| Congress
2007 archive
Report by Stéphanie
Stephan
Some observations during the
European SIETAR-congress in Sophia
“There is enough work
for Interculturalists for the next thirty years in
Eastern Europe"
Out of the more than 300 participants
who had come from all over the world to the annual European
congress of SIETAR the biggest number originated from
Germany (50) and from the Netherlands (35) which is
quite evident since these countries are on top of the
list of the destinations for the citizens of Eastern
European countries looking for jobs abroad. Interculturalists
from these countries had an extraordinary opportunity
to exchange their experiences with this specific phenomena
of contemporary migration within Europe.
Although the offer of lectures
and workshops was overwhelming, it was highly appreciated
by the majority of the participants that there were
subdivisions such as intercultural theory and research
or a special focus on Eastern Europe, just to name two
out of the seven.
The organising committee was
very right in giving much attention to the new item
“Humanitarian issues and the Intercultural Community“.
Five groups of approx. twenty participants dedicated
a whole morning session and part of the afternoon to
brainstorming as to how SIETAR-members could make their
intercultural know-how and competence available to humanitarian
issues and NGO-projects.
Due to the idea with the gorgeous
apple tree created by Mirka Lachka many realizable ideas
were produced and ended up on green and ripe apples
plugged on its branches. It is to be hoped that Jonathan
Levy, the initator of the first NGO-project on a larger
scale with “Les enfants du monde“, gets
a good feedback in the next months informing him which
of the projects has been implemented in the meantime.
SIETAR-members in Germany who met already before the
congress in order to define a middle-sized NGO-Project
will meet again in June and come to action.
Among the surplus of workshops
and lectures the one presented by Marjeta Novak from
Humus in Lubljana was in my opinion one of the most
relevant for western-socialised interculturalists. Entitled
“Why do “proven“ interactive training
methods sometimes fail in Central & Eastern Europe:
an insider’s perspective“ she gave a very
realistic and down-to-earth overview on the growing-up
of Slovenians from childhood to school age, university
and further in working life. She revealed bluntly that
in the former communist countries education, the school
system, the atmosphere in companies, everything was
based on control. The effects of this indoctrination
can still be felt in many domains of day-to day business
life at present.People have more or less been brain-washed
to be all the time on their guard. Therefore the major
aim of the interculturalist in East Europe should be
to establish trust. Participants in trainings will always
be sceptical and critical, they will first see the arrogant
Western trainer and will suffer under their inferiority
complex which they all have, no matter with which East
European you have to deal with. Marjeta Novak recommended
strongly to be authentical before everything else and
to put oneself on the same level as the trainees. This
could be the key to acceptance. “Presenting is
okay to some point“, she resumed, “but be
careful with interactive methods, they must be relevant.
It is also important to give trainees tasks which challenge
them intellectually.“ Having these warnings in
mind, there might be more than enough work for interculturalists
for the next thirty years, she predicted.
Tanya Chavdarova of the University
of Sofia presented some results of a very revealing
cross-national project entitled “After the Accession
... the socio-economic culture of Eastern Europe in
the enlarged Union: An asset or a liability?“.
It put its focus on the cultural business encounters
of Bulgarian and West European, mainly Austrian bankers
who had to cooperate in Bulgaria. By implementation
of PICO (personal, intercultural, change, orientation),
a questionnaire-type instrument which measures an individual’s
orientation towards intercultural learning, 25 in-depth
interviews had been carried out in the period between
March and October 2003. The cultural impact on day-to-day
work had been studied. She found out that the Bulgarian
business community has a split attitude towards adaption
to any kind of EU-codes in business: Some have so far
recognized only the necessity to adapt, others have
already done the steps in order to adapt, especially
the younger western socialized elite who has studied
abroad .They achieve after a relatively short working
period rather high positions in companies managed by
West Europeans. Also because the middle-aged generation
(between 35 and 55) is quasi non-existent, since they
lost their jobs after the communist regime. The process
of “cultural sorting“ of businesses by the
market forces seems to have been taking place imperceptibly,
but at a certain point it has become clear and definite
which was quite evident in the case Tanya Chavdarova
had analysed.
Those interculturalists who attended
the lecture of Dr. Juliana Roth of the Institute of
Intercultural Communication at the Ludwig-Maxiilians-University
Munich learnt that ethics in intercultural trainings
are a fairly new topic in Europe. While the English-speaking
literature treated this phenomenon already in the early
seventies, it starts only now to be taken in consideration
in Europe. The two authors Judih Martin and Michael
Page advocated already thirty years ago general principles
based on a culture relativistic approach which closely
resemble the anthropological “codes of ethics“
and aim at maintaining the integrity of the trainer.
The authors consider the intercultural trainer as the
central figure, and they establish rules for him or
her which relate directly to the practice of intercultural
trainings and can therefore be easily understood by
practitioners. As intercultural trainings become more
and more complex with their increasing relevance as
a field of business and there is, especially for the
German-speaking business world, nothing else than contributions
of American authors, Juliana Roth formulated five ethical
imperatives which interculturalist should stick to during
their trainings:
- they should be mindful of the notions of culture
and cultural difference they employ in their trainings
- they should refrain from using cultural comparisons
based on black-and-white contrasts
- they should be very critical about passing out “recipe-knowledge“
to their clients
- they should be aware of the manipulative power of
intercultural knowledge and competence
- they should be aware of the Western nature of their
trainings.
At the end of her lecture she
stressed again that this is a very sensitive matter
which in the course of the years will get more and more
impact. She also made clear that findings and practices
deriving from the US can neither be applicated one to
one to the present social reality in Europe nor integrate
the present state of sociological and anthropological
research. It was her intention to give an impulse for
systematic studies in the ethical field among her listeners:
The intensive discussion afterwards showed that she
obviously succeeded.
Another workshop which attracted
very much the interest of a large number of congress
participants in Sophia was the one of Mijnd Huijser
with the promising title “The Cultural Advantage:
Reconciling the work of Hofstede and Trompenaar in a
new model.“ He gave a concise introduction to
his new model which he named the model of freedom (MoF).
His model brings together the two major schools of thought
in the intercultural field , those of Geert Hofstede
and of Fons Trompenaars and has been tested meanwhile
with some 5000 globally operating managers in practice.
The feedback among the participants was very positive
and some who wanted to get more in-depth insight in
the MoF decided to participate in a Master Class Seminar
on the subject scheduled for August in Paris. |
