This brief aims to help to understand Germans and avoid intercultural misunderstandings while doing business. However, this is just a generalization of most common German culture and one should not stereotype.
Location
A member of the European Union, Germany is located between multiple countries as shown in Figure 1.
Culture is the way of life that affects behaviour and habits towards one another in a particular group of people. (Dictionary.cambridge.org, 2016)
Thus, could be affected by other cultures and change due to various …show more content…
Individualism and Collectivism
The degree of prioritization of needs of an individual or an organization, an individualistic society will focus on personal achievements and independence (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, 2010), e.g Americans. While, a collective society will favour collective interests and often is hostile toward people who threaten the hierarchy or harmony of the group. E.g Chinese community.
Germany is an Individualism society, they communicate by being direct, and believing that wasting people’s time by circling the issue is not efficient and unconducive. With that they also place a high trust on people to do what is needed to make everything efficient and it is reflected in their daily lives, even being in the city, the Honour system is heavily relied on.
Stations have no barriers to enter, bus drivers doesn’t check tickets and there is only a few conductors that board on and off to check. Flowers could be picked without supervision, just a sign to show prices as shown in Figure 4. When given a task, one is expected to complete it and would speak up if they would need help.