What cluster frameworks are and why the series uses them

The program's Expand Your Borders series introduces cultural patterns found in cross-cultural research, organized by region. It is built on cluster frameworks, and the best known of these comes from the GLOBE research program, a large international study of culture and leadership. GLOBE researchers surveyed roughly seventeen thousand managers in about sixty societies about the practices and values they saw in their organizations and societies. They then grouped societies whose responses were similar. A study by Vipin Gupta, Paul Hanges and Peter Dorfman tested proposed groupings statistically and found support for ten clusters: Anglo, Germanic Europe, Nordic Europe, Latin Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Arab (named Middle East in some later GLOBE writing), South Asia and Confucian Asia.

Clusters are useful because they give a big-picture map. They suggest where societies tended to be similar in, for example, how much they emphasized hierarchy, group loyalty or planning for the future, and where they tended to differ. For someone new to intercultural work, a map like this can make visible that one's own workplace habits are part of a pattern too, and it can suggest questions to ask before a meeting with a new partner. The Expand Your Borders courses use the clusters in that spirit, as an organizing map.

It is just as important to know what the data did not measure. The respondents were managers in organizations, not a cross-section of each society. The results are averages for societies, usually countries, not descriptions of individuals. They were collected at a particular time, and societies change. Many people and peoples do not fit national boundaries: the Hmong live across several countries, Dakota and Anishinaabe nations are sovereign nations within what is now Minnesota, and many Minnesotans have heritage in more than one society or grew up here with parents from elsewhere. Religious, linguistic, regional and class differences within a country do not show up in a national average. Introductory textbooks that teach GLOBE make the same point, warning that relying solely on such frameworks can be misleading.

So hold two ideas together. Cluster research is real, careful work that can help you notice patterns, including your own. And a cluster describes a statistical tendency across a group of societies. It cannot tell you how the person on the other side of the table communicates, decides or builds trust. The rest of this course is about using the map without mistaking it for the territory.

Fictional case: Before a video call with a provider association whose leaders include several people who emigrated from Latin America, Grace, a DSD contract manager, skims a summary of the Latin America cluster. It notes a tendency, on average, to place value on relationships and group loyalty. Grace plans to open the call with ten minutes of personal conversation and to avoid discussing the contract details until the end. Her colleague Luis, who grew up in Minneapolis, says the association's leaders are known for being very businesslike.

Look at one cluster summary in the Expand Your Borders series. Write down one pattern it describes and two reasons a specific person with heritage in that region might not fit it.

When you read about a cultural pattern tied to a region, what is your first instinct: to apply it, to reject it, or to test it? What shapes that instinct?