Q&A Hero

Q: Hofstede's long-term orientation tends to be found in: A. Asian cultures. B. Canada. C. Brazil. D. A and C.

Q: Uncertainty avoidance describes man's search for Truth, according to Hofstede, because: A. Truth is primary to our human value system; everything else depends upon it. B. it describes how comfortable the culture's members feel in an unstructured situation. C. once you have Truth, you can avoid change, which is always disruptive. D. All of the above.

Q: In a small power distance culture: A. people will want direction, so top-down leadership styles are appropriate. B. seniority, rank, and title are important. C. first names are likely to be used in the office because the ideal is equality. D. A and C.

Q: That almost everyone in the United States self-identifies as middle class suggests that: A. the United States is a successful meritocracy. B. the United States measures low on the uncertainty avoidance dimension. C. the U.S. economy has failed to support an aristocracy. D. the United States measures small on the power distance dimension.

Q: Individualism-collectivism measures: A. the degree to which people in the culture are integrated into groups. B. the tendency to differentiate male roles. C. the degree to which social inequality is tolerated. D. A and B.

Q: In high-context cultures, face-to-face relationships tend to be important and: A. knowledge is situational. B. decisions focus around personal relationships. C. long term. D. all of the above.

Q: In low-context cultures: A. there is subtlety and innuendo. B. what you say tends to be what you mean, in that communication tends to be explicit. C. indirection is prized because it recognizes the ability of the other. D. leadership is mostly from behind, allowing the work group to self-direct.

Q: Monochronic time is best illustrated by: A. university scheduling patterns. B. a rock concert. C. high-context cultures, such as Arab and Asian cultures. D. all of the above.

Q: Referring to Hall's high-and low-context framework, in a high-context culture, A. communication is explicit. B. the context carries much of the communication. C. communication is direct and focused on the topic. D. the context is irrelevant.

Q: As we use frameworks to help us understand culture, it's important to remember that frameworks: A. describe other cultures with precision. B. can't be used to describe our own cultures. C. are comparative, with our own culture being the reference point. D. all of the above.

Q: Culture plays a significant role in the discipline(s) of: A. marketing, but not finance, because it is quantitative. B. leadership, accounting, finance, marketing, human resources, and production. C. marketing and human resources, but not production, finance, and accounting. D. all foreign businesses, but not businesses of the home country.

Q: Culture includes everything but: A. religion. B. religion and politics. C. higher education and universal values. D. none of the above.

Q: Culture is a group of shared worldviews, social rules, and interpersonal dynamics that is: A. chosen consciously by each group to set themselves apart from other groups. B. learned, interrelated, and shared. C. used as a way to separate economic classes. D. a collection of noble pursuits including opera, art, ballet, and classical music.

Q: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" is a solid, moral guideline.

Q: Facebook is a social institution based on free association.

Q: The family is the basic unit of institutions based on free association.

Q: There are three main classes of social institutions, based on the conditions of their formation: family, kinship, and free association.

Q: The unspoken language cannot tell the international manager something that the spoken language does not.

Q: Material culture includes all human-made objects.

Q: (p. 93) There are few cultural misunderstandings in the discipline of marketing.

Q: Human resources are influenced by cultural values because values are the foundation of motivation and evaluation.

Q: Leadership is universal; all people want to be led by a strong leader.

Q: Culture includes everything objective, and religion contains values and is thus not a part of culture.

Q: Gift-giving across cultures is a simple kindness and need not be complicated with attempts to understand. The act of generosity says everything in and of itself.

Q: Spoken language does not demarcate culture, but body language does.

Q: Material culture describes how people make things, who makes what, and why.

Q: Religion is not an important aspect of culture in countries that are secular and have split the church from the state.

Q: A culture's aesthetics is the sense of moral behavior taught to the young.

Q: Trompenaars' achievement vs. ascription dimension describes social status based on what one does or who one is. The United States is a culture in which people build who they are through work, so its social status tends to be based on ascription.

Q: Your neighbor's business is cutting down an acre of first-growth, virgin forest and planting a lawn and garden beds at its HQ. You are likely to be in an Anglo culture, where domination of nature seems normal.

Q: The specific-diffuse dimension has to do with social patterns for child rearing.

Q: Trompenaars' dimension of individualism vs. communitarianism differs greatly from Hofstede's individualism-collectivism dimension.

Q: Trompenaars' dimension of universalism vs. particularism measures whether rules or rewards regulate behaviors.

Q: Hofstede describes his Confucian dynamism dimension as dealing with Virtue regardless of Truth.

Q: Feminine cultures in Hofstede's dimensions care about relationships and are not focused on business success. It is quality of life that matters.

Q: Hofstede's framework is based on social science theory.

Q: The United States and Canada are small power distance countries because they expect a level playing field, socially, at least at the ideal level.

Q: Hofstede's individualism-collectivism dimension measures the degree to which people tend to be integrated into groups.

Q: In high-context cultures, people tend to form long-lasting relationships that endure over time.

Q: Low-context cultures tend to be polychronic, with a lot going on at one time.

Q: Low-context cultures such as the United States have explicit communication patterns.

Q: In Hall's use, context is the irrelevant environment in a communication act.

Q: Hall's high-and low-context framework is based upon communication styles.

Q: When we use cultural frameworks to build our understanding of another culture, we use our own culture as an implicit reference point.

Q: Although some business areas are affected by culture, accounting and finance are objective and thus universal.

Q: Leadership traits may vary some by culture, but underneath they build on the idea that all people want to be led and directed.

Q: Cultural attitudes toward change can influence the acceptance of new production methods.

Q: In human resources, laws administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, (EEOC) allow an American company to be successful on the cultural front in all foreign labor markets.

Q: Business makes few costly mistakes in product introductions into foreign markets.

Q: When operating in other cultures, if we realize that, underneath it all, we are all the same, we will be fine.

Q: Anthropologist E. T. Hall suggests that to learn another culture, you need to spend two weeks in it with a training program.

Q: International business managers need to be able to communicate across cultural borders, even if they don't speak foreign languages.

Q: We are each born with a unique culture.

Q: Regional trade agreements such as NAFTA can be seen to impact the WTO: A. negatively, because they undercut the nondiscrimination principle of the WTO. B. positively, because they extend most-favored-nation status to more nations. C. negatively, because they compete with the WTO for membership, since nations can belong to only one trade group. D. negatively, because the United States and the EU do not have a regional trade agreement between them.

Q: The WTO has made progress on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS). An example of this progress is: A. an agreement that property rights should not take precedence over public health. C. a shared recognition that private property is a basic human right. D. an agreement that governments should hold all pharmaceutical trade secrets. The TRIPS agreement recognizes that property rights should not take precedence over public health. All adopting countries have the right to copy drugs patented before 1995.

Q: The Doha Development Agenda is: A. a WTO plan to establish free trade among the emirates in the Persian Gulf. B. the government seat of Qatar and source of significant WTO funding through Sheik Kalifa al-Thani. C. a UN plan to develop the Arab Emirates to ensure their independence. D. an extended conference of the WTO initially convened in Doha.

Q: Is the WTO's idea of "fair competition" really a code phrase for free trade? A. Yes, the WTO is in favor of free trade and only free trade under all circumstances. B. Not really. Trade relationships among nations can be exceedingly complex, and the WTO supports fair competition, which may mean freer trade rather than free trade. C. Yes, the WTO stands for trade liberalization, which requires transparency, economic reform, and no protectionism, regardless of the member nation's economic situation. D. Yes. The WTO supports free trade and the term fair competition is used to obtain buy-in from nations opposed to trade liberalization.

Q: The WTO exists to: A. establish and help implement rules of trade among nations in order to increase trade flows. B. monitor and reduce the amount of trade from developing nations to developed nations. C. ensure that the industrial revolution continues to support the economies of developed nations. D. B and C.

Q: The IBRD is a major institution of the World Bank whose function is to loan to: A. countries whose income levels make them not creditworthy. B. private-sector development-focused firms. C. private individuals in developing nations whose entrepreneurial efforts support development. D. middle-income and creditworthy poor nations.

Q: The major function of the World Bank is to serve as a: A. nonprofit banking cooperative for its members to meet development needs. B. central bank for the world's central bankers. C. nonprofit cooperative to finance the educational needs of its members. D. investor of funds in global businesses in order to create value for its shareholders.

Q: The IMF initially played a central role in: A. establishing trade initiatives through GAAP measures. B. supporting war-torn nations of Europe as they recovered from their devastation. C. setting fixed exchange rates among nations' currencies with an established par value based on gold. D. the monitoring of EU initiatives to restrain trade with South Africa.

Q: IMF quotas are determined by the relative size of a nation in the global economy and: A. determine the weight of the nation's voting in the IMF. B. determine how much a nation can borrow from the IMF. C. are the nation's "dues" to the IMF. D. all of the above.

Q: An important assumption that the IMF makes is that a strong organization with rules and penalties for their violation is necessary to support trade.

Q: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) handles all cases brought forward by any person or organization.

Q: As Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the UN, observed, the UN exists to help us master the challenges of our common, global destiny, which we can do only if we face them together.

Q: The UN General Assembly is the main staff organization responsible for the UN administration.

Q: The following is an area in which the UN plays a significant role for international business: loaning seed money for entrepreneurial start-ups in developed nations.

Q: An example of an informal, cognitive institution would be the celebration of Halloween.

Q: Examples of informal, normative institutions would include local town/city governments and the U.S. government.

Q: Cognitive institutions are important to the international manager because these institutions help the manager understand the schema operating in their international environments and are easily missed or misunderstood by the non-native, so schemas can easily lead to misunderstandings.

Q: Formal institutions operate through laws and regulations. They require members to make a written commitment.

Q: Institutions are constructed to provide meaning and stability to social life, regulate the relations of individuals to each other, and limit behavior of individuals and firms.

Q: All EU members use the euro and thus have given up part of their national sovereignty to the EU.

Q: Although the EU can influence the practices of businesses located in non-EU-member countries, Microsoft has been able to maintain business in the EU much as it conducts business in the United States.

Q: The EU has been unsuccessful at harmonizing customs and tax formalities within member nations' borders.

Q: The EU is administered by the European Commission, a group composed of 27 commissioners elected at the EU level.

Q: The EU is a supranational body that has become, essentially, a regional government.

Q: ASEAN, whose initial goal was political, to foster peaceful relations among members, includes China as its core member.

Q: Trading blocs always bring cost savings to international firms.

Q: Among trading blocs, the EU has the largest GDP per capita.