German And Indonesian Cultures: Comparing Working Styles

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Introduction

Culture is a characteristic or identity of people who live in a certain area. It is arises from daily actions taken by the community to create habits and finally became the culture of the community. So, we can say culture affects people’s lives in socialization, consumption and modernization. Therefore, culture create characteristics of people. In business, people also bring their culture into the business. Business is people’s activity who is connected with products and services to achieve a goal, which is profit or money. If the business expand to other regions or other countries, understanding the region or country culture is necessary.

Communication becomes one of the key success in business, especially for international business (Gibson, 2002, p.1). In international business, every organization tries to utilize theirs cultural specialties to communicate among others. Verbal and non-verbal communication is important to run the business. Most International businesses would employ domestic and foreign people. This builds diversity in the company. Usually, people do business with people they like, trust and in the same culture. The company should anticipate this issue by combining all domestic and foreign employees. Besides employee, culture can determine success and failure of the business, it helps the company for taking the decision and negotiation (Schwartz & Davis, 1981). Negotiation with different culture is harder. Miscommunication is usually the main problem in negotiating because the point that we want to deliver is not the same and also leads to different ideas. Tolerance in culture is not only applied in businesses but also applied in daily life and environment. People’s personalities can be changed by their environment, specially for millenials. In this paper, I will analyze the cultural differences in Germany and Indonesia. The reason I compare Germany and Indonesia because I grew up in Indonesia and now I live in Germany for a long period.

Findings

Cross-cultural began to see everywhere in the country. For example, in international offices there will be foreign employees and mostly people who do cross-cultural more tolerable. Indonesia is located in South East Asia and it has 16,056 islands, the islands make Indonesia has more than 300 ethnics (Kusnandar, 2019). And Germany is located in West Europe and becomes the highest population in Europe (‘Where is Germany?’, 2015). The similarities of Germany and Indonesia in business is: they are leading businesses among their respective continent (‘Index of Economic Freedom: Promoting Economic Opportunity and Prosperity by Country’, 2019).

According Browaeys & Price (2015), there are eight components in cross-cultural framework. In this paper, I will take four components to compare Germany and Indonesian cultures, which are time focus, power, action, and communication. As stated in the introduction, communication is important in running the business. According to Browaeys & Price (2015), There are two kinds of communication in cross-cultural, which are high context and low context. In Indonesia, high context communication means the communication is not well received. In a high context culture, the communication more focus on how to deliver the message rather than the meaning of the messages because they argue open communication leads to conflicts. On the other hand, German has different ways to communicate, which is low context communication. The information on this communication will represent the whole meaning of the message.

Times focus in Indonesia are polychronic because Indonesian people are more flexible for the times. Polychronic means the speed of culture is more relaxed, maintaining harmonious relationship is more important, so time is used more flexibility (Kristof, 2019). Based on my experiences, in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta, when I want to do my group meeting at 1 PM, usually it will be delayed for 2 or 3 hours because we can accept the lateness reason and also we try to avoid the conflict about times. However in German’s people are monochronic because they are more strict to their times, German’s people believe time can not be repeated, so they need to use their time efficient and effective. Monochronic is a concept that explains time as linear and divided (Kristof, 2019). More specifically, the monochronic view of time is the time should be managed and shared by scheduling and agreements. Their activities are structured and scheduled linearly, based on the objectives, the efficiency of implementation and the progress of the economy. Monochronic culture argues be on time will be fix everything. Based on my experience living in Germany for 4 months, people here more punctuality. One day, I had a group meeting at my university at noon, and I came late for an hour when I arrive all of my group members already arrive and start the group meeting. At that time, I feel embarrassed because I came late.

For power in cross cultural, there are two kinds, which are hierarchy and equality. In Indonesia, the power in Indonesia’s company is hierarchy. Hierarchy cultural or large power is based on structure and control (Mischke, 2009). it’s is more formal and strict. The value of hierarchical culture is consistency. The advantages of hierarchical culture are reliable planning so produce high quality products and services, timely delivery and low operating costs. Management must ensure job certainty and predictability. When I did my internship in oil and gas company, I did observation. The company always held meeting regularly to control the company. The power in Indonesia is different with German. German company’s power is equality, equality is the other side from hierarchy. Equality cultural or small power is more flexible, sometimes, it leads to bend the rules (Mischke, 2009). All employees are equals so they can share their thoughts to the managers.

The company’s action is important to running the business, unfortunately, the region of the company affects the way the employee works. There are two kinds of actions, which are doing and being. In cross-cultural framework, polychronic and hierarchy are recognized as doing cultures. Nonetheless, monochronic and equality are reflect on being cultures (Knight, n.d., 2019). Indonesian company uses doing cultures for their business, it means the employees work together to finish their jobs, meanwhile, it’s hard for employees to get a promotion in the company. And also the employees can share their opinion with their senior not directly to managers. However, in Germany, the action is being cultures. The employees work individually because position is important for them. Education titles also important for German people, to show their status in society.

Conclusion

In conclusion, German and Indonesian have different cultures. I believe cultural differences lead to issues. Nevertheless, the differences in cultures does not mean negative way. In this era, adaptation is a necessity because it helps people in real life. But, adaptation of cultures is also not easy, I have experienced this situation. Since I grew up in Indonesia and I just move to Germany. In the beginning, it is not easy to do adaptable and feel uncomfortable, but, day by day I got used to it.

In this paper, I differentiate German and Indonesian based on a cross-cultural framework from Breaways & Prices (2015) especially in businesses. There are four components in this paper, which are time focus, power, action, and communication. Every component explain the characteristics of business model in the country more details. From the framework, there are differences in running businesses. In Indonesia, the employee working in a group, office hours for Indonesian employees also flexible. The employee in Indonesia is unable to express their opinion freely due to the working environment provide, only certain employees that have the same status can deliver opinions freely. And also the communication among employees are complicated because they try to avoid misunderstanding. However, in Germany, the employees do their jobs individually because they are looking for promotion, the office hour in Germany more strict than Indonesia because German people think time is very important and can not be replaced. In a group discussion, the employee can state their opinion freely to increase company performance, for communication, German people state their thoughts directly. This paper also recommends people who want to live outside. Firstly, open-mindedness is important. Cultures create people’s personalities, meanwhile, it is hard to change it. Secondly, to understand other cultures. As an immigrant, culture is important to avoid misunderstanding. And lastly, prepare the mental to decrease culture shock.

References

Browaeys, M., & Price, R. (2015). Understanding Cross-Cultural Management. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Canada.
Gibson, R. (2002). Intercultural Business Communication (p.1). Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://books.google.de/books?hl=en&lr=&id=qa3Vhhd4IGsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP10&dq=communication+in+business&ots=ewBemPE_B6&sig=k68rBrUGXJg1QmNXbpK_bX89xeY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=communication%20in%20business&f=false
Index of Economic Freedom: Promoting Economic Opportunity and Prosperity by Country. (2019). Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://www.heritage.org/index/
Intercultural Communication: High and Low Context Cultures. (2016). Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-cultures/
Knight, A. Doing & Being Cultures. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://smallplanetstudio.com/doing-being-cultures/
Kristof. (2019). Monochronic vs Polychronic: Cultural differences explained. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://habitgrowth.com/polychronic-vs-monochronic/
Kusnandar, V. (2019). Jumlah Pulau di Indonesia Berkurang Menjadi 16 Ribu | Databoks. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2019/06/12/jumlah-pulau-di-indonesia-berkurang-menjadi-16-ribu
Matthews, L., & Thakkar, B. The Impact of Globalization on Cross-Cultural Communication. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/38267/…on_cross_cultural_communication.pdf
Mischke, W. (2009). Understanding the culture scale, Equality/Hierarchy, through the lens of honor & shame. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://wernermischke.org/2009/11/17/equality-hierarchy/
Schwartz, H. and Davis, S.M. (1981) Matching Corporate Culture and Business Strategy. Organizational Dynamics, 10, 30-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(81)90010-3
Where is Germany?. (2015). Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://www.worldatlas.com/eu/de/where-is-germany.html

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German And Indonesian Cultures: Comparing Working Styles

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