Power distance is one of the four dimensions of cultural variation identified by Hofstede. He defines it as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations (and similar systems) within a nation expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

That practically means that in countries with high power distance (Asian, African, Latin American..), the employees expect the boss to give orders and they won’t criticise his desicions or give suggestions (among other characteristics). In countries with low power distance (North America, Netherlands…), the relationship between the boss and the inferior is more equal, the superior asks for his employees opinion and they more often call them on their mistakes.

In front of this background I thought about the experiences I had when researching on Asian Websites, which I did during my internship in Taipei. Those are the features on these websites, which could have been caused by the high power distance:

• organization charts – one person on the top
• message from the CEO prominently placed
• often absence of corporate blogs or any other envolvement of employees
• almost no pictures of “real” employees (as the people behind the brand)
• …

These are a few I thought are the most obvious. I’d like to know about your experiences surfing Asian websites!

low-context vs. high-context

These are terms first used by E.T. Hall to describe an attribute of communication. In relation to this context is ‘the information that surrounds an event’ (Hall & Hall, 1990) The opposite of context is text, which is according to Hall ‘the coded explicit, transmitted part of the message’ (Hall, 1976).

To make this concept clear and accessible to you I’ll tell you a little story:
Karl from Germany is studying Chinese Culture together with Monika. When they invite their Chinese friends Ling and Nan over for dinner, Ling gives them a wrapped box. Karl takes the gift and says “Thanks”, but the moment he makes a move to unwrap it, Monika says: “Karl” and gives him a special look. Karl understands and puts the gift aside.

The text in this communication is “Thanks” and “Karl”, but the context is more interesting, because the context behind “Karl” is rather large. Monika and Karl share the same knowledge about Chinese culture, which includes the custom of Chinese to unwrap gifts only when their guests are gone, in order to hide their feelings concerning it. This is a method to protect their guest’s and their own “face“. So Monika actually reminded Karl of this principle by simply calling him by his name. A different person, which doesn’t share the context would not have been able to understand this message.
According to that cultures with high-context communication generally use less text and more context, for example Chinese or Asians. Cultures with low-context communications use more text than context.

That’s why you would expect the German website of Yahoo to have more text than the Chinese or Taiwanese one, which is not the fact. This is the contradiction I mentioned above and which threw me a curve.
Just now I was able to create a theory explaining WHY.

Since Germans are used to low-context communications they put their message across in an effective way using a certain amount of text. But Chinese are used to high-context, so since in the web, there is hardly any context, they try to make up for it by more text which leads to bigger websites than the ones of low-context cultures.

But here I have to state that this is only one possible explanation. Aside from culture which influences communication there are several factors which we shouldn’t forget. What kind of website are we dealing with here? How big is the target group they are focussing on? What characteristics does this target group have? And what goals is the company trying to achieve with the website.
I am just trying to give all this yet another angle.

To demonstrate what I mean and analyze it I picked out the website of yahoo for Taiwan and the USA.

You can clearly see that the page of Yahoo USA is offering less information.
So what did Yahoo Taiwan do differently?

• the “sign in – field” is bigger and has more options
• advertising (acer, LG and a housing project)
• less news (above acer ad) and more shopping (shoes, mobile phones, cosmetic)
• when you view the page in your browser you’ll also notice that the Taiwanese site is longer
• less icons

(to only name a few)

I asked myself: Why do they do it that way?
Obviously their customers are different. Consequently does the difference between Chinese and Americans (please excuse my generalization here) dictate the way Yahoo sets up their websites.

And in general it’s a culture difference, because culture is:

“the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning“ Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

If the members of a society use their culture as a “tool” to deal with the world, it is no wonder it should influence the design of websites online.  In the next few posts I will describe some aspects of culture, which are most influential for web design.

His book ‘The Mindful International Manager‘, which he wrote in cooperation with his friend and founder of York Associates has been published, and his other book ‘Intercultural Interaction‘ will be soon. Moreover did he mention that the conference I helped him organize in 2007 titled ‘Developing people internationally’ and which was the first by dialogin and York associates, will take place this year September 17-18 in York, UK. It will be under the title ‘High performing international teams’ and I am really proud that I was involved in this conference’s launch and I am happy that it was so successful to become a regular event.

Peter Franklin had great influence on me by sparking the interest for intercultural studies in me. I took his course ‘Intercultural Communication’ in the first semester and was so lucky to become one of his assistants afterwards. Through working with him I was able to gain grater insight in this field and get to know scholars from different countries and backgrounds. During my Vocational Training in Hong Kong I had already experienced the misunderstandings and problems, which can arise from communication between people of different cultures. That is the reason why it was amazing for me to finally understand some of the reasons for these problems and learn how to solve them.

I have the strong belief that on a global market, where a country are highly affected by the policies of the other (see recent events), global cooperation is needed and empathy for not only fellow countrymen but fellow ‘worldmen’. This causes the need for better communication and understanding between people of different cultures and this can only be achieved with acquireing intercultural competences.

This need has not yet been generally acknowledged. Although not only large corporations like Daimler, GE or Lenovo have a want for smooth communication in their culturally diverse teams, small companies who export their goods overseas have to be able to communicate effectively with their clients as well. Most of the time the cause of miscommunication is perceived as a simple lack of language ability, but content or words make up the smallest part in the communication.

So now I ask you: Do you think it’s worth investing in a consulting service on intercultural competences?