American Culture Analysis Based on Hofstede

1. CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS

UNITED STATES

To be able to enable a good negotiation is crucial to know the main cultural aspects of people from countries involves in negotiation, in this case United States, to have a better choice to understand their behavior, and thus can establish closer links between the parts, what will make the negotiation easier.

American society is very individualistic, what means that the interests and rights of each person are more important than the group or community ones. This implies that one of the most important objectives for the people from USA is to maintain or increase the personal welfare. They also feel independent which can be interpreted as they can make decisions by themselves without any kind of approval because they are adequately trained. The capability to achieve objectives is highly valued on this society as well, to the extent that the achievements of each person define their position in society.

According to communication, US is a low context culture. It refers that they are direct and explicit in this field. People prefer forthright information and not to mask it, because it can involve confusion and different ways of interpretation, what has to be taken into account at the time to specify the scope of the different topics to be treated into the negotiation: they has to be sufficiently clear and precise.

For American people time is money. Life style is, in general, very busy and tiring, and they really believe that “fast” is good. If someone can do something in less time than another one is better because is more efficient. Efficiency is considered like a basic principle in whatever thing they do. Other characteristic is that they use to be more rational than other cultures. Then for people from USA is very important to separate the private and professional life. They are not driven