Communication Between Cultures

Other Cultural Pattern Typologies

With this understanding of the dominant U.S. culture values, you are now ready for

a more comprehensive exploration of cultural pattern typologies and to begin mak-

ing some cross-cultural comparisons. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, scholars

have devised a number of taxonomies that can be used to analyze key behavioral

patterns found in almost every culture. Amongthose classification listings, several

seem to be at the core of most intercultural communication studies, and we will

look at seven of them.

There are, however, other important typologies that you should be aware of,

which, due to limited space, cannot be covered in this text. Probably the two most

significant are the GLOBE Study and work by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner.

The GLOBE Study is an ongoing research project investigating the relationship

between social culture, organizational culture, and leadership within organizations.

The extensive project has involved approximately 170 international researchers and

more than 17,000 managers from over 900 organizations across sixty-one societies

from fifty-eight nations. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s work extends over

twenty years and focuses on the role of culture in international business and cross-

cultural management. They examine five different cultural orientations and cultural

differences in attitudes toward time and the environment.^31

Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s Value Orientations

32

The first taxonomy of cultural orientations comes from the anthropological work of

Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck. They based their research on the idea that every individ-

ual, regardless of culture, must deal with five universal questions, referred to as“value

orientations.”These“orientations,”or patterns, inform members of a culture what is

important and provide them guidance for living their lives. After extensive study,

they concluded that all people turn to their culture for help in answering the same

five basic questions:

1.What is the character of human nature?

2.What is the relation of humankind to nature?

3.What is the orientation toward time?

4.What is the value placed on activity?

5.What is the relationship of people to each other?

As with all the cultural value typologies you will study, Kluckhohn and

Strodtbeck’s orientations (see Table 6.2) are best visualized as points along a contin-

uum. Moving through the five orientations (human nature, person/nature orientation,

time, activity, and relational orientation), you will notice that although they have

different names, some of the characteristics are similar to the ones discussed in other

taxonomies in this chapter. This is understandable because the different classifications

are focused on the meaningful values underpinning all cultures. Hence, some of the

classifications track the same or similar patterns.

214 CHAPTER 6•Cultural Values: Road Maps for Behavior

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