Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Animated profiling
On a computer, the differences between the perception of one’s own cultural 
style and the perception of another’s can be shown visually and also mapped 
against the most appropriate cultural style.
One of the best examples of this is the Aperian model of world cultures, 
which is part of the Robert House GLOBE Project approach to leadership in 

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Cultural Profiling and Classification 269
world cultures. This offers a visual means of comparing cultural styles. The 
profile is based on a series of questionnaires, the results of which are used to 
provide visual profiles on a graph against a series of indicators. Users map 
their own management style against a number of indicators. Their ‘map’ is 
then automatically presented as a continuous line by the computer. At the 
click of a mouse or trackpad, the user can then call up the expert profile of 
any country he or she is dealing with and even that of other colleagues who 
have mapped their styles on the system and have given their permission for 
comparison. Details are available at: www.aperianglobal.com.
The framework approach
A simpler but similar approach is offered by the RADAR profile explained 
by Tomalin and Nicks (2010). In this case, users map their personal styles 
against ten paradigms.
Their style is then represented as a graph which can then be compared 
with the ‘expert’ view of other countries, using the same ten indicators. An 
example of the Tomalin and Nicks profile, comparing the UK and the USA, 
can be seen below in Figure 14.2. The USA is represented by a continuous 
line and the UK by a dotted line.
As we look at the two major theoretical approaches to the designing of pro-
filing tools for assessing cultural appropriateness, we recognize two sources:
psychological personality analyses applied to organizations and cultures;
social and behavioural styles applied to national cultures.
What is common to both is the organization of information into frame-
works that can be applied by specialists to the study of business behaviour, 
business organizations and national business cultures. The value of the 
framework approach is that it organizes psychological and social character-
istics into an easily applicable form. The problem is that humanity rarely 
conforms to organizational convenience and that psychological and social 
characteristics may be in danger of being shoehorned into categories to fit 
the framework. Overall, however, our experience is that the psychological 
and social frameworks we have studied, if used sensitively, can act as an aid 
to supporting organizational and cross- cultural adaptation.