Author: Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas
Date: December 2011
Source: Athens News, Column ‘On the borderline’
GROWING up in a small Canadian town on the prairie, a breeding ground for peer pressure and conformity, I fitted in – but didn’t. It’s the same for me in Greece.
I’ve often seen this air of comfortable “outsider” and relaxed manoeuvrability in fellow transnationals. Confirmation finally came from the International Business Review article called “Exploring cultural misfit: Causes and consequences”.
This article concludes that at home or abroad, or both, being “a cultural misfit” – not sharing widely-held values and beliefs of the milieu – can actually be advantageous in certain situations and societies.
Most literature, the writers say, suggests we conform and adapt to our host culture. To the contrary, this article recommends utilising differences.
The writers evaluate “conformity” by examining our personal social networks. And while we must conform to mainstream networking norms to some degree to gain acceptance and legitimacy, they point out that we who stray from societal norms may be able to operate more effectively.
Overriding mainstream
For example, let’s say a company has a long term interdependent or cooperative project in a country like the United States, which values individualism. The employees who have personal social networks valuing strong ties and trust – such as migrants from collectivist societies like China – have a built-in advantage over their more individualistically-minded local colleagues.
On the other hand, in collectivist societies, the so-called cultural misfits who are comfortable with “structural holes”, or weak ties, in their social networks – like migrants from individualistic societies – can likely outperform others at competitive tasks, readily moving between networks, brokering and bridging resources.
Those with the greatest advantage, suggest the writers can play to strengths and weaknesses on several planes, including personal.
Finding that niche
Kathleen Hart didn’t seem to fit into American society at the macro-societal level. “This perception could be related to my innate disdain for authority,” Hart says. “As soon as I finished university, I wanted to flee.”
David Willis felt the same about England.
“I fit in socially but always seemed to be on the fringe, rather than in the midst,” Willis says. “The first thing I did upon finishing university was to leave the country. I must have instinctively felt that I would be more comfortable elsewhere.”
Both feel more content in Greece – yet they’ve retained valuable traits from their past.
As the article suggests people do, Hart uses her mobility across diverse networks to her professional advantage in Greece, a more collectivist society. She landed an editing job, for example, because a Bangladeshi PhD candidate in Greece recommended her to a London publisher who was producing a book about the history of Bangladeshi newspapers in Britain.
Stretching the concept more laterally, Willis, a retired business manager at two US-related educational institutes in Greece, describes his approach to conflict resolution: he listened to and collected all employees’ competing views, then proposed a rational, conciliatory resolution to bridge the conflicting positions. Thus, he provided effective management in a culture that often finds compromise difficult.
Many of us supposed outsiders have managed to fit in by standing out, successfully using the engrained cultural differences on both sides to our personal and professional advantage.
Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas is an Athens-based, Canadian Greek (by marriage) writer and a transnational of some 30-odd years
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Misfits Fit Fine
Author: Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas
Date: December 2011
Source: Athens News, Column ‘On the borderline’
GROWING up in a small Canadian town on the prairie, a breeding ground for peer pressure and conformity, I fitted in – but didn’t. It’s the same for me in Greece.
I’ve often seen this air of comfortable “outsider” and relaxed manoeuvrability in fellow transnationals. Confirmation finally came from the International Business Review article called “Exploring cultural misfit: Causes and consequences”.
This article concludes that at home or abroad, or both, being “a cultural misfit” – not sharing widely-held values and beliefs of the milieu – can actually be advantageous in certain situations and societies.
Most literature, the writers say, suggests we conform and adapt to our host culture. To the contrary, this article recommends utilising differences.
The writers evaluate “conformity” by examining our personal social networks. And while we must conform to mainstream networking norms to some degree to gain acceptance and legitimacy, they point out that we who stray from societal norms may be able to operate more effectively.
Overriding mainstream
For example, let’s say a company has a long term interdependent or cooperative project in a country like the United States, which values individualism. The employees who have personal social networks valuing strong ties and trust – such as migrants from collectivist societies like China – have a built-in advantage over their more individualistically-minded local colleagues.
On the other hand, in collectivist societies, the so-called cultural misfits who are comfortable with “structural holes”, or weak ties, in their social networks – like migrants from individualistic societies – can likely outperform others at competitive tasks, readily moving between networks, brokering and bridging resources.
Those with the greatest advantage, suggest the writers can play to strengths and weaknesses on several planes, including personal.
Finding that niche
Kathleen Hart didn’t seem to fit into American society at the macro-societal level. “This perception could be related to my innate disdain for authority,” Hart says. “As soon as I finished university, I wanted to flee.”
David Willis felt the same about England.
“I fit in socially but always seemed to be on the fringe, rather than in the midst,” Willis says. “The first thing I did upon finishing university was to leave the country. I must have instinctively felt that I would be more comfortable elsewhere.”
Both feel more content in Greece – yet they’ve retained valuable traits from their past.
As the article suggests people do, Hart uses her mobility across diverse networks to her professional advantage in Greece, a more collectivist society. She landed an editing job, for example, because a Bangladeshi PhD candidate in Greece recommended her to a London publisher who was producing a book about the history of Bangladeshi newspapers in Britain.
Stretching the concept more laterally, Willis, a retired business manager at two US-related educational institutes in Greece, describes his approach to conflict resolution: he listened to and collected all employees’ competing views, then proposed a rational, conciliatory resolution to bridge the conflicting positions. Thus, he provided effective management in a culture that often finds compromise difficult.
Many of us supposed outsiders have managed to fit in by standing out, successfully using the engrained cultural differences on both sides to our personal and professional advantage.
Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas is an Athens-based, Canadian Greek (by marriage) writer and a transnational of some 30-odd years