2.6 Barriers to performance in the new culture
In the previous section we looked at the specification for the ideal expatriate manager. This section continues that theme in a specific form. We are concerned here with the notion of ethnocentrism .
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own group is superior to others (Hill 2005). The term is used in international business to describe the organisation or individual who is so imbued with the idea that what worked at home should work in other countries that cultural and environmental differences are ignored. Your textbook notes that many American, French, Japanese and British people are guilty of ethnocentrism (Hill 2005, p. 117). To this list we might add Germans (the 'master race' concept espoused by Hitler), Australians ('white Australia ' policy), and Serbs (ethnic 'cleansing' in Bosnia ). We might reasonably infer that ethnocentrism is part of the human condition. As host nationals often refuse to accept the expatriate, this indicates ethnocentrism can occur on both sides.
We shall return to ethnocentrism in Chapter 11 when we discuss international human resource management.
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