Mr. Philip Kolman is German, in which his country focuses more on individual development; power distance among people is not big, in other words, there are not much gaps among employees and their employers. Moreover, the German would not prefer long-term orientation but short-term orientation because they believe unexpected things can happen at any time. And they are task-oriented and individualists. Hence, Mr.Philip can be considered as the reflection of his culture.

On the other hand, Mr.Đinh comes from a totally different culture, Vietnam. In Vietnam, people are living as a big community in which they pay more attention to how much can each individual contributes to the society and how can they support each other.Thus,Vietnamese society is collectivism.Substantially, there is a wide distance between the employees and their bosses. Vietnamese people is detailed-oriented so when doing business, they usually comes up with long-term orientation.Additionally, they are relation-oriented. Nonetheless, since Mr.Đinh had been studying abroad in Switzerland, he might have been affected by the Western civilization while maintaining his original culture at the same time.So we can say that he is the mixture of two distinctive cultures.

 When analyzing the case study, there are 5 dimensions influencing people’s behaviours and thoughts, especialy in this situation are :

a.     Uncertainty avoidance

As uncertainty avoidance is “the extent to which members of a culture learned to feel comfortable ( or uncomfortable) is unstructured, unknown situations”, there is an opposing approach between two characters.

As Mr.Philip comes from Germany, a country which the score for uncertainty avoidance is really slow , he felt it easier in taking risks. Through the case study, it can be seen that he obtained the meeting with Mr.Đinh was a good opportunities for the company’s expansion. Hence, when they discussed their mutual business interest as well as the possibilities of collaboration between two companies, he believed that there would be a business agreement happened later on. In this case, Mr.Philip did not consider and make much research about the potential of his partner’s company. He accepted the uncertainty situations when he did the business. When he saw the possibilities and prospective ability, he would prefer to take risk without any hestitations. However, since when Mr.Đinh did not reply him probably, Mr.Philip started to feel irritated by the uncertainty.

On Mr.Đinh’s side, Vietnam is a nation where people seriously avoid the uncertainty in what they do, especially when they do business. Vietnamese people want to make sure that everything is under-controlled and there will be not many unexpected situations happening. As a consequence, when Mr.Đinh talked with mr. Philip, despite they did share the same interest in many things, he would consider their cooperation as a different story. When Vietnamese people are long-term oriented, Mr.Đinh might contemplate substaintially the benefits of the collaboration between two companies. Moreover, he might want to have a further research Mr.Philip’s company to actually know them before coming to business arrangement. Subsequently, he wanted to make sure about everything with a long-term view instead of going straight to do business without considering any risks and threats may come later. ( cong ty nua)

b.    Emotions

In spite of emotional differences, there are also some similarities in the way these characters express.These two man showed a neutral voice when discussing. Actually, there was not much any emotions shown when they exchanged the information.

Nevertheless, there is a small paradox here. As in Vietnam, people easily show their emotions even when they work, not many people can keep emotions personally so that i can know their feelings probably.But in this case, Mr.Đinh did not do that; instead he did not show any emotions or feelings much at all.Surprisingly, he kept the voice neutrally to the situation.To explain for this, i suppose that because he studied in Switzerland for a long time, he learned how to keep his voice and emotions impartially in any circumstances, which made it harder to predict what he was thinking.

And Mr.Philip, in this situation also mantained a neutral voice at first, like many Western people do because they consider emotionality as being unprofessional.In this situation,literally, he initiated as a prove of interest. However, at the end when he felt the information and intention was ambiguous, he began showing some irritation in thinking.

In short, they both showed a neutral voice in the whole story, but it can be seen that Mr.Philip felt displeased with the situation he was in at the end. 

 

c.     Communication

The context here is the cross-cultural communication which is quite interesting that there might be some difficulties when people from different culture exchange the information.Furthermore, ”communication can only arise between people that to a certain extent share a system of meaning”.

Indeed, it is a real problem for languages between these two man spontaneously because they both used English as a way of communication. For instance, through the meetings, they talked with each other in various topics and the vibe among them was really good.It seems like there was not any obstacles understanding the counterparts.Also, since they both had concrete information about each other’s culture and customs, it helped them substaintially made the talk more interesting.

But when looking back the cultural background, there is specific contradiction between them. For Mr.Philip, he came from a low context background. In fact, people from low context background will say what they think spontaneously.When talking about doing business, Mr.Philip actually expressed his ideas and willingness for company expansion clearly and honestly with the evidence that he used words for information.Basically, what he said is what he really meant to be and there should not be any different interpretation for his speech.So, the most important message was mentioned by him at the start when they really had a talk about collaboration at the meeting together and it was verbal agreement.

In contrast, Mr. Đinh , although studying abroad, he acted as normal Vietnamese people usually do in high context culture. Usually, people will use non-verbal communication when they discuss a topic. Importantly, the meaning was also based on the context they were in. For instance, when he talked with Mr. Philip in the meeting, he might have meant for further collaboration and cooperation. But also it might interpreted as a way for making harmony between them. . Actually, Mr. Đinh did care about the business agreement but since he was not the one who had full authority for the agreement, he would prefer to inform later in order to avoid uncertainty. Moreover, if it was looked carefully, it can be seen that Mr. Đinh meant to visit Germany for further market information before conducting the business through the way he talked about it. In Vietnamese culture, if people are interested in something, they would not act rapidly, instead they will show gradually through different words and how they say them.Especially, they prefer written agreements rather than verbal agreements.

d.    Specific and diffuse relationships

As mention above,specific and diffuse relationships indeed are applied based on the cultural context.

Firstly, in Mr.Đinh’s cullture – the high context culture – people are usually dealt with diffuse relationships. In other words, before doing business with Mr.Philip, Mr. Đinh might want to get to know his trade partner in all qualities first, not only on private life but also about other aspects.Hence, he could prevent some unexpected things happened to. Even if he was interested in their contract, he would require time to think about it considerably in all aspects

On the second hand, it is specific relationships that Mr.Philip’s culture is accounted for.Thus, an individual’s private life is seperated from working performance and working environment. Moreover, as Mr.Philip is from low context culture, he would love to go straight forward into the problems since he found his talk with mr.Đinh obvious enough to express his real intention. However, Mr. Philip forgot that Mr. Đinh’s culture is a diffuse culture in which is rich and subtle, and he should have been adapted gradually to not only to know his partner well but also his customs better they actually started doing business together.

e.     The concept of time

Another important approach here is their attitudes towards time since these two characters have an opposite ideas in the dimension.

For Mr.Philip, time is being regarded as rational fact that is to be divided in equal parts.Hence,as sequential culture, when Mr. Đinh proposed he would visit Germany in the future, he felt that the statement was too vague and unclear.Instead, he would prefer a specific time for assurance.Everything should be clear and fast-moving, even when they make planning,strategy as well as investment in business.

Contrastly, coming from a synchronic culture, Mr. Đinh perceived time as something elastic and should not be fixed. In addition to that, it can be used in various way depending on the circumstances. In the case study, when knowing Mr.Philip was interested in the cooperation, Mr.Đinh replied that he would give a visit in Germany later in the future and then communicate back to the company president for further discussions without giving specific time. As interpretation, Mr.Đinh would not give specific time since the visit would not only his own decision but also from his president whether he/she accepted for the further research or not. Consequently, in this circumstance the time may take longer than expected and he could not give a specific time to his partner, Mr.Philip.

On Mr.Philip’s side, it will be a better solution when he also finds out more about how Vietnamese people behave,especially in business environment in order to avoid uncertainty.With this strategy, Mr.Philip can have a deeper insights from Mr.Đinh with a distinctive perspective on their business collaboration so that he may make the situation go better for him. In order to do that, Mr. Philip at first should do more research on mr. Đinh’s culture so that he can understand mr. Đinh’s behaviours probably. For further understanding, an email of further information about the company would be a good way to make the impression on Mr. Đinh. Moreover, since his time is flexible and elastic, Mr. Philip should ask for an approximate time for response from Mr.Đinh while mentioning that how benefits this business agreement will be for both sides. Importantly, since they started having a bond with mutual interest at first, they should also develop the personal activities for better understanding. On Mr. Đinh’s side, the effective strategy when dealing with international partnerships is that he should propose his problem more directly and give specific information about what he wanted so that his partner will not be confused. And it wil be a good strategy when he makes use of his diffuse relationships’ culture to express and give explanation about his cultural identity to Mr.Philip.