People, Cultures and Context

Every once in a while, I stumble across something which appears to be just a simple part of daily life but which turns out to still be quite profound. What I "stumbled" across most recently was a group conversation which again showed me the power of a cross-cultural group to arrive at and understand the deeper meaning of knowledge.

All of this occurred when I recently delivered a presentation to an interesting group of Knowledge Management professionals. My topic was the transfer and absorption of knowledge across cultures. As I usually like to do when dealing with this topic, I showed up with several examples of music designed to be familiar to some and quite unfamiliar or even strange to others. For me, music is a form of knowledge and also knowledge which strongly reflects its cultural context. I like to say that the content knowledge of music is integrated with its cultural context.

One piece of music that I brought with me was "Stars and Stripes Forever." I used it as an example of music that depends a lot on its cultural context for its full value as knowledge. Interestingly enough, one of the participants who grew up in China saw it as just music, not having the context of spending years listening to this music on the Fourth of July. Someone wanting to understand the full meaning of this piece of musical knowledge in the U.S. would have to know about the cultural context of this music.

I also brought with me a piece of historic Korean music, that like Chinese music is based on quarter tones and uses a number of instruments more indigenous to the Far East. With regard to this music, it was the Western participants who for the most part could neither relate to the pure musical aspects of the piece nor to its historic and cultural context. However, many Western participants did have associations to other forms of Western music, e.g. Schoenberg and his dissonant twelve-tone approach or other personal experiences.

What was most interesting to me was what happened next. There was a group conversation in which the participants shared with each other what they knew about the cultural context of each piece of music. I participated in this as well having some information about the historic roots and role of the Korean music.

Participants shared their personal history and experiences in the U.S. with regard to Stars and Stripes Forever. Participants were also willing to share their associations with regard to the Korean music to supplement the observations of the person more familiar with this type of music. We were as a group both setting out the historic and cultural context of Stars and Stripes and less accurately developing if not the actual cultural context for the Korean music at least the group's own meaning for this piece of music as of this point in time.

The message for me is that groups can through conversation arrive at a sense of the cultural context of a piece of knowledge where they are party to or have some connection with the culture of origin of that knowledge. We can each take what we know of the cultural context of knowledge and share it. To the degree that a group is more heterogeneous, it can be more successful in this endeavor. The extent of openness is also a factor. What is necessary is for each member to share the meaning that the particular knowledge has for them and the experiences on which this is based. The result is that the group will own an enhanced piece of knowledge - one that embodies and reflects the fuller meaning of the knowledge within its culture of origin and one that is more accurate.

The focus on becoming more aware of the full meaning of the knowledge is to me part of absorbing that knowledge. Even where the group lacks awareness of the culture of origin of a piece of knowledge, it can still arrive at its own unique meaning of that knowledge, recognizing that that meaning may not correspond accurately with its meaning in the culture of origin.

I wonder how much time working groups spend trying to understand the cultural context of a given piece of knowledge. I wonder how much weight is given to the cultural component of a piece of knowledge in the course of working with it. How much time and priority should be accorded to dealing with the cultural context of knowledge?  In this regard, does it make any difference whether the knowledge is scientific or technical knowledge, humanistic knowledge, trade knowledge or knowledge about restaurants or movies? Would knowledge increase in value if in the process of working with it, we derived and understood its cultural context? And would that increase in value contribute to improved business or organizational output?

If you have thoughts on any of this, please feel free to comment.

Comments

[Barry]

Wei, I believe that one of the results of such a discussion is to begin to create an internal scaffold for the new knowledge. Even in a short period of time, we are able to enhance our ability to absorb what we originally saw as very much out of our experience.

[Barry]

Kate, I do believe that having a visceral experience facilitates the internalization of our insights. You point out the importance of admitting our cultural differences. That becomes easier to do when we do have some way of being objective about our differences. A common model or a common vocabulary as you mention can be helpful here. Also, having shared models or ways of understanding and talking about our respective cultural contexts helps us move beyond surface conflicts to arrive at some deeper understanding of others.

[Wei]

Barry - Thanks for the excellent talk. What impressed me most was how fundamentally and profoundly ones cultural background affect how one interprets knowledge and subsequently absorbs knowledge, and how big a change sharing this cultural background can make. Upon hearing the unfamiliar knowledge, each of us tried very hard to understand it by associating it with something we were familiar with, and we intended to reject something we couldn't make the associations. However, after a short discussion on the background, many of us seemed to be able to appreciate the differences and enjoy the strange music a lot more!

[Kate Pugh]

Barry - I enjoyed your presentation, especially for the visceral experience you gave us of our cultural difference. (Read: Permission to admit to not relating to the Korean wailing horn and loud clashes).
Indeed, it's important to talk about the cultural context. Example: Being told that Program A must ceed to program B, when Program A participants feel the first one has merit -- even superior financial merit to Program B. I have had that experience frequently as a manager, and found myself and others blaming the "politics," rather than expression of cultural differences. Perhaps if we had a vocabularly to describe intra-organizational culture differences, we'd be able to backdrop the investment debates with a larger dialogue around culture differences between the funding departments.