Business Culture Study from the Emic Perspective

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Business Culture Study from the Emic Perspective

作者：傅蕾

来源：《商情》2013年第51期

【Abstract】the present paper is directed toward business culture study on the basis of emic/etic perspective， in an attempt to figure out a better way to study business culture.

【Keywords】emic etic business culture study

Culture can be studied from two perspectives： from an etic perspective which entails comparisons across cultures and from an emic perspective which entails culture-internal research （Spencer-Oatey&Franklin， 2010）. These are not contradictory approached， but that each complements the other in important ways. For example，Geert Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture were framed in etic approach， and when we study Chinese culture， we are usually using emic approach.

From my view， emic approach requires researchers to understand cultures through local people’s eyes as much as possible，rather than to use researchers’ personal knowledge. In this way，researchers have to be familiar with the knowledge and categorizing system. Because of that， when doing the researches， researchers will concentrate on using standard items and concept to describe their results. Nearly all the details of cultures can be described without the misunderstandings caused by cultural differences between researchers and local people. When translating， if a word from source language does not have a equivalent word in target language， some propose that using transliteration and notes to avoid potential misunderstandings.

Disadvantages of emic approach are：in local residents’ view， many special cultural phenomenons and thought processes are just ordinary. It may result in that the researchers using emic approach will ignore them. A case in point is a movie The Treatment. In this movie， the hero， a Chinese man， thought it was a common sense that when his wife and his unborn baby were both in danger and he must make a choice， he chose his wife rather than the baby. But Americans thought that was merciless and immoral to depr ive the baby’s right of existence.

Advantages of etic approach are that in this approach， researchers can analyze materials from a certain culture and recognize those special cultural phenomenons and thought processes regarded as ordinary things by local people.

However， the disadvantage of etic approach is that misunderstandings may occur and become a barrier for other culture learners because of different culture background and different levels of knowledge. For example， several decades ago， Chinese readers often misunderstood the word nun