Problems in cross-cultural contact: A literature review

fnlernofronol Prmted

Journal

of Inlerculrural

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Vol. 3. pp 269-313.

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PROBLEMS

0147.1767/79/030269-45%02.00/O Copyright

SC 1979 Pergamon

Press Ltd

IN CROSS-CULTURAL CONTACT: A LITERATURE REVIEW

BRUCE W. STENING The University of Western Australia ABSTRACT An examination is undertaken of literature bearing on the matter of misunderstandings between persons engaged in cross-cultural relationships. The dimensions of the problem are outlined using the following sub-headings: subjective culture and social construction of reality; intercultural communication; stereotyping, ethnocentrism, and prejudice; time factor; cultural distance; personality; and contact and attitudes. Further, a description is made of various approaches which have been adopted in investigating the problems of cross-cultural contact in international organizations. A critical analysis reveals that the most significant gaps in current knowledge of the problems are at the interpersonal level. Suggestions are made as to what research questions demand urgent attentton.

Today, to a considerably greater extent than, say, thirty years ago, large numbers of persons all around the world are engaged in relatively long-term relationships with members of cultures other than their own. This is principally a result of the development of various educational exchange programs (e.g., Spaulding & Flack, 1976) rapid post-war growth in the number and size of multinational corporations (Fayerweather, 1972; Wilkins, 1974), and an expanded role for such international organizations as the United Nations. Besides difficulties emanating from their often basic differences in attitudes and values, the ability of parties to cross-cultural relationships to relate effectively to one another is likely to be made more difficult by various problems of cross-cultural communication (Gardner, 1962). Such problems reduce the likelihood The author would hke to thank Professor Dexter Dunphy and Dr. Tohr Yamaguchi of the University of New South Wales and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent to Bruce W. Stening, Department of Management, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 6009, Australia.

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that the parties will accurately understand their differences as well as their similarities (Bass, 197 1). The objective of this paper is to review that literature which bears directly and indirectly on the matter of misunderstandings between persons engaged in cross-cultural relationships. In particular, the paper seeks to outline the dimensions of the problem as have been mapped by studies to date and to discuss the most significant remaining gaps in our knowledge of the problem. A framework has been adopted which is similar in certain respects to that employed in previous cross-cultural reviews by Brein and David (197 1) and Roberts (1970). However, the perspective taken here is broader than in the former article and narrower than in the latter. The paper is divided into three major sections. The first section comprises a review of that literature which has broadly specified the nature of the problem of cross-cultural misunderstandings. An examination of studies which have specifically given empirical attention to the problem within the context of international organizations is undertaken in the second section. Finally, in the third section, an overall analysis is made of the principal gaps in current knowledge. PROBLEM

RECOGNITION

AND SPECIFICATION

Problems in cross-cultural contact have been the subject of attention of researchers from such diverse fields as psychology, sociology and anthropology, intercultural communications, international business, and education. We are interested here in examining what factors researchers from these fields have suggested, directly or by implication, are important in creating misunderstandings between parties to intercultural relationships. This identification and specification of the problem will be carried out under several principal sub-headings of influences; though there is considerable overlap between some of the sub-categories, this scheme has been adopted to assist in comprehension of the mass of material. Subjective

Culture, Social Construction

of Reality

The potential for problems in intercultural (as contrasted intracultural) relationships is greater since cross-culturally

with there

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are often major differences in values, attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and the like; Triandis (1972) has described these features which are “a cultural group’s characteristic way of perceiving its social environment” (p. 3), as “subjective culture.” At base, the subjective culture concept impresses upon us the fact that is a socially (or even more broadly, culturally) con“reality” structed phenomenon, a point that sociology of knowledge theorists such as Berger and Luckman (1967) have been making for some time. It is now well established that each of us has his own subjective reality which even in “ordinary” intra-cultural circumstances can result in misunderstandings in our relations with others (Cantril, 1957). Of particular interest in this regard are certain studies relating cognitive similarity of individuals to the nature of their relations. Based upon foundations laid by Newcomb (1953) and Runkel (1956), several studies have been undertaken to investigate the relationship between interpersonal cognitive similarity, on the one hand, and communications effectiveness and interpersonal liking on the other (e.g., Triandis, 1959, 1960a, 1960b). Though the precise nature of these studies varied slightly, the overall conclusion to be drawn from them as a whole was that those parties to dyads who perceived their environment in a similar fashion (that is, those who were cognitively similar) perceived greater communication effectiveness and in fact achieved greater communication effectiveness than those dyads in which the two parties were cognitively dissimilar. As well, it was shown (Triandis, 1959) that in instances of cognitive similarity between supervisors and subordinates, subordinates had a significantly greater liking for their supervisor than in cases of dissimilarity. One study utilised communication similarity, defined as the similarity in the dimensions used by the dyad members in the actual process of communicating, as an independent variable with respect to communication effectiveness; in this study it was discovered that some communication could take place even when communication similarity was low, but that the greater the communication similarity in the dyad, the more effective was the communication between members of the dyad (Triandis, 1960a). Therefore, it has been clearly demonstrated that cognitive dissimilarities between individuals with the same cultural background can reduce communication effectiveness. It would seem reasonable to expect that the problem will be potentially greater in intercultural relationships where the gap in subjective cultures

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may be quite wide. A multitude of articles has dealt with these cross-cultural differences in perception (for several reviews see Triandis, 1964; Triandis, Malpass, & Davidson, 1973; Tajfel, 1969); though extensive discussion of these studies is inappropriate here, brief reference to several specific studies will serve to illustrate that problems in intercultural, interpersonal relations may stem from differences in perceived ‘reality.’ In a widely-reported study of binocular rivalry, Bagby (1957) used an instrument known as a stereoscope to present subjects simultaneously with two scenes, one culturally familiar, the other not. The subjects’ reports of what they “saw” conformed with what was culturally familiar, and in most instances the subjects made no mention of having seen the culturally unfamiliar scene. His results were highly significant. Similarly, the results obtained by Korten (1974) in a comparison of university students in Ethiopia and the United States confirm that “different cultural groups use very different systems of categories in perceiving other people” (p. 43). In describing people they knew, Ethiopian students were more likely to describe those persons in terms of “opinions and beliefs” and “interpersonal relations” than their’ American counterparts who by comparison had a higher propensity to describe in terms of “abilities and knowledge,” “cognitive-emotional style,” and “interpersonal style.” Much recent attention to culturally-related interpretations of reality has focused on differences in interpersonal structures between cultures. Particular attention has been given to the concept of cognitive differentiation with respect to roles and institutions. It has been pointed out (Foa & Foa, 1974) that cultures differ markedly in the extent to which they differentiate between roles and between institutions. Such contrasts in differentiation between cultures will potentially create communication problems as a result of “mismatching” in interpersonal, intercultural situations (Foa, Mitchell, & Fiedler, 197 1). Foa and Foa (1974) explain : The degree of differentiation among classes may differ for the sender and the receiver. If the sender differentiates more than the receiver, he activates only one or a few classes for a given message, while in the receiver’s cognition more neighbouring classes will be activated as well. The differentiation between love and hatred, for example, is stronger in the American culture. Consequently, criticism of performance does not imply personal dislike for an

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American as it does for an Arab by whom the message “you can do a better job” is decoded as “I dislike you and your work.” (p. 275)

In intercultural, interpersonal relationships, then, there is an increased likelihood that individuals will be unable to make isomorphic attributions concerning the causes and intentions of the other’s behavior (Triandis, 1977). The problems created by differences in cognitive differentiation compound the problems associated with similarity or dissimilarity in beliefs. In a study (Bochner, 1976) comparing religious role salience and differentiation in four cultures (between Pakistani Moslems, Javanese Moslems, Thai Buddhists, and Philippine Catholics) it was pointed out that: members of faith X may look askance at members of faith Y, not because the doctrines differ in content, but because religion in culture X is more salient and less differentiated from other societal structures than it is in culture Y. (P. 16)

The consequences of mismatching, it has been suggested, will often be profound, resulting most probably in “tension, dismay, anger and other emotional disturbances of the heterocultural relationships” (Foa, Mitchell, & Fiedler, 1971, p. 138). Coelho (1958) has also pointed out the disillusionment which often ensues when a person in an intercultural relationship discovers that people will not “accept things as they really are.” Empirical evidence provided by non-cross-cultural research exists (Stack & Cook, 1973) to support the general proposition that persons who differentiate in a similar way will be more effective in relating to one another than persons whose basis of differentiation is not the same. Evidence presented by Foa and Foa (1974) suggests the relationship may not be entirely straightforward and that while considerable cognitive differences will create difficulties, slight differences may actually produce certain creativity. This is not to suggest, however, that such problems created by differences in differentiation cannot be reduced. Considerable attention has been devoted to devising methods of training members of one culture to differentiate in the same way as members of another culture (e.g., Foa & Chemers, 1967). Intercultural Normally

Communication persons

are aided in understanding

another’s

social

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reality by the feedback responses they receive in face-to-face interactions. In intercultural situations, however, a variety of communication problems can reduce the effectiveness of these responses. These problems are of two types: verbal and non-verbal. In many instances there is an actual physical obstruction insofar as the parties to a relationship have different native tongues. The problem is not one solved merely by “accurate” translation; even in instances where both parties have a high degree of mutual fluency the meaning of what either says may be lost as a result of connotative and denotative differences in meanings crossculturally (D’Anglejan & Tucker, 1973). Porter (1972) has commented that, “Culture and language are inseparably intertwined” (p. 13). Such verbal communication problems may exist even when the native language of the parties is the same but where their cultures or subcultures are different: for example, in the meanings given particular words by black and white Americans (Landis, McGrew, Day, Savage, & Saral, 1976). That language does create problems in international organizations has been noted by a number of writers (e.g., Chorafas, 1969; Hildebrandt, 1973; Teague, 1968). (Despite this, it has been commented [Barrett & Bass, 19761 that the precise relationship between language fluency and performance as an expatriate has been neglected in empirical work.) The problems may be manifested in both internal and external relationships. Internally, the language problem may have a significant impact on the nature and direction of information flows (Chorafas, 1969). Externally, the expatriate may be compelled to seek most of his leisure companions from among fellow expatriates, impeding further his ability to understand the host environment. In addition to the most obvious verbal communication problems, researchers have isolated certain other problems of intercultural communication which broadly fall into a non-verbal category. Foremost in specifying the general nature of such problems has been Hall (1959), whose central contention is that much of the communication between individuals is conveyed not through the spoken language but, rather, through the silent language of behavior. Hall has devoted attention to illustrating how culturally-determined behavior with respect to such matters as time, space and work can create misunderstandings in intercultural situations where the meaning assigned to particular forms of behavior may be quite different according to each culture. The

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work of Hall and others involved in non-verbal communication research (see Duncan, 1969; Harrison, Cohen, Crouch, Genova, & Steinberg, 1972) shows that even if both parties to an intercultural relationship were entirely fluent in the other’s language, “communication” problems may well still arise. Hall, who coined the term “proxemics” to describe theories which deal with the cultural influences upon man’s use of space, has dealt at length with cross-cultural differences in the use and organization of space (Hall, 1966). He and other researchers (e.g., Little, 1968; Sommer, 1966) have shown, for example, that the appropriate social distance in differing circumstances of interpersonal face-to-face communication varies markedly from culture to culture: for instance, as a generalization, the peoples of English-speaking nations tend to reserve a close physical contact almost exclusively for intimate associations, a behavior not characteristic of, say, Arab cultures (Yousef, 1974). That non-verbal communication factors can produce adverse effects upon intercultural business relationships has been illustrated (principally by anecdote) in a number of places (e.g., Hall, 1960; Stessin, 1973; Yousef & Briggs, 1975). By virtue of their generality, however, such reports have most often ignored the possibility of subtle cultural differences in the perceived importance of non-verbal behavior. For example, commenting on the results of a small-scale experiment examining the relationship between a sample of English students and Arabs studying in England, Collett (197 1) claimed that “whereas Arabs place more emphasis on variations in certain non-verbal behaviors when assessing Englishmen, Englishmen attend more to the residual features of performance (possibly tone, manifest attitude, etc.) in evaluating their compatriots” (p. 2 14). Stereo typing, Ethnocentrism and Prejudice There is a considerable amount of evidence within the literature to suggest that many of the misunderstandings which arise in intercultural relationships are rooted in the stereotypes, prejudices and ethnocentric perspectives of the parties involved. In this subsection we examine how these phenomena may affect relationships in international organizations. Allport (1958) has described a stereotype simply as “an exaggerated belief associated with a category” (p. 187). An example

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of a stereotype would be a belief that all Jews are shrewd. The thinking effect of the stereotype is “to prevent differentiated about the concept” (p. 187); that is, characteristics are inputed to individuals purely on the basis of their membership or nonmembership of some category. The reasoning is thus of syllogistic form: “Jews are shrewd”: “Mr. Schwartz is a Jew”; “Mr. Schwartz is, therefore, shrewd.” Though a complex function of various factors, stereotyping is thus to be seen largely as a product of man’s need to categorise objects in his environment which for various reasons (such as inadequate experience) he is unable to adequately discriminate between at an individual level. The stereotypes so formed are not necessarily completely false, though frequently they are at least partially inaccurate (Harding, Proshansky, Kutner, & Chein, 1969). However, in the formation of the stereotype the areas of greatest contrast are likely to be given greatest prominence (i.e., exaggerated) in the stereotype. This is explainable in terms of Helson’s (1948) level of adaptation concept. Campbell ( 1967) has commented on this process in this way: The greater the real differences between groups on any particular custom, detail of physical appearance, or item of material culture, the more likely it is that that feature will appear in the stereotyped imagery each group has of the other. (p. 821)

It would seem logical to expect, then, that in international relationships nationality will be an important basis for stereotyping since it encompasses significant broad differences. That this is so has been affirmed in several important studies (Bochner & Perks, 197 1; Bruner & Perlmutter. 1957; Morris, 1956; Perlmutter & Shapiro, 1957). It was shown that nationality was a dominant cue in predicting the behavior of foreigners and that other characteristics were used only secondarily. Recent research (Bochner & Ohsako, 1977) has shown that even in a culturally integrated society such as Hawaii, ethnic role salience is very important. To the extent that the stereotypes used by persons in cross-cultural relationships are inaccurate or excessively simplistic they may be the source of misunderstandings between those parties at the interpersonal level. That it is, indeed, a matter of concern at a practical level in international organizations (particularly multinational corporations) has been recognized; referring to the expatriate executive, Hays (1972b) has commented that if he is

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to adequately understand the local nationals with whom he is involved he should at least be aware of the stereotypes he has of them and some conception of the stereotypes they have of his national group. As would be expected in any stereotyping situation, the greater the degree of first-hand experience gained in an intercultural relationship the less prevalent becomes the actual stereotyping (Pool, 1965). That is, the greater contact there is between the parties the more likely it is that their images of each other will move from the simple to the more complex, though the favourability of those more complex images (i.e., the affective, as contrasted with the cognitive, component of those images), as will be seen later, is a much more complicated issue (Amir, 1969). Several studies have examined the effect of first-hand communication and experience upon the favourability or unfavourability of the stereotypes held by the parties to an intercultural relationship (e.g., Triandis, 1967; Triandis & Vassiliou, 1967). Triandis and Vassiliou (1967) examined the autostereotypes of Illinois- and Athens-Americans (what they thought about their own group) and their heterostereotypes with respect to Greeks (what they thought about Greeks) as well as the autostereotypes of Athens-Greeks and their heterostereotypes with respect to Americans. It was established that the autostereotype of the Athens-Americans was more favourable than the autostereotypes of the Illinois-Ame~cans. With regard to the heterostereotypes of Americans concerning Greeks, these were more favourable for the minimum than for the maximum contact groups, while the heterostereotype of Greeks concerning Americans was more favourable for those in maximum contact with Americans than for those in minimum contact. The hypotheses developed for ex~ination in the study were presented in terms of high-status visitors working in a low-status culture. Of greatest import to the present paper is the conclusion drawn that “the unequal status contact that is typical in many international organizations has the effect of accentuating negative stereotypes” (Triandis, 1967, p. 52). In addition to those studies which have dealt with the favourability/unfavourability aspect of stereotypes, several experimental studies (Lindgren & Marrash, 1970; Lindgren & Tebcherani, 197 1) have examined the degree of intercultural insight shown in stereotyping behaviors. In the first of these studies (Lindgren &

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Marrash, 1970) contrasting self-descriptions of British and Americans were presented to a group of American, Armenian, and Arab subjects living in Lebanon. The objective of the study was to determine which groups could most accurately discriminate between the two kinds of self-descriptions, British and American; the results indicated that in order of greatest to least accurate were Americans, Armenians, and Arabs. That Americans scored best was explained by the contention that Americans could be expected to know themselves better than the other two groups could be expected to know them. It was suggested that the greater accuracy of the Armenians over the Arabs reflected the more Western-oriented outlook of the Armenians, that is, the emphathetic qualities of Armenians with respect to British and Americans. Though similar, the second study (Lindgren & Tebcherani, 1971) was concerned with examining the relationship between auto- and heterostereotypes, seeking specifically to test the hypotheses that “the heterostereotypes Arab male university students have regarding American students would correspond more to the autostereotypes of the latter group, than the heterostereotypes that Americans have for Arabs would correspond to Arab autostereotypes” (p. 176). This proposition was based on the view that Arabs, as members of a low-power group, would have more to gain by developing empathy for the Americans than would be true in reverse. The results did show that the Arabs were more empathetic than the Americans. However, the precise reasons for this are open to debate and may not necessarily be a function of the relative power of the groups, a possibility admitted by the authors themselves. Though the results of both the favourability/unfavourab~ity studies and the empathy studies are interesting to us in this review, their findings should be taken merely as suggestive, raising many more questions than they answer. Clearly, much empirical work remains before firm assertions can be made. Several perceptual distortions related to stereotyping behavior are of particular interest to us in discussing factors related to the manifestation of misunderstandings in intercultural relationships. One such distortion has been labelled the “mote-beam mechanism” (Ichheiser, 1949). Ichheiser has contended that in their interrelations with others there is a tendency for people to perceive certain characteristics (usually ones with negative af-

fective connotations) in others but to falsely believe that they themselves are free of those characteristics. Deutsch (1965) has commented that the effect of the mote-beam mechanism (alternatively described as minor-ima~ng) is to accentuate the differences between ourselves and others in such a way that it is a potential source of misunderstanding and conflict in intercultural relationships. The mote-beam mechanism may well help to explain the interesting results reported by Kumata and Schramm (1956) who, in a semantic comparison of Koreans and Japanese, discovered that: the Japanese and Koreans, when asked to judge “myself” and “my people”, produced profiles that were quite close to each other; that is, the Japanese idea of the Japanese and the Korean idea of the Koreans were not much different. But when the two groups were asked to rate each other, the profiles were far apart! (p. 233)

The above should not be taken to suggest, however, that perceived differences between self and others will always be the result of disapproval of others. Berrien (1969) reports findings, for example, which strongly suggest that, “Cognitive contrasts are possible in the absence of affective differences” (p. 2 14). In a study of Greek and American judgments about’themselves and each other, Triandis and Vassiliou (1972) have shown that, given a difference between two nationalities on one characteristic, there may be a tendency for the parties to extrapolate that difference to other characteristics where, in fact, no differences exist between the two groups. This results, they believe, from the need for cognitive consistency in a situation of limited information. In summary, their results suggested a tendency to exaggerate differences and not recognize similarities. Though no reference is made to it, the findings of this research would appear to require modification of an earlier theoretical view of Triandis (1967) or, at least, call for further empirical investigation. In the earlier article, Triandis made reference to the level of adaptation achieved by an expatriate in the period soon after his arrival in the host country. At this point, Triandis argued, the expatriate would still be using his own country as a reference point and he predicted that the congruency perceived by the expatriate would swing to both positive and negative extremes, in accordance with the assimilation-contrast effect propounded by Sherif and Hovland ( 196 1).

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Where, in contrast to the most-beam mechanism, an overly favourable stereotype is held by one party or another before actual intercultural contact, problems may be manifested subsequent to contact. On the basis of obse~ational data, Pool I1 965) has commented on expatriates who before going abroad were xenophiles (Perlmutter, 1954, 1956). Contrary to what may have been expected, they tended to have greater than normal problems of adjustment in their host environment because the latter “could not live up to their unrealistic expactations” (Pool, 196.5, p- 51). Stereotypes are especially important insofar as they influence perceptual judgments. Several additional studies merit brief discussion in this regard. In a Canadian experiment designed to assess the evaluational reactions of subjects to different languages, five bilingual persons (fluent in both English and French) spoke over a telephone in each of the languages to both English-Canadian and French-Canadian subjects (Lambert, Frankel, & Tucker, 1966; Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillcnbaum, 1960). (The subjects were unaware that the speakers were bilingual.) In evaluating the personality characteristics of the speakers, the subjects judged the English speakers more favourably than the French speakers. The authors concluded that this reflected widely-held stereotypes regarding Canadians of English and French origin. In an investigation of the stereotyping practices of managers within industrial organizations, Whitehead and King (1973) showed that managers in California and Texas consistently had a less favourable stereotype of Mexican-American employees than of American employees. The most important point made by the researchers is that such stereotypes may become self-fulfilling prophesies in that the unfavourable stereotype will elicit managerial behavior which by itself will provide for the manifestation of that stereotype in fact. Related to stereotyping is another phenomenon of importance in intercultural relations. namely, ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is “a tendency to view people unconsciously by using our own customs as the standard for all judgments” (Porter, 1972, p. 6). In contrast to the principle of cultural relativism expounded by anthropologists (e.g., Kluckhohn, 1949, p. 41) ethnocentrism implies evaluating the behavior and customs of some outgroup according to our standards rather than theirs. As a result, those customs of the outgroup which are the same as our own are considered “good,” while the more dissimilar they are the more

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they are likely to be evaluated as “bad.” Though the tendency toward ethnocentrism has been shown to vary between cultures (Levine, 1965), the overall proneness of people to ethnocentric behavior must create the potential for problems in intercultural relations since the differences at this level are conceivably very great. The barriers to interpersonal understanding between expatriates and locals in international business operations as a result of this so-called self-reference criterion have been discussed by Lee (1966). In a similar vein, it has been hypothesised that at the institutional level there are three general orientations which may be adopted by a multinational corporation, each of which may be seen to have particular consequences at the individual level (Perlmutter, 1969). The three basic orientations hypothesised by Perlmutter are ethnocentrism (a home-country orientation on the part of the parent company), polycentrism (a host-country orientation), and geocentrism (a world orientation). With respect to personnel policies a geocentric orientation would imply that ultimately a multinational corporation’s employees would be as described-multinational-and that local employees would not be discriminated against. As Simmonds (1966) pointed out in the mid-sixites, multinationalism was far from being achieved then. More recently, several studies (Heenan, 1972; Perlmutter & Heenan, 1974) have verified the tendency, in the personnel function at least, for multinational corporations to tend toward ethnocentrism rather than geocentrism. Clearly, whichever orientation is adopted by the parent company will have important consequences for the relations between expatriate and local personnel in the subsidiaries. If ethnocentric policies prevail, local employees will be given a much lesser role and opportunities than would be so in a geocentrically-oriented firm. Perlmutter and Heenan have asserted the dysfunctional consequences of an ethnocentric approach by pointing out that one of the symptoms of this orientation is a high turnover rate of local employees (see also EdStrom & Galbraith, 1977). Nevertheless, it appears that there are no simple answers: it has been reported that even in cases approaching a genuine multinational staffing policy, morale problems among local managers remain (Zeira & Harari, 1977a). A common complaint of host country nationals regarding third country nationals (nationals of neither the host country nor the country in which the corporation has its headquarters), for example, is that

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the latter are frequently more oriented to the views of the headquarters than the needs of the subsidiary (Zeira & Harari, 1977b). If stereotyping and ethnocentrism are likely to create problems in interpersonal, intercultural relationships, the effect of prejudice is certain to be even greater. In his classic work on the subject, Allport ( 1958) has defined prejudice thus: Ethnic prejudice is an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of that group. The net effect of prejudice, thus defined, is to place the object of prejudice at some disadvantage not merited by his own misconduct. (p. 10)

The degree to which prejudice can be reduced by contact between members of different ethnic groups is a moot point. In a major review of studies which have examined the relationship, Amir (1969) concluded that whether contact would reduce prejudice or not was a function largely of the conditions surrounding that contact. Among the conditions noted by Amir as likely to be conducive to a reduction in prejudice were circumstances where the contact was between members of groups of equal status or the members of a majority group and higher status members of a minority group, where the contact was intimate rather than casual in nature, where the intergroup contact was pleasant or rewarding, where an authority was in favor of the contact, and where the contact was functionally important to both groups or there were superordinate goals transcending the goals of either individual group. Correspondingly, unfavorable conditions surrounding the contact would serve merely to strengthen prejudice. In a recent review of the concept of equal-status interracial contact, Riordan (1978) has argued that an assumption of equal status is often quite unjustified, representing ‘&acruel and treacherous misnomer which substitutes ideology for reality” (p. 176). Though directed specifically at studies of black-white relations in the United States, the implications of his argument for the wider field of crosscultural contact ought to be recognised. To some extent it is possible to keep strongly prejudiced individuals out of international organizations by devising selection techniques to detect them. The special need for international organizations to utilise such techniques has been made clear by Wilson (1961) who notes the possibility that individuals with

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personalities and characteristics which specifically limit their ability to function satisfactorily in cross-cultural work will be particularly drawn to this kind of work directly because of their inability to cope within their own society on account of those same characteristics. Time Factor There is a considerable weight of evidence in the literature to suggest that the problems of adjustment in intercultural relationships, particularly of an expatriate to his host environment, are greatest in the early stages of familiarity. (Though, as discussed below, at the very beginning of the sojourn experience there may be a “honeymoon” phase of good adjustment.) It is correspondingly during this initial period of adjustment that we would expect the relations between individuals interculturally to be prone to the greatest number of misunderstandings. For the expatriate’s part, he often discovers a wide disparity between what he has been used to and what he finds in the host environment; so many of the aspects affecting both his professional and his personal life may be different. Though varying from location to location and between expatriates depending upon a variety of factors to be discussed subsequently, a not uncommon reaction of an expatriate to such a situation is culture shock, a term coined by Oberg (1960). Lundstedt (1963) has described culture shock as: a form of personality maladjustment which is a reaction to a temporarily unsuccessful attempt to adjust to new surroundings and people, Instead of absorbing new stress successfully, the person becomes anxious, confused and often appears apathetic. The symptoms of culture shock are usually accompanied by a subjective feeling of loss, and a sense of isolation and loneliness often called homesickness. Culture shock can be viewed as a response to stress by emotional and intellectual withdrawal, and is characterised by a longing for an environment in which gratification of important psychological and physical needs is predictable and less uncertain. (p. 3)

Taft (1977) has gone further and identified six different types of culture shock. Though it may be so that culture shock has affected all kinds of travellers since human society began (Bock, 1970) it must be acknowledged that the ability to cope with a foreign environment varies widely from individual to individual, with certain persons being able to adapt with very few problems

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(see, for example, the research of Smith [ 19663 on Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana), and that the nature of the culture contact situation will affect the form of culture shock experienced (Taft, 1977). Such initial culture shock and many of the problems it implies are gradually overcome through a process of socialization and learning in the new environment. (Adler [ 19751 has pointed out that the positive aspect of this process in terms of the personal growth of sojourners is sometimes overlooked. Further, on the basis of their research among Canadian expatriates in Kenya, Ruben and Kealey [ 19791 have found tentative evidence to in some cases at least, the persons who will suggest “that ultimately be the most effective can be expected to undergo the most intense culture shock during transition” [p. 4 11.) It has been suggested, in fact, that expatriates go through a characteristic pattern of adjustment with respect to their cross-cultural experience. Examining the adjustment of Norwegian Fulbright scholars to the United States, Lysgaard (1955) observed that there were “certain stages of adjustment, characterised by good adjustment, followed by an adjustment “crisis,” after which good adjustment is again achieved” ( p. 49). The sojourners appeared to experience a kind of U-shaped adjustment curve; their arrival and early period in the host environment was one of high expectations and satisfaction; eventually the differences between their own and the host culture became impressed upon them, there were various adjustment problems and their satisfactions were decreased; gradually, though, they adjusted to their host environment and the favourability of their impressions increased. Since Lysgaard’s article it has been reasoned that an expatriate, having adjusted to his host environment, faces similar rt)-entry problems upon returning to his home environment and that the U-curve may thus be extended to resemble a W-curve (Gullahorn & Gullahorn, 1963: Jacobson, 1963; Murray. 1973). The adjustment curves imply that after an initial ‘high,’ relations between expatriates and locals will be somewhat strained and open to misunderstandings for some time as a result of the wide divergency in the expectations each party has of the other. The Gullahorns have said that during this period before adequate adjustment the expatriate’s state will be similar to a condition of structural imbalance (Heider, 195 8 ) or cognitive dissonance (Festinger. 1957 ).

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Though it is not our purpose to elaborate on the issue here, it should be noted that in seeking to accommodate the expectations of those with whom he is involved and to whom he is responsible, an expatriate is placed in a unique situation of role conflict faced as he may be with a variety of role senders (Mennis & Sauvant, 1972; Shetty, 1971; Yun, 1973). For example, in attempting to accommodate his role to the local environment an expatriate executive may create the impression with management at headquarters that he has “sold the company out.” In essence: managers of foreign subsidiaries have often failed because they did not understand the foreign nation in which they worked, but others have also failed because they understood the foreign country so well that their head office decided they had “gone native.” (Wilkins, 1966, p. 90)

Inevitably, such conflicts imply potential strain and misunderstandings in the relations between the expatriate and (among others) his local national counterparts. Several additional important factors, besides those so far mentioned, influence the adjustment of the expatriate to his host environment-which, in turn, influences the development of an adequate and accurate understanding between the expatriate and local personnel. Very important among these is the extent of congruency which exists between the expatriate’s expectations prior to taking up his expatriate position and, in the first place, the expectations of the organization to which he is assigned in the host country, and, in the second place, his actual experience in his expatriate role. For each set of circumstances previous research has shown that in those instances where the degree of congruency is low, the expatriate is not likely to adjust well but, rather, is likely to experience a high level of frustration and a low level of satisfaction (Aram & Stoner, 1972; Byrnes, 1965). In a similar fashion, the performance of local personnel in relation to the expectations held for them by the expatriate executives who hire them may have an important bearing upon relations between the two. It has been noted (Teague, 1968) for example, that United States expatriates need to realise that European middle managers usually do not have the decisionmaking skills that their title would imply in the United States since their authority is very limited in Europe. Failure to understand such a difference may adversely affect relations between the parties.

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It has been claimed that in many instances the expatriate’s adjustment to the ways of his hosts, and vice versa, is made easier by the existence of what has been termed a “third culture” (Useem, Donoghue, & Useem, 1963). Useem, Donoghue and Useem theorise that at the intersections of societies a third culture develops in which the culture of the hosts and that of the expatriate are supplanted to a certain extent by their shared norms in a new culture. They define the third culture as “the behavior patterns created, shared and learned by men of different societies who are in the process of relating their societies, or sections thereof, to each other” (p. 169). The extent to which a third culture will develop is itself a function of the degree of cultural difference between the host country nationals and expatriate personnel. According to Cohen (1977), integration in such a third culture is more likely the greater the similarity between the two. Useem et al. maintain that, despite certain dysfunctional consequences which may accrue from its existence, the third culture often aids considerably in many cases in easing the transition to the new role for the expatriate. Adjustment of the parties to an intercultural relationship and the development of an adequate and accurate understanding between them will also be a function of such factors as their previous experience in cross-cultural relationships and the cultural distance between them. It is proposed to deal with this latter issue in the next sub-section. Cultural

Distance

In discussing factors which may be important in creating misunderstandings between parties to an intercultural relationship, a considerable number of researchers have given passing attention to the so-called cultural distance factor. Most have argued that the further apart the cultures of the parties to the relationship are, the greater problems there will be for each to adjust to the other and, by implication, the more likely it is that there will be misunderstandings between them. Unfortunately, only a few of those researchers have paid any attention to operationalising the cultural distance concept; here we will briefly examine the views of several who have. At a low level of conceptualisation are the views of such researchers as Porter (1972) who perceives cultural distance to

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vary along a minimal-maximal dimension of social uniqueness. He provides an example with “U.S. Hippies” and “U.S. Straights” at the minimal difference end of the continuum, and “Westerners” and “Asians” at the maximum end. The very attraction of the simplicity of the scheme is also its principal drawback insofar as it is difficult to apply to other situations. A similarly simple concept is offered by Stewart ( 1966) who in devising a scheme for the training of American advisors to serve abroad, distinguishes between American culture and, in mirror image of it, contrast American culture. Based upon the principal value orientations propounded by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck ( 196 1) as a means of differentiating between societies, he draws a profile of the two. Despite the fact that he further divides the contrast American cultures into concrete (for example, Chinese culture) and abstract (for example, Arab culture) types, the profiles drawn are essentially very broad, with the result that problems arise in applying the concept to any two specific countries. Several researchers have attempted to deal conceptually with the issue of cultural distance from the basis that most problems in intercultural interrelationships arise from the different interpretations placed on a particular behavior or set of circumstances by of the parties concerned (i.e., from their different conceptions reality). According to this viewpoint, the most straightforward situations of intercultural contact are those in which the same basic social situations are common to both the host’s and the expatriate’s culture and in which similar behavioral responses are appropriate for those situations; in these circumstances the expatriate can behave abroad in exactly the same way as he does in his own country. According to Triandis (1972) the greatest intercultural problems occur in circumstances where the social situations in the host’s and in the expatriate’s cultures are basically the same but in which the appropriate behavioral responses in such situations are different. He instances the problems of response regarding use of first names in interactions between Americans and Englishmen. (It is interesting to note that using precisely the same examples, Americans and Englishmen, Stewart [ 19721 reaches a completely different conclusion about the potential for problems in their interrelationships.) Triandis states that in circumstances where the culture of the host and the expatriate are very different, interactions are intermediate in difficulty. As a result, he claims,

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American businessmen may experience greater difficulty in dealing with South Europeans or Latin Americans than with Chinese or Japanese. Triandis’ hypothesis is a provocative one, as yet untested empirically. In fact, this particular view expressed by Triandis appears to be somewhat at variance with his co-authored view in another place (Fiedler, Mitchell, & Triandis, 197 1) in which it was suggested that the greatest problems arise in those instances where there exist the greatest divergencies in norms, customs and values. Acceptance of the subjective culture concept implies acceptance also that each culture differs in fundamental respects from every other culture. The basis upon which the degree of difference between any two cultures may be assessed, or the extent to which relationships between members of those two cultures may be judged as Iikely to be more or less difficult, is, however, a moot point as the previous discussion indicated. This fact has been recognized by Triandis ( 1972) who, in commenting upon his own propositions, was led to conclude that: Research similarity difficulty

is needed to test the hypotheses just described concerning the in the subjective cultures between two groups and its effect on the of cross-cultural interactions. (p. 348)

Pm0 nalit?l To some extent the impact of personality factors on intercultural adjustment and intercultural understanding has already been dealt with; for example, in the discussion of xenophiles and ethnocentrism. In this section certain additional personalityrelated material will be discussed. One concept which has received some attention in the sojourn research literature is authoritarianism. Implicitly, one might expect that authoritariallisln would be inversely related to empathy and that individuals high on authoritarianism would experience adjustment problems in intercultural relationships. (In this sense, authoritarianism is closely related to ethnocentrism.) The empirical evidence is, however, not clear. While Basu and Ames (1970) research showed that sojourners with authoritarian personalities were more likely to experience unpleasant aspects during their sojourn than individuals who were not authoritarian in nature. limited evidence exists (Smith, 1966) to suggest no relationship between authoritarianism, on the one hand, and either general competence or the administrative evaluations of others in the sojourn environment, on the other.

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One might speculate that, in Riesman, Glazer, and Denny’s (1950) terms, some persons will be more sensitive to the views of those around them than others (other- vs. inner-directed persons), a facility which may aid them in adjusting to their relationships with their hosts. While this may be so (no evidence exists to either support or refute the proposition), Zeleznik (1957) contends that other-directed individuals are much more prone to culture shock than the inner-directed individuals they are increasingly replacing on overseas assignments. Moreover, he claims, both inner- and other-directed persons have considerable problems relating to the tradition-directed individuals with whom they are so frequently in contact in foreign countries. These matters could well benefit from further empirical investigation. By far the greatest attention of personality-related approaches to intercultural adjustment has focused on looking for personality types, classified according to the satisfactoriness with which sojourners can adjust to a foreign environment. Such classifications have been formulated from observation of various groups of sojourners: for example, Bennett, Passin and McKnight’s (1958) study of Japanese students in the United States (classified as adjustors, constrictors, and idealists), Sewell and Davidsen’s (1956) study of Scandanavian students in the United States (detached observers, promoters, enthusiastic participants, settlers), and the wives of American sojourners in India studied by Useem (1966) (capers, the cautious, supporters, fumblers). Though interesting in themselves, such trait approaches have by definition been rather general and thus of somewhat limited usefulness in predicting the behavior of sojourners. Moreover, a comparison of the various classifications reveals no consistently agreed upon traits for successful adaptation to a foreign culture. In summary, though one traditionally held view has been that personality is central to almost all problems of intercultural adjustment (e.g., Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1958; Klineberg, 1964), current opinion is that personality is not very useful in predicting intercultural adjustment (e.g., David, 1972; Guthrie, 1975). The degree of adjustment achieved by the sojourner is likely to depend as much on such factors as the precise nature of his role and the particular environment in which he is placed as upon his personality.

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Contact and Attitudes The achievement of an adequate level of understanding between two parties of different cultural backgrounds may be expected to be significantly related to the nature of their contact and to their overall attitudes with respect to members of the other culture and their relationship to them. In an earlier section of this paper, various studies which had examined the effect of communication upon stereotyping were noted. One of the principal objectives of this section is briefly to examine the reciprocal influence of stereotyping upon communication. This has been the subject of attention in several places, particularly in relation to the experiences of foreign students in the United States (see Spaulding and Flack, 1976). Several research studies have examined the concept of perceived national status and its implications in terms of the attitudes of expatriates towards their hosts (and consequent relations between the two parties). The earliest work on this subject was done by Morris (1956, 1960). Morris’ research utilised favourability of expatriates’ attitudes as the dependent variable and found that neither self-assigned low status nor imputed low status from members of the host society necessarily implied unfavorable attitudes on the part of the expatriates towards their hosts. What was found to be important in influencing the favorability of the expatriate’s attitudes was the relative status imputed to the expatriate’s country by the expatriate himself and by the hosts. Where expatriates believed that the hosts accorded the expatriate’s country a lower status than the expatriate believed it deserved, the expatriates tended to have unfavorable attitudes towards the host country. On the other hand, where expatriates believed that the hosts accorded the expatriate’s country a higher status than did the expatriate himself the expatriates were likely to have generally favorable attitudes. Commenting upon the situation of national status deprivation, Morris has said that: Perceiving a low placement by the new ascribers under these conditions effectively reduces the chance for close personal relations with those ascribers, although it does not affect more casual contact with them nor deprive the individual student of his personal satisfaction with the experience. Cp. 136)

A considerable number of studies have concentrated examining the extent to which foreign students’ attitudes

upon toward

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their host country are a function of the nature of the contact established between those students and their hosts. The most generally reported finding has been that favorable attitudes towards the hosts depend largely upon the establishment of close and friendly relations with individual members of the host society (e.g., Selltiz & Cook, 1962). However, this general finding has been the subject of criticism on several grounds: there have been contradictions in the results (see Pool, 1965); the studies have failed to clearly differentiate between genuine and superficial contact and to specify the dimensions of the contact (see Salter & Teger, 1975); the direction of causality has been questioned by most of the researchers themselves. The most recent studies (e.g., Basu & Ames, 1970) have established that the nature of the relationship is much more complex than was previously asserted. In a comprehensive multivariate empirical examination of the overall attitudinal satisfaction of a group of American naval personnel stationed in Japan (Gudykunst, Wiseman, & Hammer, 1977) it was found that the degree of third-culture perspective of the sojourners (a composite measure designed to tap the degree of empathy, ethnocentrism, sociability and certain other characteristics of the sojourners) was a most important variable influencing satisfaction with the sojourn experience. This study is particularly noteworthy for its rigorous attempt to deal with the interrelationships between a number of pertinent independent variables affecting the dependent variable; aside from third-culture perspective, measures were also taken on cross-cultural interaction, the evaluation of interactions, behavioral skills, stereotyping, and cross-cultural training. Such a study stands in marked contrast with the more common bivariate-relationship studies, or worse, anecdotal treatments of the subject. Of greatest interest from the viewpoint of this paper, the relationship between contact and perceived similarity or dissimilarity in attitudes and values has been raised. In the most detailed of the studies examining the nature of this interactionssentiments relationship between locals and expatriates it has been commented that: Data from the involvement phase of the W-curve support Heider’s generalization that both proximity and interaction frequently increase the effect of perceived similarity or dissimilarity of attitudes and values. Given similar attitudes, proximity and frequent interaction tend to increase the degree of positive sentiment. With slight dissimilarity of attitudes an initial assimilation

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seems to be produced, converting original disparate values into common values, resulting in an increase in positive feelings. With strong dissimilarities, however, proximity and frequent interaction are likely to result in a greater clarification of divergencies and in a conflictful sequence of interactionfollowed, perhaps, by mutual antipathy and disassociation. (Gullahorn & Gullahorn, 1963, p. 41) These findings tend to reinforce the views of those researchers who, with respect to cultural distance factors, have maintained that the greatest problems in relations between expatriates and locals arise in those circumstances in which there are greatest divergencies in values and so on. The reaction of expatriates to disputes with hosts over matters such as national status is, itself, likely to be a function largely of the expatriate’s culture. For example, Coelho (1958) has noted that Indian students who perceived a derogatory image of their country on the part of their American hosts were likely to respond in a hostile fashion. On the other hand, it has been suggested that a typical Japanese student’s response to such a situation would be withdrawal (Bennett et al., 1958). In terms of the actual operating philosophy developed, in the context of multinational corporations one study has noted a tendency for American expatriate executives to adopt more authoritarian attitudes in their relations with host country nationals than they exhibited in their domestic American positions (Alpander, 1973). Taken overall, most of the studies which have utilised expatriate-local contact as an independent variable have been concerned with assessing its relationship to the attitudes of the expatriate rather than with some direct measure of adjustment or understanding between the parties. Though the attitudes of the expatriate towards his individual host colleagues and towards the host country are one measurement of adjustment and a contributing factor to the understanding which exists between expatriate and local they are so only in a secondary sense. The concentration upon attitudes as the dependent variable is a reflection of the objectives of educational aid projects, the recipients of which have been the principal subjects for investigators in this area. Despite these limitations, the findings of these studies are, of course, of substantial import for our wider understanding of the nature of intercultural relationships as well as important building blocks for subsequent investigations specifically within international organizations.

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CONCEPTUAL

AND EMPIRICAL

PROBLEMS

ATTENTION

WITHIN THE CONTEXT

INTERNATIONAL

TO THE OF

ORGANIZATIONS

In the previous section a number of factors were presented which it has been suggested are important in creating or exacerbating misunderstandings between parties to intercultural relationships. It was shown, for example, that the culturally conditioned “reality” of the parties makes for a variety of communication problems. The objective of the present section is to investigate further what research approaches have been adopted in attempting to delineate and/or solve such misunderstandings within the context of international organizations. Though principal interest lies in previous empirical work, several non-empirical studies are also relevant.

Broad Attention

to the Problems

At a relatively non-rigorous level several works have made ,an important contribution to our understanding of the problems through their description of the relations between local and expatriate personnel in multinational corporations. For the most part these studies have been content to deal with the issues at a macro level and within the context of relatively limited organizational circumstances. Typical of such work is a field study of American expatriates working in Iran (Hodgson, 1961). In this study Hodgson set out to examine the proposition that colleagues drawn from widely disparate cultures would (because they were unable to adequately understand their differences) experience considerable difficulties in working with one another. An examination was made, primarily through non-directive interviewing and personal observations, of the operating differences between the expatriates and their local Iranian colleagues and subordinates, and the consequences of those differences. It was claimed that the general proposition was confirmed by the major findings of the study. In a similar study an examination was made of the problems as they confronted American executives working in the Mexican subsidiaries of United States corporations (Fayerweather, 1959). Fayerweather explored the problems which emanate from the individualistic vs. group-oriented approaches which contrast the American and Mexican cultures. He reported similar problems to those noted by Hodgson (1961).

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In a similar vein, Skinner (1968) established that understanding must be developed at the interpersonal level. In a field study based more heavily upon interviews with expatriate and local executives than either the Hodgson or Fayerweather studies, Skinner noted that the establishment of such understanding brought with it an improvement in the relations between the parties. In an examination by intensive personal interview of the relationship between American and Japanese executives in 15 United States-Japanese joint venture operations in Japan, Yoshino ( 1968) ascertained that misunderstandings could result from both a failure to appreciate culturally-based differences and also from a tendency on the part of some individuals to attribute all problems to cultural differences. On the assumption that such cultural factors as those identified in the studies discussed above would influence the frequency and nature of contacts between intercultural partners, Pintield (1973) determined to examine the relations between international branch organizations and parties in their environment. Pinfield undertook an examination of the contacts between the members of diplomatic missions of various “Western” and “Latin” countries in three cities (two in the United States, one in an unspecified South American country) and both host country nationals and members of other diplomatic missions. Two hypotheses were formulated: first, “interactions between branches of similar socio-cultural background in a host environment will be greater than between branches of dissimilar backgrounds”; second, “interactions between branches and a culturally similar host environment will be greater than between branches and culturally dissimilar environments” (Pinfield, 1973, pp. 1OGlOl). The first of these hypotheses was supported. Two major groupings of interacting persons were identified, one comprised of Latin Americans, the other comprised mainly of persons from Western European nations. The second hypothesis was, however, rejected: this result was explained by reference to the principal tasks undertaken by a diplomatic mission, it being reasoned that socio-cultural differences were not likely to intrude to any extent upon the performance of those tasks. Several studies have specifically sought to link culturally based differences between local and expatriate personnel in multinational corporations to various behavioral consequences. In a recent intensive investigation (Harari & Zeira, 1974; Zeira, Harari,

& Nundi, 1975) of a non-American ethnocentric multinational corporation in the United States it was found that cultural differences had an important effect upon employee morale especially insofar as the local personnel disliked the managerial style of the expatriates. In addition to the field and survey studies already discussed, there exists a limited amount of experimental research into In one such experimental study intercultural understanding. (Fiedler, 1966), research was conducted to assess whether “culturally and lin~istically homogeneous teams would perform more efficiently on various tasks than would heterogeneous teams” (p. 259). The experiment was performed at the Belgian Naval Training Centre with 250 recruits and 48 petty officers; in each case half were from Dutch-spewing homes and the other half from Frenchspeaking homes. The central proposition was based on the view that the communication necessary for performing experimental tasks would be “better” in homogeneous than in heterogeneous groups. However, it was found that: While heterogeneous groups had less pleasant group atmosphere and higher anxiety scores, these teams performed as well as homogeneous groups in all but the letter-writing task which demanded a high degree of verbal facility, These results suggest the need for reevaluating the importance of the communication variable in group interaction. (Fiedler, 1966, p. 260)

Though these results are of obvious interest (see also, Fiedler, Meuwese, & Oonk, 196 l), it does need to be emphasized that these results were experimental, involving a limited range of tasks, and that the research concentrated at the group rather than the inte~ersonal level. Advances from Research into Expatriate Selection and Training

On the basis that assignment abroad is not the same as domestic placement, considerable attention, both theoretical and empirical, has been given specifically to the matters of expatriate selection and training. This material is of interest in this section insofar as much of it has focused on exploring means by which to minimise the problems encountered by both expatriates and locals in their relationships with one another.

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Recognition of the importance of cultural differences has been reflected in the concern expressed by various writers that persons selected for international assignments should be chosen as much upon their ability to adapt to a foreign environment as upon their technical capabilities (Ivancevich, 1969; Love& 1966; Wilson, 1961). Research (Miller, 1972, 1973) has suggested, however, that at least with regard to international business organizations more attention is given to an individual’s previous performance and specific abilities than to those factors which relate to his ability to adapt adequately to a foreign environment. On the basis of their research, Baker and Ivancevich (197 1) have commented that often the selectors of expatriates do not perceive any important differences between domestic and overseas placement, believing that if an executive can perform well at home then he should be able to perform well abroad. Significa~ltly, it has also been shown (Ivancevich, 1969) that there are substantial differences between the views of selectors and of expatriates themselves as regards the relative importance which should be given to various matters in selecting individuals for overseas assignment; for example expatriates place far greater importance upon their wives’ opinions than do their selectors. Studies of the actual performance of expatriates have provided varied and often conflicting explanations regarding which factors make for success (e.g., Aram & Stoner, 1972; Hays, 1972a, 1974; Montgomery, 1961; Newman, Bhatt, & Gutteridge, 1978; Stoner et al., 1972). Part of the problem almost certainly lies in the variety of criteria by which such “success” can and has been measured (Benson, 1978). Moreover, some studies have attained a greater degree of objectivity in measuring success than others. In this regard it is interesting to contrast two recent studies. In one (Hammer, Gudykunst, & Wiseman, 1978) reliance was placed on the subjects’ self-reports of how well they functioned in a foreign culture. In the other (Ruben and Kealey, 1979), the adaptation of the subjects to their foreign environment was based on the subjects’ self-reports, the observations of a trained researcher and the assessments of several categories of persons associated with the subjects in that environment. Despite the often conflicting explanations for success, there is general support for the view that cultural empathy and an ability to deal with local nationals are important attributes associated with an expatriate’s performance. The importance that a person in a cross-cultural role can

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empathise with the attitudes and expectations of his counterparts has also been emphasised by Chemers (1966) who suggests that training programmes can assist in improving the accuracy of perceptions and thus the performance of the individual concerned. The traditional university-based training (whereby individuals are broadly educated in the social sciences to become open-minded and adept at problem-solving) has met with certain criticism (Harrison & Hopkins, 1967) principally on the grounds that it does not equip individuals in sufficient depth to meet the demands of their cross-cultural roles. Though a variety of alternative approaches have been suggested (Brislin & Pedersen, 1976; Pedraglio, 1970), no consensus exists about what methods are the most effective or efficient (Thiagarajan, 1971). On the one hand, for example, some researchers (e.g., Mead, 1948) favor a general sensitizing approach, similar in some respects to the traditional university model, in which persons are trained to quickly appreciate and adapt to any different situation. Operationally this kind of training might involve an American expatriate, say, ,in different role play exercises designed to highlight for him the differences between American culture and contrast-American culture (Stewart, 1966). The rationale behind this general approach is that the individual differences in each encounter the expatriate has, in addition to outdating due to rapid cultural changes, make specific training too limited. Nevertheless, many of the most recently suggested schemes have been those designed to give in-depth training in the vagaries of specific cultures to which individuals are to be assigned. Their approach is based on the supposition that every culture is different in significant respects and that training must, therefore, be specific to each; on this basis, adherents to this approach have criticized the general sensitivity schemes as “not sufficient to overcome the communication barriers and intercultural misunderstandings” (Triandis, 1972, p. 347). It is proposed to briefly examine several of these culturallyspecific schemes here. One method which has gained a considerable amount of discussion in the literature is that of utilizing the culture assimilator. The culture assimilator consists of about 75-100 brief episodes each of which describes some type of interpersonal, intercultural encounter, where the nature of that contact is specific to a host culture. At the time of writing, assimilators have been developed for Greece, Honduras, Iran, Thailand, and Aborigi-

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nal Australians. For each encounter one “correct” and several “incorrect” explanations of the behavior of the host party are supplied. The trainee is required to select the alternative he considers the correct explanation. Having made his choice he is supplied with an analysis of why his choice was or was not correct. In this way it is anticipated that the trainee will build up a basic knowledge of the other culture which will assist him in accurately anticipating the attitudes and behavior of his intercultural partners (Fiedler et al., 1971). The assimilator, then, seeks to increase the isomorphic attributions of persons engaged in cross-cultural relations (Triandis, 197 5). A number of both laboratory and field experiments have been conducted to assess the degree to which the assimilator does, in fact, assist in aiding intercultural relations (e.g., Chemers, 1966; Chemers, Lekhyananda, Fiedler, & Stolorow, 1966; Mitchell & Foa, 1969; O’Brien, Fiedler, & Hewett, 1971; O’Brien & Plooij, 1977; Worchel & Mitchell, 1972). In an article summarising the results of experiments conducted up until 1972 (Mitchell et al., 1972) it was concluded that: the Culture Assimilator is an effective method of decreasing some of the stress experienced when one works with people from another culture. In general, personal adjustment and interpersonal relations in heterocultural groups is enhanced by this form of cultural training. Performance measures have shown somewhat less response to Assimilator training, although one field study indicates that the inclusion of task-oriented items in the Assimilator may indeed help increase productivity. (pp. 103-104)

A recent experiment (Weldon, Carlston, Rissman, Slobodin, & Triandis, 1975) involving the assimilator tested its effects on black-white interactions within the United States. In this experiment the assimilator was shown to have both desirable and undesirable outcomes. On the one hand, trained subjects provided more satisfactory explanations for the behavior of their intercultural partners than untrained subjects and perceived less conflict than untrained subjects in situations of intercultural disagreement. On the other hand, it was discovered that the workers in the experimental teams preferred to work with untrained rather than trained leaders. The authors concluded that the initial effect of the assimilator was for the subject to behave somewhat unnaturally, a reaction they suggested could be diminished by time and by supplementing the assimilator with other exercises designed to get

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over this problem. Thus, in heightening a trainee’s awareness of the need to tread carefully in dealing with the members of another culture, the assimilator may induce a tendency, especially in the early stages of contact, for the trainee to appear ill at ease. As Taft (1977, pp. 138-139) has pointed out, despite the general utility of teaching cultural skills to persons engaged in cross-cultural relationships, much must be learned “by trial and error, and practice and observation, often incidentally rather than deliberately” (p. 139). In another study (Davidson, 1975) dealing with black-white assimilators in the United States, the importance of identifying areas of greater or lesser cognitive differentiation between cultures (refer back to the section on subjective culture) was emphasised as a method of improving the usefulness of assimilators in enabling individuals involved in intercultural situations to make isomorphic attributions with respect to one another. In summary, while the culture assimilator appears to be an effective instrument by which to improve interpersonal relations in heterocultural group situations, the experimental and field results are equivocal, particularly with regard to its effects on task-related matters of the relationships. The culture assimilator technique of training is essentially aimed at propogating sociotypes (stereotypes empirically verifiable for the bulk of the population). The rationale is fundamentally that use of such sociotypes as the basis for assessing what a cultural group member’s attitudes and behavior will be in a particular set of circumstances will lead one to be accurate in most cases. An approach to cross-cultural training which is quite similar in certain respects has been developed by another group of researchers. On the basis that a high level of interpersonal understanding is essential to effective cross-cultural relationships, Bass (197 1) has explained his argument and that of his colleagues thus: Our contention is that if the American [advisor abroad] is cognizant of his own national mode and the host national mode, this knowledge may reduce the extent of his error of perception greatly, particularly where the actual differences between national groups are large and variation within national groups is small (p. 288).

This assertion is basically the same as that of the culture assimilator researchers. The difference between the two groups lies in the methods by which they formulate their modes or socio-

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types. In the case of the assimilator, the critical incident technique is used: samples of the expatriates and the hosts with whom they are in contact are asked to describe critical events in their events which have influenced their attitudes or relationships, behavior towards members of the other culture as a whole. An episode and alternative explanations for the attitudes and behavior adopted by the parties are then developed by persons familiar with the culture and validated by testing it upon members of that culture. On the other hand, the Bass team has concentrated on building up a data bank specifically concerned with the attitudes and behavior of managers in various countries with respect to the performance of their managerial tasks (see Bass, 1969). In their case the data has been gathered experimentally by exploring the attitudes held, and by observing the methods employed and results achieved in respect of a range of simulation exercises administered to a wide sample of managers in the countries surveyed. From this data bank profiles have been developed of the “average” manager in each of a number of countries. Using this information in such devices as role-play exercises, it is claimed that it is possible to improve the accuracy with which parties anticipate and interpret the attitudes and actions of their intercultural colleagues. Unfortunately, however, no hard published data exists to substantiate or refute this claim. Despite the important conceptual and experimentally-empirical contributions that the culture assimilator and Bass approaches have made to our understanding of the factors influencing the level of understanding between intercultural partners, it is appropriate at this stage to issue a caveat in respect of those approaches. Each approach involves imputing to individuals, qualities which have been shown to be a general characteristic of that group of which the individuals are members. This practice is unsatisfactory to the extent that a particular individual deviates from the “norm” of his group on that characteristic (a factor not overlooked by Bass [ 197 1, p. 2891). Thus trainees should be taught to expect certain deviation from the sociotype on the part of certain of their intercultural colleagues and encouraged not to regard such persons as necessarily especially abnormal. A more fundamental criticism of the Bass approach as a tool to aid interpersonal intercultural relations stems from the way in which their particular sociotypes are developed. Unlike the culture assimilator approach where the episodes are developed out of

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actual incidents between expatriates and locals, the Bass approach builds sociotypes on the basis of the behavior of managers in their own domestic environment. Yet it should be immediately obvious that the attitudes and behavior adopted in an intercultural situation may not necessarily be the same as those utilised in the domestic environment; recent research evidence supports this proposition (Toyne, 1976). In summary, considerable attention has been given to the question of intercultural misunderstandings within international organizations. Despite these advances, the next section will argue that important gaps remain in our understanding of the problems.

LITERATURE CRITIQUE, SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPAL RESEARCH GAPS As the literature review presented in the two previous sections has shown, a considerable degree of both conceptual and empirical attention has been given to isolating “problem areas” in the interrelationships between persons of different cultures. These studies have made an important contribution to our knowledge of and understanding about both the general problems and more specifically, the problems as they affect the operation of international organizations. At the broadest level, the array of evidence presented overwhelmingly supports the view that the potential for misunderstandings between parties to intercultural relationships is, for a variety of reasons, markedly greater than in encounters where the cultures of the parties are homogeneous. Moreover, the results of exploratory empirical investigations have suggested (albeit on the basis of limited research designs) that such misunderstandings are potentially damaging, both to the relationships between those parties and by implication to the performance of the enterprises within which they work. (It should be noted, though, that these results have emanated exclusively from studies in which the group was the unit of analysis.) Despite these undeniably important advances, however, the proposition to be made and argued here is that considerable gaps remain in our understandings about these matters concerning intercultural relationships, gaps that require further research. Much of the work reviewed suffers to the extent that it is non-analytical and non-rigorous, lacking any solid conceptual base. This is particularly true of much of the work on multinational

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corporations; studies such as those of Fayerweather (1959), Hodgson (1961) and Skinner (1968) have been useful in pointing to broad problem areas but their reliance on observational-type methods has precluded them from detailing the precise nature or dimensions of the problems. (For other broad reviews and critiques of cross-cultural organization studies, see Ajiferuke & Boddewyn, 1970; Boddewyn & Nath, 1970; Goodman & Moore, 1972; Kraut, 1973; Moore, 1974; Nath, 1968; Negandhi, 1974; Roberts, 1970, 1973; Schollhamm~r, 1973.) As a consequence, a variety of issues of theoretical importance has been skimmed over. This criticism is particularly relevant at the empirical level where many areas have been either dealt with lightly or left totally unresearched; the cultural distance phenomenon and cross-cultural communication within organizations are two excellent examples here. In addition, though research into such topics as the adjustment of students abroad has aided considerably in conceptualisation of the issues, considerable room exists for testing the hypotheses and findings in other contexts such as multinational corporations. Partly related to the criticisms of the previous paragraph, and by far the most serious criticism of the studies into the problems of intercultural relations to date, is that most of the previous studies (especially those at the empirical level, but including those of a conceptual nature, such as the recent work of Torre & Toyne, 1978) have taken an essentially macroscopic perspective, typically dealing with the problems at a general level, at best using the group as the lowest unit of analysis, In so doing, they have failed to give attention to the most critical level, the interpersonal level. (This deficiency has not escaped the attention of all writers; others to comment to this effect include Cissna, 1975, and Stewart, 1966.) Moreover, that research which has attempted to deal with the issues on a more micro level has been primarily of the sociotype, culture assimilator type involving a small group and one leader and thus has been largely experimental. In particular, there has been no serious attempt to undertake research on interpersonal relations~ps between parties from different cultural backgrounds, to identify misunderstandings, and to trace the consequential impact upon their relationships and the functioning of the organization. Many studies have been based on the quite reasonable assumption that a high level of accuracy on the part of each party to an intercultural encounter with respect to the views

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of the other will increase the effectiveness of their relations, but the proposition remains untested at the interpersonal level. An important research gap has then been left at this interpersonal level, a gap in which such questions as the following are prominent: how accurately are the respective parties to an intercultural relationship able to assess one another’s viewpoints (or, put another way, how common are misunderstandings) at an interpersonal level?; ‘what factors are important in contributing to such misunderstandings?; how is the accuracy with which such parties perceive one another’s viewpoints related to measures of their task effectiveness? As a result of these gaps in our knowledge, empirical attention should now be directed to examining the specific nature of the relationship between these sets of variables: in the first place, the relationship between various independent variables and the accuracy of perceptions on the part of cross-cultural colleagues; and in the second place, the relationship between the accuracy of such perceptions and certain measures of the effectiveness of the relations between those parties. Attention to these issues will enable us to determine, at the interpersonal level, the validity of the subjective culture theorists’ claim that, “intercultural contact can be a failure or success, depending on the extent to which each person understands and appreciates the subjective culture of the other” (Triandis, 1972, p. 344).

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"Problemas en Contactos Interculturales:

313

Revicibn de la Literatura"

Se llevb a cabo una examinacio'n de la literatura que trata con eltema de1 malentendimiento entre personas envueltas en relaciones interculturales. Las dimensiones de 10s problemas se bosquejaron usando 10s siguientes subtitutos: cultura subjetiva, construccidn social de la realidad; comunicacibn intercultural; estereotipos, etnocentrismo y prejuicio; factores de tiempo; distancia cultural; personalidad; contact0 y attitudes. Adema's, se hizo una descripci6n de varies modes que han sido usados en la investigacio'n de problemas de contactos interculturales en organizaciones internacionales. En ana'lisis critic0 revela que las mas significantes brechas en el conocimiento actual de 10s problemas se haya al nivel interpersonal. Se hacen sugerencias sobre la clase de investigaciones que demandan atencion urgente.