Perceptions and stereotypes play an important role in our lives. Sometimes they distort our decisions and make our communication with others more difficult. Some foreigners have a perception that Americans are more conservative to foreign cultures than other nationalities and find it more difficult to integrate in a multicultural environment. ZoomInterviews took a closer look at this topic and our findings contradict this view. According to “Cultural Adaptability among American and European Business Students” research recently published by Bill McPherson from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, American business students are more open-minded and more culturally flexible than European students are.
The study measured students’ rankings on the four cultural adaptability scales: emotional resilience, flexibility/openness, personal autonomy and perceptual acuity. These rankings reflect students’ ability to adapt and change to working and living with different cultures.
According to the research, American business students are more emotionally resilient (46.2% USA, 36.7% European showed good performance in this respect). A person with high emotional resilience scores can regulate his or her emotions, maintain emotional equilibrium in a new or changing environment and deal with the setbacks and difficult feelings that are a normal part of the cross-cultural experience. Emotionally resilient people like new experiences and have confidence in their ability to cope with ambiguity. However both categories have percentages (31% American and 40% European) that fell below the average.
According to the research American business students are more open and flexible (28.3% USA, 24.9% European). However, the analysis indicated that significance was not achieved on this scale. The Flexibility/Openness scale measures the extent to which a person enjoys different ways of thinking and behaving that are typically encountered in the cross-cultural experience. Open, flexible people have a positive attitude toward the unfamiliar.
Perceptual acuity is associated with confidence in one’s ability to accurately perceive the feelings of others. It is also associated with valuing other cultures and being willing to suspend judgment of others. American business students have a greater ability to learn and interpret the gestures and body language of different cultures (32.5% USA, 22.6% European).
American business students have a much stronger personal value system (51.3% USA, 33.0% European). The personal autonomy scale measures the extent to which an individual has developed a personal system of values and beliefs that he or she feels confident enough to act on in unfamiliar settings. At the same time, the scale examines the extent to which an individual respects others and their value systems. Finally this scale examines the pressure to change felt by a person in a cross-cultural environment. American students should be lauded for their strong sense of self awareness, self confidence, self-directness and strong belief system. This can be a double edged sword, however, when these beliefs and principles are so strong that they may cause conflict when then asked to accept others different from their own.
To sum up, American students, by pure percentages, fared better in all the four scales.
In our view, these results should encourage Americans to look for international education and career centered opportunities with more confidence. Europeans should also change their perception about Americans and communicate with them with a realization that Americans do have the ability to be flexible to different cultures and integrate within a foreign environment. In turn, Americans should appreciate that European students usually have excellent language skills, may be more globally aware and are more sensitive about developments in neighboring countries. While these qualities were not mentioned in the research, they are very important for success in international business.
Finally, the results suggest that there is still work to be done on all scales to make our future global managers more successful. All students can benefit from being culturally adaptable-whether within the organization or when working on international assignments the research. Business schools should continue to develop their curriculum and extra curriculum activities to hone the international and cross cultural adaptability of their students.
