1. How would you explain the differences described in the incidents in terms of Hofstede's cultural dimensions?

2. What hints or tips would you give to each of the people to overcome cultural barriers?

Incidents:

Incident 1

Sarah Marshall is head of the business development group at a U.S.-based law firm. Recently she was assigned the task of winning a contract for a new project with the Colombian government. She was competing with teams from Spain and France. Sarah had quite a lot of background information on the proposed project and on the packages her competitors were offering. Based on this information and her organization's extensive resources, she felt confident that the company would win the contract. Sarah drew up a proposal that was time and cost-effective and designed a presentation based on convincing numbers and a persuasive argument. Arriving in Bogota the day before, Sarah personally made the sales pitch in which she detailed all the relevant facts, highlighted the various ways forward and made a clear recommendation of the best solution. She eventually lost the project to the Spanish team, even though her Colombian counterparts acknowledged the quality of her proposals.

Incident 2

Richard, a 50-year-old Australian, is part of a team of lawyers based in Paris. Claude, who is 48, serves as a member of Richards team. Claude works from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with an hour and a half for lunch. Richard is very pleased with the quality of Claude's work and her commitment to the team. Unfortunately, because of Richards extensive travel commitments abroad, he has never had the opportunity to have lunch with Claude or spend any time with her and the team outside the work environment. After a while, Richard asks to be addressed by his first name. Several months later, however, Claude is still calling him "Monsieur Lafleur" and addressing him with "Voulez-vous bien," although Richard calls her "Claude" and addresses her with "Veux-tu." Richard is puzzled and decides to talk to Claude about this matter in order to clarify the situation. To Richard's amazement, Claude replies that she prefers to call him by his surname and refer to him with the formal vous.

Incident 3

Karl, a Dutch lawyer, felt that his first business trip to Japan was going fairly well. He was determined to get to know his colleagues better and was particularly pleased to be invited out for drinks after work with most of the team, including the senior managers. At the bar, everyone was expected to entertain; even the senior staff got to sing karaoke songs or tell jokes. Everything seemed fairly informal and cooperative, with Karl's karaoke version of "Imagine" winning rapturous applause from the group. One of the senior managers even asked Karl for a repeat rendition later in the evening. Keeping this informality in mind, Karl scheduled a team meeting early the next morning to present a proposal for resolving a minor logistics problem he had noticed. He was surprised to be met with a wall of embarrassed silence and was noticeably excluded from informal exchanges as people left the meeting.

Incident 4

Rebecca, a recently recruited British executive in an international law firm, was asked to chair a meeting with her French and British colleagues. From Rebecca's point of view, the meeting went well. She did her utmost to make sure that everyone was heard and the relevant issues discussed and summarized in a diplomatic way. She even changed the agenda and extended the meeting to accommodate new issues that some British delegates had brought up. At the end of the meeting, Rebecca was shocked to hear one French colleague whisper to another, "Typical British, just typical. No proper preparation." She was even more surprised to hear the reply, "Yes, and they never say what they mean, do they?"