I like to study intercultural differences. A few weeks back I had written about Microsoft’s goof-up in Russia that can be attributed to a cultural error of judgment. Today I came across another example of a gaping cultural difference.
Recently IHT carried a front-page story about Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan (“Dutch soldiers stress respect and restraint in Afghanistan”). It talks about the counterinsurgency tactics of a Dutch-led task force that emphasizes efforts to improve living conditions and self-governance, rather than hunting the Taliban’s fighters. Bloodshed is out. Reconstruction and diplomacy are in. Although this doctrine is not new, the Dutch have “the embraced this theory more fully than most, to the point that Dutch units now take steps to avoid military escalation and risk of damage to property or harm to civilians”. Not surprisingly the Dutch officers think that approach is “yielding promising results”.
Yet not everybody is convinced. The detractors feel that the formula is “out of balance, undermined by too great a reluctance to use force”. One Afghan translator all but calls the Dutch sissies. He says this about them…
If the fight starts, they run inside their vehicles every time… If you don’t fight, you cannot have peace in Afghanistan.
There are two different cultural frames of reference at work here. Geert Hofstede contrasts this as masculinity versus its opposite, femininity. The assertive pole is called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole ‘feminine’. Geert has done studies on most national cultures and, guess what, American society is staunchly “masculine” while Dutch society one of the most “feminine” in the world. The US score is a high 62 while the Dutch score is a low 14. You can see this cultural difference at work in Afghanistan. (Incidentally, India is 56, China is 66; all scores are here).
Ruud Lubbers example
This is not the first time the American and Dutch cultural differences on the masculine/feminine dimension have come out in the open. In 1995, Ruud Lubbers, one of the most successful and respected Prime Ministers the Netherlands has known was nominated for the job of Secretary General of NATO. But, unexpectedly, US vetoed him causing outrage in Europe. The headline in IHT says it all: Dutch See Humiliation by Washington After Lubbers Withdraws. What went wrong? Why did US use the veto?
Apparently, Lubbers was “vague”, a spokesperson was quoted as saying. ”I know he was a prime minister of the Netherlands for some ten years, but he did not impress us as powerful leader”.
Gross cross-cultural misunderstanding!
These kind of misunderstandings are not limited to just the political space. They are common in business as well. I have worked a little with Dutch employees at Lucent and I found that they do undersell themselves. They are very careful not to be seen as braggarts. To an uninitiated (American) manager they come across as lacking initiative.
This brings me to my main point. I feel that there is a pressing need for more intercultural awareness and education. Intercultural competence is now critical to growing open source type communities and for resolving conflicts in the non-hierarchical connect-and-collaborate workplace.
Dear Sharad,
Very different and interesting article.
I am surprised to find that Adolf Hitler arguably the world’s most masculine character has came form Austria which scores poorly in Masculinity Index(Manages only a meager 11).
Thanks,
Arun.PC
Hi Arun - I went back and checked the Masculinity score for Austria at the url that I mentioned in the post. It’s 79, which is the 3rd highest in the list. BTW, Austria is much higher than Germany (score: 66).