How Culture Affect How We Work

Questions: 1. Write down one of your favorite childhood stories what life lesson does it teach? 2. Do you think Pattanaiks approach to work environment culture could be applied to your own country justify your answer? Answer: 1. Culture varies from one region to another. Many cultures are ranging from gender, family, generational, sexual orientation, religious, national, educational, corporate to professional. All these cultures in one way or the other impact on how people work, how they interact and how they communicate. This paper focuses mostly on how culture affects how people work. To extensively and comprehensively illustrate the above statement, the paper commences by illustrating a favorite childhood story as well the lesson it teaches about culture. While was a still a little kid I had an opportunity to visit my mothers workplace. My mother was working in an organization where the majority of the people were from both Eastern and Western cultures. Despite, being a little child I was able to observe the diversity portrayed by the two cultures while at the workplace. Western cultures were strongly individualistic whereby they seemed to focus more on the individual than a collective group. Western culture does not put a lot emphasis on the team performance but instead puts into consideration individual achievement and performance. I also noticed that western culture communication does not have established hierarchy and hence someone is not startled even when talking in front of the boss. Contrarily, Eastern culture is quite different. The culture largely focus on the team than on the individual. People are expected to think regarding their group identity before having a notion of an individual identity. Alternatively, Eastern cultu re communication seems to follow a hierarchy unlike it is in the case of the Western culture. From the above childhood story, it conclusively comes out clearly that the influence of culture on how people work varies from one region to another. 2. According to Pattanaik (2016) culture is constructed but is not a natural phenomenon. Therefore, people should not be tied to the culture which is passed from one generation to another in the form of symbols and stories. Instead, they should look at the world from the cyclical point of view but not direct perception(Pattanaik, 2016). This will create a sense of viewing the world as infinity instead of viewing it as a single element. Pattanaik goes further and illustrates how people look at operations of the business through their own eyes. Pattanaik disputes this ideology and suggests that the best way to enhance business culture is by integrating the cultures of the customers in the target market in the operations of the business. Upon analyzing Pattanaik approach to work, this paper recommends the same approach should be applied in Switzerland. Business operations culture in Switzerland seems to incorporate the dynamics in the world of business culture. However, there is still a gap which needs to be addressed. The country business culture is based on linear, absolute, standardized and binary logic procedure. The culture focuses on adhering to all set ground rules and regulations. For example, discrimination which is portrayed against women job applicants seems to shun off the modern world way of doing business(ExpatFocus, 2015). Therefore, Switzerland should adopt workplace culture highlighted by Pattanaik. This will incorporate critical elements of the modern business culture which include being curvaceous, relative, contextual and able to express an opinion(Pattanaik, 2016). The paper concludes by looking at Dejoy (2005) article on workplace culture. Dejoy argued that culture should be flexible to accommodate the ever changing aspects in the field of business. The flexibility of the business culture will make it easy to embrace various cultures of the world. Upon analyzing Dejoy article, the paper finds that both Dejoy and Pattanaik agree that culture should be cyclical rather than be being linear. References Dejoy, D. M., 2005. Behavior change versus culture change: Divergent approaches to managing workplace safety. Safety Science, 43(2), p. 105129. ExpatFocus, 2015. Switzerland - Business and Workplace Culture. [Online] Available at: https://www.expatfocus.com[Accessed 12 February 2017]. Pattanaik, D., 2016. East Vs. West - The Myths That Mystify. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZKU_yDDKvM [Accessed 2 February 2017].