
4 Flexibility: flexible behaviour, flexible judgement, learning languages
5 Personal autonomy: Inner purpose, focus on goals
6 Emotional strength: resilience, coping, spirit of adventure
7 Perceptiveness: attuned, reflected awareness
8 Listening orientation: active listening
9 Transparency: clarity of communication, exposing intentions
10 Cultural knowledge: information gathering, valuing difference
11 Influencing: rapport, range of style, sensitivity to context
12 Synergy: creating new alternatives.

D11

Trust: is the foundation of relationships in general and across cultures in particular, particularly in GBTs (Based on WorldWork Ltd, London and Univ. of Cambridge course materials)

1 Competence: trust based on the perception that team members are competent
2 Compatibility: based on common background, values, approaches, interests and objectives
3 Benevolence: based on the belief that other team members are concerned about one's welfare
4 Integrity: based on keeping promises and a moral behaviour code
5 Predictability: based on consistency over time of team members' behaviour
6 Security: absence of fear
7 Inclusion: partners are team-oriented and integrative
8 Open with information: willingness to share relevant information
9 Accessible: communication at a personal level
10 Reciprocal: mutual trust and cooperation
11 Moral responsibility: assuming responsibility for one's behaviours
12 Good intentions: ethical motivations

D12

Globalism. Planetary environment interconnection diagnostic: global compatibility check.

1 International Law
2 Biodiversity
3 Sustainability
4 Climate change impact
5 International political equilibrium
6 International economic equilibrium
7 International cultural equilibrium
8 Strategic balance
9 Genetic heritage integrity
10 Cultural ethics. Intercultural ethics. Global code of ethics.
11 Environmental compatibility
12 Resources impact

[...]