Dealing with Culture

You have a mountain of information on how to deal with cultural differences but you will not find the answer in it. The reason is simple: dealing with cultural differences depends ultimately on you as an individual person. The number of people who wrote that book for one’s own consumption only is small. This course indicates what might be included or not. Things that you do always right, have no claim for inclusion. Some need only to be mentioned and others discussed at length.

The six main topics of this course are communication; dealing with culture abroad; dealing with culture at home; general aspects; individual aspects; and cultural competence (including experience); the cauldron with all necessary ingredients. If you need more, you can easily find it. The six topics are like a frame, enabling you to orden the information. 

Dealing with cultural differences at home is often neglected. However, every meeting of two people includes already cultural differences. At the other end of the scale multicultural society demands more consideration of cultural differences. Thirdly, probably every organisation fits in an international context, whether the people in that organisation are aware of it or not. Business in particular has a lot of international aspects, even if you leave your office only for going home afterwards. Once you recognise this international context, you have to take the cultural aspects into consideration.