Anthony White Blog #3

For this blog, I will discuss the the four dimensions of natural culture in the Cross-Culture Diversity article. These dimensions are individualism/ collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity/ femininity.

I would like to bring up the "Kitchen Nightmares" example shown in class. The example shows all four decisions very well. For individualism/ collectivism, the two owners showed a unique type of strong individualism between to two of them and the rest of their staff. There is also a case to be made that the two of them could be considered in a collective sense because it was only the two of them doing the work.

Uncertainty avoidance was the most interesting to figure out because there was almost a defined certainty. For example, if a member of the staff questioned or spoke up about an issue with the two owners, they were shut down immediately. I suppose one could say there was a "certain avoidance" between the owners and the staff. The more "experienced" staff knew their issues would be certainly avoided" be the owners. Thus, nothing would get resolved.

The power distance between the owners and the staff, too me, was the most obvious of the four dimensions. There was a feeling of a "war" that was imminent because the power distance was so great. It was not in any of the staff members' right to speak their mind if they had an issue.

As tradition says, masculinity/ femininity is essentially man/ woman traits. In this case, it seemed about a 50/50 balance between the owners. An argument could be made that the balance, sometimes, swings in the polar opposite direction to what tradition says. The female owner showed a more masculine side, where the male owner showed a more feminine side at times. Personally, these traits come down to personality, and who shows masculinity/ femininity through their personality.