Samenvatting

This study aims to show that the approaches to culture and cultural differences usually referred to in IB courses at RBS are misleading in many ways. It aims at animating managers, teachers, and students of international business to develop an understanding of a different ‘culture’ that surpasses a superficial awareness of different usances and collective inclinations to specific behavioural patterns that goes beyond references to scores on scales reliant on antipodes such as collectivism and individualism that serve as universal explanation for anything that is different. Whereas this implies the intention to provide a general route to understanding and accessing different ‘cultures’, this paper does explicitly not aim at developing another dubious model to assess cultural differences. Neither does it aim at developing quantitative parameters to create easily accessible schemes and graphs, allegedly allowing for the evaluation of cultural differences at a glance when doing business internationally. On the contrary, the starting point of this study begins with the conviction that only a hermeneutical, qualitative approach and a constructivist perspective can allow for the understanding of ‘cultures’, including collective habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and social graces.