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I often wonder if part of America's productivity can be attributed to the shortness of this list. It's just a handful of expressions that are mildly misleading

I often wonder if part of America's productivity can be attributed to the shortness of this list. It's just a handful of expressions that are mildly misleading. In other cultures, you have to get together with friends over dinner to discuss the hidden meaning of a single suspect word your boss had used that day. High context cultures take a lot of mental effort.

Jolter 7y ago
Examples?
- newsbinator 7y ago
  One story comes to mind, though it's not so much about productivity. A friend in South Korea was running late to the office (I think it was Samsung?). He made it in by his start time and went into the office bathroom for a quick shave. His direct superior happened to walk in. As the boss was washing his hands next to my friend, he said something like, "make sure you do a thorough job of shaving" (though obviously not as awkwardly). Other Koreans who heard the story confirmed this probably meant: "I see what you're doing: get yourself in order this one time, and if I ever catch you shaving at work again you're toast". (Note this was about 15 years ago, and I hear Samsung and most of the other Chaebol have mellowed out a great deal since then)
bjornsteffanson 7y ago
Which cultures would be considered high-context? (Genuinely curious)
- newsbinator 7y ago
  Not sure if everybody would agree, but here's one chart I found: https://online.seu.edu/wp-content/uploads/795x400-InternationalBusiness-Chart-SEU.png https://online.seu.edu/wp-content/uploads/795x400-Internatio... > In high-context communication, a message cannot be understood without a great deal of background information. Asian, African, Arab, central European and Latin American cultures are generally considered to be high-context cultures. https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-cultures/ https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-culture...
  - stfwn 7y ago
    Cultures that differ the most from author’s require most context to be understood by author? Hardly surprising. The quoted source is an anthropological work from 1959, a time when anthropology still wanted to be a natural science. These sort of generalizations do not go over well in contemporary cultural anthropology.
sideshowb 7y ago
Only a small part of the productivity, if so. I suspect larger parts come from offshoring the less productive industries (as we have done in the UK) and actually optimizing for productivity at national/cultural/political level (which I think is optimizing for the wrong thing. Truckloads of salary but only 2 weeks holiday? No thanks!). A related thought however is whether such lists, for any given culture, tend to grow over time, like special cases in legacy software, until the overhead of working with complexity exceeds the cost of starting a new culture afresh..?

Jolter 7y ago

Examples?

newsbinator 7y ago
One story comes to mind, though it's not so much about productivity. A friend in South Korea was running late to the office (I think it was Samsung?). He made it in by his start time and went into the office bathroom for a quick shave. His direct superior happened to walk in. As the boss was washing his hands next to my friend, he said something like, "make sure you do a thorough job of shaving" (though obviously not as awkwardly). Other Koreans who heard the story confirmed this probably meant: "I see what you're doing: get yourself in order this one time, and if I ever catch you shaving at work again you're toast". (Note this was about 15 years ago, and I hear Samsung and most of the other Chaebol have mellowed out a great deal since then)

bjornsteffanson 7y ago

Which cultures would be considered high-context? (Genuinely curious)

newsbinator 7y ago
Not sure if everybody would agree, but here's one chart I found: https://online.seu.edu/wp-content/uploads/795x400-InternationalBusiness-Chart-SEU.png https://online.seu.edu/wp-content/uploads/795x400-Internatio... > In high-context communication, a message cannot be understood without a great deal of background information. Asian, African, Arab, central European and Latin American cultures are generally considered to be high-context cultures. https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-cultures/ https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-culture...
- stfwn 7y ago
  Cultures that differ the most from author’s require most context to be understood by author? Hardly surprising. The quoted source is an anthropological work from 1959, a time when anthropology still wanted to be a natural science. These sort of generalizations do not go over well in contemporary cultural anthropology.

sideshowb 7y ago

Only a small part of the productivity, if so. I suspect larger parts come from offshoring the less productive industries (as we have done in the UK) and actually optimizing for productivity at national/cultural/political level (which I think is optimizing for the wrong thing. Truckloads of salary but only 2 weeks holiday? No thanks!). A related thought however is whether such lists, for any given culture, tend to grow over time, like special cases in legacy software, until the overhead of working with complexity exceeds the cost of starting a new culture afresh..?