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A Review of
Asitimbay, Diane, What’s Up America? A Foreigner’s Guide to Understanding Americans. 2005 Culturelink Press, San Diego, CA, USA 0975-9276-0-4, 215pps. www.culturelinkpress.com.

Review by George F. Simons, co-author of The Cultural Detective USA, www.diversophy.com. If you want to get inside of US mindsets (they are plural) forget the travel books, the culture guides, and the tip sheets and grab a copy of What’s UP America? This book is a potent concoction—a journalist’s easy and friendly style and the ability to hear and respond to the FAQs about USians heard by the author in some 20 years of assisting international people to adjust to the USA.

What’s Up America? is like watching a series of video clips in which the reader gets to observe how diverse families, women and men of various ages and generations, as well as children feel and think as they go about everyday life in the USA. Its cinema verité lets us poke our noses into their houses, their cars, their kitchens (when not eating out), their schools, their workplaces and their shopping centers. It pictures and explains US values, attitudes and behavior around beauty and success, politics and patriotism, religion and superstition, family and friends, mating and retirement.

“A good wholesome girl from the Midwest,” as she describes herself, Diane Asitimbay has made good both in the Big Apple and the fleshpots of Southern California. She has worked and traveled extensively through Europe and Latin America and has navigated a multicultural marriage. She has lived to tell about what she has seen and heard in ways that newcomers want to know, and that reflect US natives to themselves, perhaps at times too close for comfort, a bit like a magnifying makeup mirror.

Asitimbay exposes the soft underbelly of US mores with both delight and dismay. Mostly she lets USians speak for themselves through what they do and how they think. Unlike Ted Stanger’s Sacrés Americains (when will someone please translate this so that USians can read it, too?!) Asitimbay’s judgments of her own people are neither ironic nor acidic. They simply flow from the facts and behaviors of US life and her ability to be honest about what she and many USians see and worry about.

What’s Up America? Is interspersed with illustrated pages that carry the punch of the some of the topics discussed, e.g., the kinds of friends we make and the houses we build as well as some that compare the US with other places or cultures. Comparisons can be odious but also enlightening. Asitimbay does not hesitate to compare—everything from transportation to pizza—to help the reader get a fix on how the US is different. Some of the author’s images both of USians and foreigners may be disputed as “not the whole picture.” This is inevitable in a brief practical exploration of culture. No doubt some US readers (remember they think of themselves as unique) will cry “stereotype” without examining the core of truth found even in most stereotypes.

This book deserves to be in the bag of goodies that every expat gets on his or her way to the American Dream. It is easy on ESL readers—just enough “in” terms and slang to encourage the foreigner to ask questions when he or she arrives. There are also some good explanations of words that have multiple overtones in US speech.

The book is well indexed, and even provides notes pages with wit and wisdom about the tribes of people that make up the USA. One of them cites Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribes.” What’s Up America? gives an intimate look at the tattoos and piercings that distinguish US folk from neighboring tribes.

A review of Davies, Paul, What's This India Business? Offshoring, Outsourcing and the Global Services Revolution. 2004. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing and Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. 233 pps. £20.00. $29.95. ISBN 1-904838-00-6. Review by George F. Simons, www.diversophy.com.

This next decade will certainly see an extraordinary and painful reorganization of the social, cultural and economic orders, first because of the increasing free movement of labor across borders, and secondly, and much
harder to manage, the free movement of work via telecommunications and information technology. Both create both new hopes and significant disruptions in the populations affected and the organizations that conduct them. Paul Davies, now MD of a consultancy for Onshore-Offshore, previously was responsible for transferring business processes to Unisys India. The fact that working for the Indian part of the organization is currently spoken of in Unisys in the USA as “joining the dark side” is a good indicator of the pain in this process.

What's This India Business? is about two things. Firstly, it unabashedly advocates offshoring as not only a given, but as a evolutionary inevitability for successful enterprises in the now and future global economy. Secondly, it is about India and its business culture, currently the outstanding example of the global trend to offshoring work in the service sector. As Davies puts it in his introduction, his book aims to help the reader “comprehend the scale of the change and what India can do for your business” and to help the reader be more on a par with the more extensive knowledge that his or her Indian counterpart is likely to have of Western business people and practices.

Davies starts with the basics of Indian economy, history and geography, what the business traveler can expect to find there. He follows this with a picture of the educational level of the people he or she will deal with. This is followed by a “primer of offshoring,” spelling out which business functions are suitable for offshoring and how one can to do this as safely as possible. Given the high failure rate of outsourcing projects, this is much needed advice.

The focus then turns to India’s role in the services revolution and the advantages which widespread English language competence and engineering education have given it in the IT marketplace. He answers questions about how one should approach this resource, align objectives, and structure relationships to do business together.

The second part of the book is a well-focused cultural briefing that concerns itself with what the eager entrepreneur is faced with having set foot in India. Like one who learns a foreign language to the point of being able to share humor and take pleasure in foreign company, Davies has learned to enjoy the differences and convert irritation into delight. Insights are shored by pungent anecdotes largely from the author’s first-hand experiences.

That being said, whatever the author’s personal successes in navigating the Indian business environment—and they appear considerable—this section tends to drift into imperially British wit, full of off-the-cuff judgments at the expense of Indian culture. While Brits may snigger at and lampoon the things that don’t work or work for them in Indian culture, this is at the expense of the host culture, and appears arrogant and somewhat off-putting to this reader. One only has to think of Peter Mayle whose Year In Provence and subsequent books regale British tourists and attract settlers with while leaving a trail of resentiment locally.

Once surviving on the ground in India, it is decision time. A solid cost-benefit analysis is needed and Davies stimulates the process of preparing a business plan that fits this new environment and the particular risks it brings to the business arrangement.

Chapter 12 carefully explores the rhythm of Indian style negotiation and provides valuable insights both into the processes one may encounter and into the need to control ones impulses when entering into the local rhythm of give and take. This negotiation does not end with the decision to hire or partner with an Indian firm. The following chapters are about how to manage in order to get the results you need from the arrangement, and how to leverage the advantages your Indian collaborators can bring to you, even opening doors in the Indian market itself.

Most of us have already been consciously or unconsciously impacted by the services we receive from offshore agents of the many companies we deal with. Recently I had the occasion to ask for customer service for a crisis with my laptop software while I was working in Europe. Idled by the situation, I waited for the better part of the business day be able to connect the supplier during their posted Silicon Valley office hours—8:00AM to 6:00PM PST, only to speak to a Mumbai technical support professional on night shift. Not only did the US company try to dissimulate its offshoring activity, but it could have easily have offered better service hours to their customers given their multiple service locations.

In a final chapter on “Corporate Social Responsibility” Davies identifies some of the public relations risks and a few of ethical dimensions that offshoring is bringing about both in the home workforce as well as in the society of the offshore workforce. There are some suggestions but few solutions to the disturbing social disruptions that are now beginning to surface.

Perhaps the directness of What's This India Business? will serve not only as a handbook to offshoring to India, but as a wake-up call to reflective readers to the fact that few practical suggestions are being offered to help us cope with the social impact of what seems to the new economic offshoring imperative for Western enterprises. The energy of the new economic giants, India and China, will not be repressed. We all need better theories for managing our human planet than the worn version of Darwinian selection that seems to be capital’s anachronistic mode of thinking.

Dr. George Simons is an independent intercultural professional specializing in intercultural expertise online. He writes for the Communications Committee of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) in Europe.

Ein Buch von Iris Fischlmayr „Expatriation – Ein Handbuch zur Entsendung von Mitarbeitern ins Ausland“ (ISBN 3-85487-610-6) zum Preis von à € 27,- unter Tel.:++43/732/2468/9125
E-Mail: iris.fischlmayr@jku.at

Warum senden Unternehmen ihre Mitarbeiter in Niederlassungen anderer Länder anstatt verfügbares Personal vor Ort einzustellen? Welche Kriterien sollte ein Mitarbeiter erfüllen, um als geeigneter Entsandter (Expatriate) zu dienen? Wie kann man diesen auf den Auslandsaufenthalt vorbereiten und wann ist gegebenenfalls der geeignete Zeitpunkt mit den Vorbereitungen für diesen Aufenthalt zu beginnen? Welche Schwierigkeiten sind bereits vorab absehbar und wie kann das Unternehmen trotz der geographischen Distanz bei deren Überwindung Einfluss nehmen? Wie gestaltet sich die sehr oft unterschätzte Rückkehrphase ins Stammunternehmen? Wie können sowohl der Mitarbeiter als auch das Unternehmen das erworbene Wissen und die Erfahrungen bestmöglich nutzen und davon langfristig profitieren? Diese und ähnliche Fragen im Zusammenhang mit dem Themengebiet Auslandsentsendung und Wiedereingliederung von Mitarbeitern soll dieses Handbuch beantworten.

Aufgabe dieses Buches war es nun, eine Ausgewogenheit zwischen Theorie und Praxis zu finden. Die theoretischen Kenntnisse basieren auf einer eingehenden Beleuchtung der existierenden Literatur zu diesem Thema und betrachten diese kritisch. Da die herrschende Literatur den Fokus vor allem auf den amerikanischen Markt richtet, ist diese meist nur bedingt auf den europäischen Raum anzuwenden. Daten über Österreich existieren kaum. Ziel dieses Handbuchs war es daher, Österreichspezifika aufzufinden und einen Leitfaden für Österreich zu gestalten. Der Praxisbezug stammt aus zahlreichen Interviews und Erfahrungsberichten mit Personalmanagern und ehemaligen Auslandsentsandten österreichischer Unternehmen, die international tätig sind. Checklisten zu jedem Themengebiet ermöglichen den schnellen Überblick über die jeweiligen Gestaltungsempfehlungen und eignen sich daher besonders als Nachschlagwerk. So können sowohl erfahrene Manager von dem einen oder anderen Detail zu Spezialthemen profitieren als auch Neueinsteiger, die sich in diesem Gebiet Basiswissen aneignen möchten.

A review of
110 Experiences for Multicultural Learning
by Paul B. Pedersen, 2004. American Psychological Association. Washington, DC. Softcover 360 pages. ISBN 1-59147-082--X / $39.95
by George F. Simons at www.diversophy.com

As one whose imagination is likely to fail when I need it most, I have always appreciated collections of experiential activities for the classroom and training room. Brought up on the annual collections of structured experiences provided by Pfeiffer and Jones at University Associates, I have always tried to have a fat shelf of creative interventions to turn to. Paul Pedersen’s new offering of 110 Experiences for Multicultural Learning is a particularly welcome addition to the collection.

The activities that Pederson presents are in the main what interculturalists term “culture general” exercises. That means that the deal with the dynamics of culture and diversity, peoples’ perceptions, attitudes and the way they interact with others, rather than focusing on the behaviors and values of specific cultures. While a number of exercises bring in data or cases from specific cultures, generally the cultural specificity comes into the exercises through the experiences and interactions of the participants. This gives teacher or trainer a wide range of applications, e.g., in many cases the same exercise might be useful for examining values differences between Chinese and Mexican attitudes toward health, or between engineering and marketing priorities within an organization.

Pedersen’s target market is primarily educators in the classroom, particularly those whose students need hands on appreciation of the effects of culture and diversity on the practice of such disciplines as psychology, social work, inter-group relations, etc. That being said, there is plenty here that can be effectively applied in communications, international studies and global business courses as well as picked up by organizational development and intercultural trainers in government, commerce and industry, and Pedersen is actively conscious of this audience as well.

In every case, the 110 Experiences provide clear and easy to read instructions for the facilitator of the activity. These tell the learning objective, time required, the risk level, who the participants should be, step by step procedures (sometimes this will involve templates for handouts to the students or material to be posted on flip charts, etc.), a formula for debriefing the experiences, and a brief statement of the insight that the exercise is likely to produce. This last, though not identified as such, is generally a concrete statement of the learning objective of the exercise in terms of outcome. While the procedure is thorough, my personal preference would have been to have one more category that broke out in to a separate list the materials needed or contexts required for building the experience.

Worth noting is Pedersen’s concern that the instructor using the materials be clear about what risks the exercise may have. He introduces this topic in the first chapter which discusses the “Favorable Conditions for Multicultural Experiences.” He then labels each exercise with a low, moderate, or high risk ranking. He returns to this concern with risk in the concluding chapter, “Staying out of Trouble.” There are all kinds of potential hazards in teaching and training for the kinds of awareness and skills that these exercises lead to, everything from logistics to politics, but those that concern him and us the most are the personal and interpersonal challenges and changes which such learning processes are designed to bring about. He provides good advice on how to manage processes so that there is both enough safety and enough challenge for the participants to engage, learn and apply.

The experiences themselves are arranged in three chapters according to the time required for them. The series begins with 34 “Brief 30 Minute Warm-up Experiences,” which serve as ice-breakers, introductions to important multicultural themes and generators of interest in basic awareness. In many cases these exercises will be the starting points in a session or program where the longer “One-Hour Experiences” (35 activities) and the “Two-Hour Laboratory Experiences” (24 activities) will be employed. Some exercises in this section are actually half and full day labs.

To reduce the risk of such activities becoming a hothouse experience, an additional chapter provides 17 “Homework.” Experiences, activities that can be performed either alone by the participant or by immersing him or herself in professional activity or in the community outside the classroom. The information gathered by experience, interview, or reflection is then brought back to the class for debriefing, discussion and further reflection.

Long time practitioners will fine familiar as well as adaptations and new things in the 110 experiences. Pedersen has culled his own previous works and vast multicultural experience in the field of psychology for the best items to place here. In addition he has added direction and value to activities generated by others, wherever possible citing sources and contexts. Many of us will find “old friends” from OD and Humanistic Psychology among the exercises that have been enhanced and repositioned for multicultural learning.

The paperbound volume sells for USD 39.95, making it quite reasonably priced given the amount of useful material it contains. While I generally prefer to have such material in a loose leaf format with CD ROM for reproduction and customization of participant materials, I am well aware such collections in the training field run two to three times the price and often contain far less.

Dr. George Simons is the creator of the DIVERSOPHY ® series of intercultural games and a co-editor of Global Competence. 50 Training Activities for Succeeding in International Business. He has a doctorate is from Claremont College where he researched the applications of humanistic psychology to small group learning experiences.

A review of

Adkins, Gary Y., Diversity Beyond the Numbers: Business Vitality, Ethics and Identity In the 21st Century, 2003 GDI Press. Long Beach, CA. Review by Dr. George F. Simons,
SIETAR Europa Communications Committee.

Gary Adkins is making the case for nothing less than revolutionizing the praxis of diversity in the USA and around the world. In the same stroke he claims to be opening a door to a realizable connection with the kind of local competence that interculturalists and global management consultants have been trying to deliver around the globe. Let’s explore this claim.

What is wrong with diversity? In a word often used by Adkins, "reification." Reification is, on one hand, the industrialization and ultimately the digitization of flesh and blood people into measurable commodities. For diversity, this means the rigid categorization of people into legal and operational types or target populations: women, blacks, Hispanics, etc., etc., ultimately used as a matrix for deciding how they should be treated, and spoken about. It decides on the basis of identity what one deserves, and, even more importantly how one should conceive of and speak about him or herself.

The violence of such pigeonholing has been seen intuitively for a long time as stereotyping. Adkins follows the trail of Amin Maalouf (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong/Les Identités meurtrières) in seeing that the key diversity problem not as one of labeling others, mistreating them and misleading them. Rather it is an internal question about identity formation. How flexible or rigid has our own sense of identity been formed and maintained in the groups we belong to? "All the massacres that have taken place in recent years, like most of the bloody wars, have been linked to complex and long-standing 'cases' of identity.’" There is always a history to how we choose our identities and part of that story is how others have been allowed to choose them for us.

Reification is the tendency to construct realities out of language so that they take on a life of their own. In the beginning the Elohim said, "Let there be light! And, there was light." (Genesis 1:3). George Bush tells USians "we are in unending war," claiming to rely on the same author. This phenomenon, though related to politics and religion is not restricted to them. It fits the broader US culture with its passion for control, whose chief tools today are language and media and sound bytes. Whether or not he or she holds office or has influence, the contemporary USian is expected to be able think or say something and have it become reality. You only have to believe…

But, not so fast. Our ability to construct reality (at least almost anything for ourselves) is matched by our ability to deconstruct realities at the speed of CNN. At the core of this is an important diversity "right to define ourselves" rather than to be defined by others. There is no dialogue here, and Adkins is right in following the lead of Maalouf in seeing that, in the midst of all this social construction and deconstruction, forming or negotiating identity is what is at stake in the diversity equation, not skin color, language, sex or belief.

At this moment the US is at war and engaged in the political process of elections. The temptation is to steer this review into an analysis of what it says about both these geopolitical events (much, much). But, having followed the problem of diversity as Adkins presents it, it is important to simply see his solution for what it is, a new focus on more effective ways of thinking and doing diversity that will ultimately take us not just to workplaces but of necessity to society and politics as well.

Beyond reification, Adkins points to three other forms of disenchantment in the workplace and his recommended procedures for meeting them: disembodied language, legitimacy and trust issues, and anxiety containment. In the last third of the book, he analyzes each of these for how it saps organizational energy and effectiveness and proceeds to suggest counter-steps toward organizational vitality and ethical pluralism, i.e., how to create, maintain and function with the real parameters of our people and the direction and goals of our organizational systems.

This book is an important document. It is also punishing to read. Adkins spends more than enough pages to document this transition of US diversity from a passion for justice to a boilerplate offering in the marketplace. After all, he will be promoting not just a new paradigm but a competing product.

Some of his complexity of expression is the necessary struggling with words required to establish the freedom and movement of new ideas. At the outset they necessarily circulate perilously close to the sucking black hole of accepted paradigms about diversity. In other places the text seems gratuitously pedantic. In effect it suffers from its own reification in language, a USian trend in such writing. Alas, Papa Hemingway is dead.

The book bears the imprint of the Global Diversity Institute, a non-profit directed by the author, so in effect, it is a self-published work. It suffers from poor layout, bad choices of typeface, and in short from the discipline which an objective outside editor might have brought to it. Despite the complexity of the content, the book gives the impression of having been thrown together in a hurry. The glossary is not a glossary in the traditional sense, but a reassertion of key concepts as Adkins intends them. In this way it is quite useful, less for understanding the concepts as commonly used, but more so for following the turns of the author’s redefinitions of certain key issues. Footnotes are ample and well documented and there is a brief index.

A German colleague of mine read one sentence and closed the book, put off by the theoretical jargon as well as by the homemade layout. I had to explain the thesis and why it was important. Europeans, faced by diversity as a US product, subsidized and marketed by US corporations abroad and by consultancies and practitioners, will find an ally in Adkins as they seek to understand their own resistance to the US hype. One hopes that further publication of the ideas will make them more readily available and acceptable to the world’s majority of non-native English speakers and the less philosophically driven. The gold is worth mining.