Customer Reviews

Riding the Waves of Culture

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This is a shorter, and more condensed version of the authors' earlier book 'Building Cross Cultural Competence'. In this book, the authors' target managers and business people who are looking to understand cultural differences and how to deal with them in a variety of circumstances and situations. Each chapter begins with am introduction to one of the dimensions, a discussion of how the differences manifest themselves and concludes with 'tips' on how to deal, and how to do business, with the different culture explored in that chapter.

The authors use the same six dimensions of culture introduced in their earlier work (universalism vs. particularism; individualism vs communitarism; specificity vs. diffusion; achieved status vs. ascribed status; inner direction vs. outer direction; and sequential time vs. synchronous time), but they present these dimensions in a much more accessible and simple manner with more emphasis on what each dimension actually means for business people and how it affects business-related situations.

This book has become the reference for business people and managers in the area of culture. Simple and very well written without losing credibility; this is a book that will enlighten and guide any manager in dealing with people from other cultures. While in some ways it is a 'western-centric' book (targeted to Western - especially US - managers), it remains very useful for managers from other cultures since the authors have attempted to keep the examples and discussion culturally neutral.

Do you travel beyond your border? For work? For pleasure? This book will keep you from making some terrible mistakes communicating and understanding other foreign nationals.

For example, when do you respect rules over relationships? In Germany rules rule, in South Korea, relationships overshadow the law.

Fascinating reading, incredible insights - you won't be disappointed in the usefulness of this work.

Having read a number of books on intercultural management, I can only say that in my opinion, "Riding the Waves of Culture" is by far the best book on this subject. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner present the results of their research on cultural differences in a most engaging way. Their book is a quick read that is full of wonderful anecdotes about cross-cultural business dilemmas. The stories are presented in a way that demonstrates great awareness of and respect for very diverse approaches to business. The authors also offer a methodology for reconciling value differences that incorporates the best of both worlds.

I work in a large international ag company. I've been working on a project on how to approach the challenges of language and culture in fully integrated cross-hemisphere teams. I've done a lot of reading of articles and books. This book is the best resource I have found. Trompenaars gives you a framework to begin to think about and understand the differences between cultures. What makes this really valuable is that the information on how specific cultures operate within this framework is based on a database of reponses from more than 30,000 managers around the world. The book is full of specific examples and data to support conclusions.

The results are in: All of those stereotypes that we've been told to forget are, in fact, true. At least, that's what a survey of 30,000 people from 31 nations suggests. The data paints some familiar pictures: the inflexible German, the vacillating Frenchman and the pushy American. The statistics from the survey support the conclusions reached by authors Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner in the earlier, first edition of this book: Don't base business decisions on the rhetoric that people are the same regardless of race, color or creed. They aren't! Academically organized, dense with anecdotes and, this time, thoroughly documented, Riding the Waves of Culture is entertaining at least, and possibly essential in this global age. We [...] recommend this book to any professional approaching an international management task, or overseeing a business that stretches across regional boundaries.

Fons Trompenaars's "Riding the Waves of Culture" is an excellent explication of the difficulties in conducting business in an increasingly globalized marketplace. He and his colleagues have made use of an extensive database to dimensionalize culture in way that is understandable to executives and students alike. In fact, I will be using this in my MBA Cross-Cultural Management course this year for just that reason.

One of the keenest insights in the book is that culture has its origins in how various societies have solved dilemmas relating to relationships with people, time and the environment. It is from this core that arise the seven dimensions of culture.

It is also critically important that practicing managers--and my MBA students--get away from the idea of "one best way" management. That is, there are probably no universal solutions to management problems. To use the catch phrase from contingency theorists: "It all depends."

However, we cannot uncritically accept the entire text. I think that in their zeal to get managers to move away from one size fits all solutions, they have overlooked how the global economy today is demanding that businesses of all stripes and origins fall in line with global "rules of the game." For example, today the Big 5 accounting firms must indicate in their audits if international standards were followed, or local ones. While it is possible to keep two sets of standards, this will be untenable in the long run, thus the capital markets will have enforced their own preferred solutions on businesses independent of culture.

That type of thing will occur more and more as the world gets increasingly close linked. And, if you standardize systems, some so you will begin to standardize organizations--at least at the structural/systemic level.

At some level also, the book devolves to "do this thing and its opposite", and that prescription managers will find impossible to sustain. While it is true that Scott Fitzgerald lauded this capability--to keep two opposing thoughts in your head simultaneously--in practice, most managers will be unable to function at this level.

Finally, there is a small, but annoying, underlying tone in many European management writings today of: "Well, but not the American way." This is true of this text as well. Yes, some of my fellow management scholars decry what they see as a hegemony of North American management thought. However, the success of the American globalized system in the last decade provides its own best argument.

This is a well-written book, which provides a solid approach to dealing with cross-cultural issues with many excellent examples and statistics. The central purpose of this work is to dispel the idea that there is one correct management model. In addition to initiating the reader into the world of cultural diversity as seen in a business setting, the authors also analyse concrete steps for reconciling cultural dilemmas.

Like many other books in this genre, this book equates culture with the boundaries of the nation states and all countries are treated as monolithic cultures. This may lead readers to assume that once I learn about American of British behaviour, I can predict how any American or Brit would act in a certain situation.

Recommended for managers in multicultural organizations, especially those involved in the process of internationalisation. Students of cross cultural studies and HR-practitioners would also find this book useful.

This review is difficult to write. On one hand, I really liked the book, but on the other hand, I had a lot of trouble getting through it and felt it to be boring at times. Part of it relates to the writing, part of it related to the verbosity. Anyways.

"Riding the Waves of Culture" is one of the well-known books on cultural dimensions (the most famous other one being the work of Geert Hofstede Cultures and Organizations: Software for the Mind, Third Edition). Trompenaars has collected a enormous amount of cultural survey results from many different countries. In this book, he shares some of the questions and the conclusions he drew based on the answers. Based on these survey results, he created seven cultural dimensions as a way to think about different cultural differences.

The book consists of 15 chapters. The three chapters provide an introduction. The next even chapters cover the seven cultural dimensions. Chapter 11-13 discuss organizations, organizational cultures and ways to reconcile cultural differences. The last two chapters (which I found least interesting) look at cultural differences within a country, one in South Africa and one in the US.

One of the key themes throughout Trompenaars book is that different management techniques should depend on the different cultures and that there are no universal management techniques (argument starting in chapter 2). Though, I do not disagree with his perspective, I do find it somewhat simplistic. For example, he gives the example that individual rewards will work well in a US or North European culture, but wouldn't work in a more collective (he calls communitatian) culture. That while at the moment there is a lot of criticism that individual rewards do not work well in US/North Europe (e.g. the work of Dan Pink Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) and, on the other hand, I've seen individual rewards thrive in India/China (thrive as being popular, not as being working) which are countries which, according to their culture, they shouldn't work at all. Trompenaars is careful drawing too big conclusions though and talks about countries 'dancing on the dimensions' which allows him to withdraw from making any harsh conclusions :)

Chapter 4-10 relate to the seven cultural dimensions that Trompenaars defined, they are: Universalism vs particularism, individualism vs communitarianism, neutral vs emotional, specific vs diffuse, achievement vs ascription, attitudes to time, and attitudes to the environment. Each chapter discusses the dimensions and covers some of the specific questions that were asked during his survey. Each chapter ends advise on how to deal with the opposite dimensions' culture.

Another theme in this book is the need for reconciling cultures. The need for not taking one extreme perspective and yet not losing your own culture. The need to understanding the others culture and taking that into account when working with them (especially chapter 12-13). I do like this approach, though at times I felt the book was a little vague and abstract, even with the concrete questions it posed.

All in all, Riding the Waves of Culture is a good book, but it wasn't an exceptional book. For me, I had trouble getting through it and I guess that it had to do with the writing style. At times it was hard to follow and contained too many words. Rating-wise, I was doubting between a 4 stars (a really good book) and 3 stars (a book that covers the topic, but wasn't exceptional) and decided to go with 3 stars. The main reason for that was the writing and the trouble I had getting through the book. If you look for *one* book to read on cultural differences, this is not the one. If you are very interested in knowing a lot about cultures, then this is a must read.

This book is deservedly already an international management classic, and should be required reading for anybody who needs to interact with other nationalities and cultures. Hofstede got there first with his classifications of cultural dimensions, but Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars' are arguably more compelling, and - more importantly - the book is both highly readable and replete with case studies. It gives American and Northern European business people insights into why their assumptions about what motivates people from other parts of the world are wrong, and why so many US-centered initiatives founder on the rocks of unrecognized cultural differences. Send a copy to the White House!

This book was used as the core text in a Master Level course I took in Global Leadership.

It frankly is one of the best books I have ever read which surprises me even, given that it was used in this context from a primarily academic point of view. I did not expect this book to be as readable and as practical as I found it to be.

First, it's important to note the book's own disclaimer from the earliest pages. This is not a book that assumes nor is it designed to explain to the reader how other culture's think and function to where a reader will come away with a complete grasp of other cultures. Frankly, that is a nearly impossible task. If you're looking for a book on cultural etiquette that will catalog and recount all the possible missteps and misunderstandings that can occur when different cultures meet, this is not your book.

What this book does is break cultural elements into general categories and through the use of an extensive database of about 50,000 managers from around the world, it demonstrates how different cultures, defined primarily by national boundaries, approach universal challenges and compares them by use of a sliding scale between two identified extremes.

This is done for 7 different cultural elements. An example and the first element explored, would be the tendency toward Universalism versus Particularism. Universalism is the tendency of people within a specific culture to appeal to concepts of social justice, absolute values or the like and guide their individual decisions on that basis. This is a fairly high tendency with the United States for example. Particularism, on the other hand, is the tendency to define such choices more on the basis of one's relationship to the people involved rather than principles that apply in every situation. Russia and Venezuela (interestingly enough, both nations which seem perpetually at odds with the US and criticized by Americans for being "corrupt") are examples of nations that score higher in this realm.

While it can be a little dry to read through these elements, the authors do a good job of balancing data and theory with illustrations from real life and a continuing scenario that is returned to several times illustrating these elements in the context of a multi-national firm's managers meeting.

The primary value of this book for me has been the ability to suspend and step outside of my own biases, prejudices and stereotypes and from a more objective position, see and understand how different cultures approach situations. When that can be achieved then there is a better chance of coming up with a solution that will make sense and achieve a desired end, than when the noise common to cross-cultural or multi-cultural situations is left to reign free.

The authors are European and management consultants in the field. As a revision to a prior edition, this most recent book has expanded the value of the base concepts by including 2 additional chapters. One looks at South Africa which is a case study of multiculturalism within a single nation and it helps to identify what is no doubt true in other nations as well, namely that even with the measurements and objective evaluations of the earlier chapters, it is still important to do your homework and recognize that cultural nuances exist within the country by other factors such as ethnic group.

Illustrating this point even further is the final chapter which focuses upon the differences found within management task roles in the same firm and the same country. This is a little anticlimatic in some ways as it serves to diminish the value of the generalizations drawn earlier in the book, but it does serve to reinforce the warning of assuming too high a level of familiarity and thus moving from confidence into arrogance.

This book should be required reading not only for the business community moving toward multi-nationalism or transnationalism, but also for diplomatic personnel, world travellers or anyone wanting to raise their cultural IQ and sensitivity to different situations.

5 Stars. Buy this one to keep in your professional reference library.

Bart Breen