Culture has historically been a difficult term to define. There was an attempt in 1952 by Kroeber and Kluckholm to define culture and ended up with 164 definitions of "culture". Apte (1994), summarized the issue as "Despite a century of efforts to define the culture adequately, there was in the early 1990's no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature." Another interesting take on culture is that the distinction between culture and civilization is not well embedded in the English language and the fogginess of the distinction has been reinforced when powerful streams of English-speaking anthropologists suggested that both concepts are identical (Botz-Bornstein, 2012). One can draw from "Culture" (from Latin culture) that it refers to spiritual, intellectual and artistic phenomena and the term civilization (from Latin civis) refers to material, technical, economic and social facts (Botz-Bornstein, 2012). Even if it seems that simple, it is not always black and white as there are cases where the two concepts can not be distinguished.
So how do we define culture? According to Botz-Bornstein (2012), the definition of culture has an increasing intension as it depends on the concrete sense or the connotation of phenomena. The term culture is conceptually powerful only as long as it excludes most phenomena from itself and any extremely liberal idea of culture is useless.
Seeming that we could not pinpoint a true definition for culture and different countries having their own definition of culture based on their history can lead us to understand how culture has a strong impact on influence and negotiation activities. Those activities will be based on each of the persons involved history and their belief of how things should be done or have always been done within their culture. In international markets you can see how the impact would be great due to the different cultures that would be sitting at the table to discuss business. For example, when I started doing business in Latin America I was a young lad and it didn't help that I had a baby face and looked much younger than my age. The old guard at the time was used to doing business with men their age, which symbolized wisdom and maturity. I was in my late twenties but had to meet with CEO's, VP's and heads of departments. During the meetings they would not take me seriously and my age and experience would always come up and be discussed during the meetings. So I finally grew a goatie beard to look older and I have to say the meetings went longer, more business was closed and I got the respect I was looking for. In the US this would never happen but at the time that was the culture in Latin America.
This was a basic example but if two cultures do not respect each other or do not understand each other, the meaning of lost in translation can have a negative affect on the influence and negotiation activities in international markets.
References
Apte, M (1994). Language in socialcultural context. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol 4 (p; 2000-2010). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Botz-Bornstein. (2012, Spring). What is the Difference between Culture and Civilization? Two Hundred Fifty Years of Confusion. Comparative Civilizations Review. 66. (p. 10-12). ProQuest Research Library
So how do we define culture? According to Botz-Bornstein (2012), the definition of culture has an increasing intension as it depends on the concrete sense or the connotation of phenomena. The term culture is conceptually powerful only as long as it excludes most phenomena from itself and any extremely liberal idea of culture is useless.
Seeming that we could not pinpoint a true definition for culture and different countries having their own definition of culture based on their history can lead us to understand how culture has a strong impact on influence and negotiation activities. Those activities will be based on each of the persons involved history and their belief of how things should be done or have always been done within their culture. In international markets you can see how the impact would be great due to the different cultures that would be sitting at the table to discuss business. For example, when I started doing business in Latin America I was a young lad and it didn't help that I had a baby face and looked much younger than my age. The old guard at the time was used to doing business with men their age, which symbolized wisdom and maturity. I was in my late twenties but had to meet with CEO's, VP's and heads of departments. During the meetings they would not take me seriously and my age and experience would always come up and be discussed during the meetings. So I finally grew a goatie beard to look older and I have to say the meetings went longer, more business was closed and I got the respect I was looking for. In the US this would never happen but at the time that was the culture in Latin America.
This was a basic example but if two cultures do not respect each other or do not understand each other, the meaning of lost in translation can have a negative affect on the influence and negotiation activities in international markets.
References
Apte, M (1994). Language in socialcultural context. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol 4 (p; 2000-2010). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Botz-Bornstein. (2012, Spring). What is the Difference between Culture and Civilization? Two Hundred Fifty Years of Confusion. Comparative Civilizations Review. 66. (p. 10-12). ProQuest Research Library