Acculturation.

One key topic in the wider discussion of transformation is culture. To be clear, I am not talking organisational culture, but national culture, or the culture that someone identifies that they come from. Usually this identification is in the form of a country or could be a sub-group of a country. For example, if I ask one of my friends from Barcelona where she is from, her answer to me isn't simply Spain, it is Catalonia (a region of Spain). Her answer gives me some insight as to how she identifies her culture and also gives me some clues as to what might be important for her or what her behaviours might mean.

Culture is influenced by so many factors. Two people growing up on the same street may have similar values but may have different traditions or views on how they see the world. This 'frame' is unique to the individual. However, a lot of research has been done that provides some general guidelines such as how one culture might be more individualistic than collective. I will also say that this as it is is sliding scale; but for instance, people from a more Western type background may have more individualistic tendencies such as a greater proximity to family, where as maybe people from an Asian background may have more collective tendencies, such as it is more normal to live in a multi-generational household.

Now, what happens when people from various cultures maybe leave home and relocated to a different place in the world such as Dubai? This is where something called Acculturation happens.

To help explain Acculturation, I have borrowed a few paragraphs from my PhD dissertation:

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The term acculturation appears throughout the psychological literature, with the earliest reference in the American Journal of Psychology from 1898, reviewing McGee’s four-stage approach to Piratical Acculturation (AFC, 1898, p. 154). In this work, the phases are imitation, mating, civilization, and enlightenment. Although rudimentary, the basic principles have stayed the same: always trying to answer the complexities of how culture comes together, adapts, and changes. Sam and Berry (2010) provided a clearer definition of postmodern acculturation, and Figure 6 illustrates it:

Acculturation refers to the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. Closely linked to acculturation is adaptation, which … refer(s) to individual psychological well-being and how individuals manage socioculturally.… Adaptation is thus considered a consequence of acculturation. (p. 472)

This definition has evolved most notably from both Kramer’s (1992, 1997, 2012) theory of dimensional accrual and dissociation and Gudykunst and Kim’s (2003) work to redefine acculturation for a more modern audience, in which they viewed acculturation in terms of high adaptability. In addition, they emphasized the deculturation and acculturation process as an adaptation mechanism.

Figure 6. The framework for conceptualizing and studying acculturation. Adapted from “Acculturation When Individuals and Groups of Different Cultural Backgrounds Meet,” by D. L. Sam and J. W. Berry, 2010, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, p. 474.

Gudykunst and Kim’s (2003) approach somewhat aligns with the work of Berry (1998), in that they view deculturation as cultural stress that occurs naturally as part of the process. Sam and Berry’s (2010) approach to acculturation, as depicted in Figure 6, applies to the Dubai context and can help researchers to understand how individuals from two cultures connect and change (due to cultural stress), and then adapt. Where two individuals from seemingly different cultures connect and behavioral shifts begin to occur as a result of cultural stress, a level of cultural adaption or acculturation occurs. This process can further impact operating norms such as how individuals interact within a service transaction situation.

The study of acculturation within the context of the UAE is still relatively new. Studies on topics such as acculturation and healthcare (Ghubash, Hamdi, & Bebbington, 1994; Shah et al., 2015) are readily available, but they focus on singular and specific subsets of the population such as healthcare professionals. However, one article by Atiyyah (1996) began to examine expatriate acculturation in Arab Gulf countries using a theoretical lens. Atiyyah concluded that expatriates should acculturate further, but that they lacked the functional data to generate concrete conclusions and somewhat missed the point of acculturation, a result of two cultures interacting. This interaction can function as cultural intelligence on the part of one or both of the actors, as Cultural intelligence is the ability to engage in a set of behaviors that uses skills (i.e. language or interpersonal skills) and qualities (e.g. tolerance for ambiguity, flexibility) that are tuned appropriately to the culture-based values and attitudes of the people with whom one interacts. (Peterson, 2011, p. 89).

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Phew! That's a lot to digest. But simply - Acculturation looks at how people adapt to each other within the context of two different cultures coming together.

Why is this important to know?

The concept of acculturation needs to be considered in the context of Transformation because assumptions of behavioural norms may be inconsistent with the cultural norms more commonly found in participants home countries.

The idea of acculturation also suggests that people can and will change based on their environments and what they are exposed to. For example, maybe while out shopping in a mall you might see a local dressed traditionally but wearing a fashionable baseball cap. This is a simplistic example, but a visual one where dress has been adapted. Although we don't know the primary reason for the change, it could include factors such as:

• the individual has spent time in another country where that is the norm, or
• it could be a fashion choice based on peers or social media influence.

In a place like the UAE, interacting with other cultures is a daily occurrence. It is really interesting to start to understand why and how we may slightly shift our own behavioral norms based on interaction, maybe sometimes without realizing it until we visit home. But acknowledging that this process exists will help us to navigate culture in the context of organisational transformation.

Do you have any experiences of acculturation? I would love to read them in the comments!

#acculturation #transformation #culturalintelligence #phd #drhilsadvice #changemanagement