Language and Culture

This writer chose to write about culture in regards to behaviors and orientation at work. This writer chose to write on this topic as she is a social worker by profession and this topic is of interest to her. This writer also felt that this topic fit in well with the required readings in regards to culture and globalization. In the Harvard Business Review Article entitled “Common Language Doesn’t Equal Common Culture (Molinsky, 2013) the author states that most American business people when traveling to a business meeting to places like China, Japan, Korea, India, etc., will utilize a cultural guide book to help understand how they are supposed to behave in a new place. However when traveling to a place like London, they are pretty sure they can make it on their own as the assumption is that the British and American people are alike in regards to behaviors and orientation at work.

Molinsky (2013) however suggests that just because two cultures share a common language or are in a similar part of the world does not necessarily mean that they share a common business culture. For instance, Molinsky (2013) begins by discussing the topic of self-promotion, which he considers to be one of the strongest differences he found during his year-long research in the U.S. and UK. Molinsky (2013) stated that anyone familiar with U.S. business communication culture knows that Americans are not shy about talking about their accomplishments and selling themselves, whether it be at job fairs, interviews, sales calls, performance evaluations, or when competing for prized internal assignments and positions. Overall, self-promotion has clearly proven to be a necessary and useful skill for getting ahead in the U.S. professional world.

In the UK however, overt self-promotion is uncommon as well as taboo. Molinsky (2013) states that most British people are pretty uncomfortable with receiving public praise