The Role of Culture, Language, and Ethics in Global Business, Research Paper Example

A Personal Journey of Identity

This personal journey of exploring the cultural identity that is the underpinnings of this life that is mine is about origins, history, and people, while exploring the beliefs and personal practices aligned to my Chinese culture, and their effect on health (specifically as it relates to community). Coming to America as a Chinese Mandarin 14-year-old female without my parents was challenging in adapting to this new culture, nonetheless it proved successful with completion of high school.

Currently as a student of higher education the focus in my life is to attain the needed credentials for a registered dietician. As a part of the Chinese American community today, the traditions and customs honored and celebrated adhere to the Chinese lunar new year and other festivals. Father owns a construction company, and my mother, now a homemaker, is a former accountant. The references included in the following support the personal, professional, and/or academic experiences in response to the assignment requirements.

Cultural Identity

Origin Aligns to the Influence of Confucius

The origin of the most influential ideology on the Chinese culture is Confucianism (Irwin, 2012). This is about my Chinese cultural identity. The Chinese culture is ancient and greatly influenced by the teachings of Confucius. Understanding this allows having a better idea of the mindset of Chinese people in everything they do starting with the most important part of the Chinese identity—the family. But as importantly, again, on every aspect of a Chinese person’s life from a societal perspective as explained by Irwin (2012), “Chinese society is heavily influenced by the traditional values associated with Confucianism which promotes a strict system of norms and propriety. This determines how a person should act within a community, with hierarchy a central theme (p. 5)”. Another important understanding is there is little separation of a person’s business and private life (Irwin, 2012).

Consequently, the customs and traditions of the Chinese are embedded in ancient practices. Again, this is centered first on the family. This affects all aspects of a Chinese person’s life aligning to custom and traditions and as a male in my family this also has specific characteristics. Coming to America at age 14 was an expectation of my family to gain a better education and career opportunities that come with this accomplishment. A great deal of this personal identity shared in this academic paper is about representing the family.

Chinese culture is like other cultures, in how the collective mindset of a group of people separates them from other communities (Banutu-Gomez, 2014). Chinese culture influences our daily activities as well as our interpersonal relations; a sharing of learned moral values, attitudes, beliefs, and norms (Banutu-Gomez, 2014). Kairulla and Kairulla (2013) describe how variables affecting culture derive from uncommon shared values as is the case with the roots of the Chinese culture. It is typically about value systems as explained by Kairullah and Kairulla (2013).

In fact:

Most of the differences between cultures arise from underlying value systems, which cause people to behave differently under similar circumstances…Values are a society’s ideas about what is good or bad, right or wrong … the importance of things and ideas … and hold the key to understanding a culture…Values in general … (then) determine how individuals respond in any given circumstance … Values are enduring beliefs that modes of conduct or end-states of existence are preferred to opposing modes of conduct, or end states of existence. (Kairullah & Kairullah, 2013, p. 2)

The study completed by Hofstede that Kairulla and Kairulla (2013) discuss provides additional understanding about the importance of cultural value that is as ancient and strong as the Chinese culture. Among two of the four dimensions of culture the research findings note that connect to the Chinese are “Individualism/Collective Index? as well as the “Confucian Dynamism? (Kairullah & Kairullah, 2013). The customs, traditions, and history of China provide the means for understanding our cultural values.

Customs and Traditions

History

Rarick (2009) helps explain the personal challenge of this academic exercise in terms of providing an exploration of the sources of the cultural values of the Chinese. This is about understanding this comes from exploring the historical backgrounds of Chinese beliefs as well as values (Rarick, 2009). One must consider the placement of family names among the Chinese where the family name is first and the given as explained by Rarick (2009) is second. This reflects the valued importance of family among the Chinese and as importantly that Chinese customs and traditions have a deep historical framework of a collectivist orientation (Rarick, 2009). This orientation is so profound that from the Confucian ideology there are cultural moral standards Kwok and Shu (2013) explain taking precedence over formal law.

Confucian philosophical precepts frame Chinese moral standards that Kwok and Shu (2013) describe as  “mutual trust and respect cultivated through strong relationships (otherwise called “guanxi”) (p. 58)”. Within the solid foundation of the Confucian ideology there also exist Buddhist cultural/philosophical influence on the Chinese about how the collective approach law and business contracts. The Buddhist influence on Chinese culture is about the emphasis on social harmony while it does not condone direct confrontation (Kwok & Shu, 2013) and explains the cultural tendency of the Chinese to avoid engaging in direct disagreements with anyone.

This is specific to the cultural adherence of Chinese people regarding the law and remains a Chinese social value deeply embedded in the collective (Kwok & Shu, 2013). Another aspect of the Chinese culture has to do with power (Irwin, 2012; Kairullah & Kairulla, 2013; Wackner, 2013). The power structure of families based on patriarchal positioning extends to organizations and institutions as explained by Irwin (2012). Power is accepted as not distributed equally based on this cultural predisposition and is personally experienced in the family setting. The absence of the father means an elder brother, uncle, and even a cousin fills this position.

Individualism does not play a role within the traditional Chinese cultural norm (Irwin, 2012; Kairullah & Kairulla, 2013; Wackner, 2013). Chinese culture does not reinforce individualism. The high regard for masculinity inherent to the Chinese culture aligns to control, power, achievement, and the male work model (Irwin, 2012; Kairullah & Kairulla, 2013; Wackner, 2013). Another aspect of Chinese culture is about avoiding any element of the uncertain connecting to society as explained by Irwin (2012). The long-term elements of life are a high Chinese cultural characteristic for the sustainability of society and the role each person plays in this collective embedment (Wackner, 2013). Shame has a strong attachment to failure in the Chinese culture explains Irwin (2012). Consequently, interpersonal relationships in the Chinese culture remain framed in dependency on the status and in observing this defined social order (Kairullah & Kairullah, 2013; Irwin, 2012; Wackner, 2013).

The next section following discusses the health disparity specific to the Chinese immigrant in America about barriers to accessibility (Tong & Santell, 2017). At the same time, in China it is about cancer and its prevalence in a deteriorating environment due to lack of standards on industrial pollution (Wang & Jiao, 2016). For this academic focus, this next section is on the Chinese American including immigrants lack of statistics on health disparities including access to health care.

Health Disparity

The work of Tong and Sentell (2017) derives from responses to a sampling of targeted Chinese American participants in their study to assess health disparities within this community. As an immigrant member of the Chinese American community this section of the paper is personally important to have a better understanding and researching this has been enlightening. The authors have explained how there exists the need among populations that include the Chinese American for research in determining the health disparities that exist (Tong & Sentell, 2017). Among the barriers include linguistic challenges, cultural sensitivity among healthcare professionals, as well as ethnic and racial sensitivity (Tong & Sentell, 2017).

There remain challenges in gathering this information among the nation’s Chinese American including Chinese immigrant populations on this topic (Tong & Sentell, 2017). The barriers to healthcare in America the Chinese American (including immigrants) needs to expand the research samplings to have a more accurate picture of the details of the cultural and language barriers to health care services. The significance of this problematic to the challenge to have better statistical information looks at what Tong and Sentell (2017) describe as aligned to a recent report listing existing federal data sets providing this health disparity information. Out of the 153 data sets listed there are a mere four Chinese specific data sets noted with but one interview withing the sampling participants having taken place in Mandarin and Cantonese (Tong & Sentell, 2017).

This is personally an eye-opening situation. Tong and Sentell (2017) also report how the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) proved an invaluable source of information on Chinese as part of the Asian American population on mental health disparities. This report provides links between language use, ethnic disparities, and mental health disorders but again, this is but a fraction of the statistics that have a measurable gap in the accuracy of the needed data. In review, the impact on the Chinese American community with this ongoing lack of data that constitutes a true picture of the health disparities in my cultural community suggests an unquestionable disservice taking place.

The work of Tong and Sentell (2017) was specific to them determining the explicit challenges of qualifying the existing data and about the needed application of the data where it will serve the best for the Chinese American community. The challenge for identifying multiple health disparities remains the number one need for more qualitative research to come up with the quantitative figures so effective interventions for addressing the identified disparities take place.

References

Banutu-Gomez, M. (2014). The role of culture, language, and ethics in global business. European Scientific Journal. http://www.eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/viewFile/3280/3062

Irwin. (2012). Doing business in China: An overview of ethical aspects. Institute of Business Ethics. http://www.ibe.org.uk/userfiles/chinaop.pdf

Khairullah, D., & Khairullah, Z. (2013). Cultural values and decision-making in China. International Journal of Business, Humanities, and Technology, 3(2). http://www.ijbhtnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_2_February_2013/1.pdf

Kwock, B., James, M., & Shu, A. (2013). Doing business in China: What is the use of having a

contract? The rule of law and guanxi when doing business in China. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 4(4). http://www.ibe.org.uk/userfiles/chinaop.pdf

Rarick, C. A. (2009). The Historical Roots of Chinese Cultural Values and Managerial Practices. Journal of International Business Research, 8(2). http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-219002339/the-historical-roots-of-chinese-cultural-values-and.

Tong, M., & Sentell, T. (2017). Insights in Public Health: Challenges Investigating Health Outcomes in Chinese Americans Using Population-Based Survey Data. Hawai’i journal of medicine & public health : a journal of Asia Pacific Medicine & Public Health, 76(1). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5226019/#:~:text=Chinese%20Americans%20experience%20unique%20health,and%20often%20significant%20linguistic%20barriers.&text=Chinese%20immigrant%20groups%20were%20also,providers%20than%20they%20were%20receiving.

Wang, Q., & Jiao, J. (2016). Health Disparity and Cancer Health Disparity in China. Asia-Pacific journal of oncology nursing, 3(4). https://doi.org/10.4103/2347-5625.195899