I was reading a ho-hum article in Foreign Policy about how International Relations theory doesn’t truly grasp the role of culture, which article I don’t recommend to you. It started me thinking about times when, working with grad students from other cultures, I’ve run into a “culture wall.”
Let me share one such with you. I was advising the thesis of an MBA student with a Math baccalaureate who was a member of the discriminated-against Chinese minority in Malaysia. Let’s call her Lee (not her actual name).
Lee had a combination of skills - math and business - which would have landed her a good job in a computer firm or as an insurance actuary. Her chances of getting a green card and staying in the U.S. looked hopeful in those less-immigration-burdened days perhaps 25 years ago.
Lee said, however, that she had to “go home.” I asked her what she’d do with her education there and she replied “perhaps teach high school mathematics.” It was a job that wouldn’t utilize her MBA.
I compared that future with her prospects in the States and asked why she felt she must go home? The answer was “my family wants me to come home.” I asked why they wouldn’t want her to stay here and perhaps follow her here at some later date. She said “no, I have to go home.”
It was a degree of filial piety you would essentially never see in an American, very Confucian. Lee was fully prepared, albeit unexcited, to go home because her father expected it, even though doing so fell far short of maximizing her potential, .
We looked at each other in mutual incomprehension and dropped the subject. I didn’t understand her commitment to family and she didn’t understand my American individualism. She graduated and went home.
Moral of the story: culture matters ... a lot.
