First Class

THE TWO MOST RELEVANT POINTS FOR ME IN CLASS

1. The wide variety definitions of CULTURE

Since I started studying international business, the term "culture" has become common and usual for my daily life.  In almost every class I have studied the different concepts of culture, its different definitions and the different perspectives on how culture can be seen and be studied.  Culture is not only about customs or how a determined group of people act but also, as Kluckhohn said, "is a patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting of a community", or as Fred E Jandt said, "a community or population sufficiently large enough to be self-sustaining to produce new generations of members without relying on outside people". Culture is also traditions, ideas, values, patterns, beliefs and behaviors that characterized a community but, although these definitions embrace pretty much what culture is, cannot fully describe the whole concept or at least give a single definition to this term.

2.  The difference between International Marketing and Intercultural Management

As seen in class, International Marketing is the development of a marketing plan dependent on cultural variables of a certain market and its consumers (behavior, preferences, values), such as enterprises like Unilever, that they use a different name for the same product in different countries, this, taking into account the cultural variables of each market they are penetrating. And Intercultural Management, which is management practices and behaviors adapted according to cultural variables of stakeholders.

HOW/ IN WHICH CIRCUMSTANCES COULD THIS BECOME RELEVANT

1.  The understanding of "culture" is extremely important in the world of business as well as in the regular daily life.  In order to succeed in a negotiation and have a better understanding of our counterpart we need to acknowledge and study the culture he/she comes from.  Doing this, will give you an advantage by approaching him/her in a right way  and you will be able to identify easily its needs and wants and also  give you an idea on how and why the counterpart is going to react or response to different situations.

Understanding the different cultures as well as your own will provide you knowledge about how to treat people, how to introduce a product to a market, how to greet people and also how to adapt more easily. 

2. Culture is involved in both marketing and management. When working with marketing, culture needs to be study from the market's perspective we are aiming at, meaning that we need to take into account the needs, wants, tastes and likes of a particular market segment in order to position and advertise well a product or a service. In management, culture is important because by understanding it you can adapt better your ways of managing the stakeholders, which will make processes, relationships and coexisting better between stakeholders.

RESEARCH QUESTION 

WHAT IS CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE?

"Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a person's capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity." (Cultural Intelligence, 2005)

"Cultural intelligence is related to emotional intelligence, but it picks up where emotional intelligence leaves off. A person with high emotional intelligence grasps what makes us human and at the same time what makes each of us different from one another. A person with high cultural intelligence can somehow tease out of a person’s or group’s behavior those features that would be true of all people and all groups, those peculiar to this person or this group, and those that are neither universal nor idiosyncratic. The vast realm that lies between those two poles is culture." (Harvard Business Review, 2004)

SOURCES

 (Ang, Van Dyne, & Koh, 2005; Earley & Ang, 2003; Earley & Mosakowski, 2005). 

Earley, P. C., & Mosakowski, E. (n.d.). Cultural Intelligence. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved July 28, 2014, from http://hbr.org/2004/10/cultural-intelligence