Culture Acculturation

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Acculturation When an expatriate comes to another country, two different cultures confront each other and interact involving changes, what we call acculturation. First defined as the phenomena raising from the continuous and direct contact between people from different cultural backgrounds, as well as the changes operating in these different cultures (Redfield, Linton and Herskovits, 1936 pp. 149), we can advance that it is the way two different cultures are interacting to threat their differences. Further researches clamed it is a process with different observable phases with often a dominant culture involving a transformation or the lost of one culture. Within an organisation or a society, three main models can be observed. The assimilation…show more content…
Berry propose a framework considering the cultural maintenance, ie to what extent the ethnic identity and customs seen as important, and the cultural contact, dealing with the level of participation in the dominant culture (Berry, Poortinga and Pandey, 1997, pp. 296). Based on this, four main levels can be observed. The assimilation as seen before, with a high cultural participation but a low maintenance, the segregation which propose the exact contrary, the integration similar to the pluralism, and the marginalization without any communication between the different cultures. Other researchers defined then the acculturation as an interactive and dynamic process between the two cultural groups according to their acculturation orientations (Bourhis et al., 1997). In fact, conflicts raise when these orientations are not concordant or opposite. For instance, the host country may be more keen to prefer assimilation whereas the minority integration or segregation provoking a disagreement on the maintenance or both cultural maintenance and participation. One orientation of an ethnic group can influence the other as the dynamic framework proposed argued that when the minority adopts a separation attitude, the host majority can pass from integration orientations to segregation or…show more content…
We can consider that four kind of teams exist (Adler, 1991). In a homogeneous team, all the members share the same background and analyse and perceive a situation in a similar way. A token team presents only one member without the same background while a bicultural team is composed of two homogeneous groups, represented in an equal proportion or not. The majority is more about to dominate. In multicultural team, more than three different cultures are represented favouring cross-cultural interactions. Cross-cultural are broadly used in a business environment to design the interactions of people from different cultures bringing their own perspectives and values. Training and support is usually necessary to reach an effective cross-cultural environment (Usunier, 2007). These various compositions of team involve different responses and are not often all considered as productive. Multicultural team are abler to use their diversity to create a synergy and a proper group, enhancing their differences to create valuable ideas and be proficient, and decreasing their differences when it appears to be less productive (Adler and Gundersen, 2008). Token teams faces more issues creating such synergies as the integration of the token is more difficult. In fact, researches agree to declare that the addition of the individual contributions is less
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