German cultural standards from the Portuguese perspective

• Autor(a) principal: Agostinho, Nuno Manuel N. Neves
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/3163
• topic: Cross-cultural; Cultural standards method; Narrative interviews; Qualitative content analysis

The purpose of this study is to identify the cultural standards of the Germans from the Portuguese perspective. The methodology used is the Cultural Standard Method, an innovative methodology that allows identifying with much more detail and rigor the cultural differences between two cultures. The instrument used is the narrative interview, a kind of open interviews in which interviewees, which are all Portuguese with an extensive working experience in Germany, present, by the order they consider more significant in terms of culture shock, the stories of incidents that occurred during their stay in Germany, which represent critical incidents that may be positive or negative. Critical incidents, analyzed with base on the process "Qualitative Content Analysis" allow to identify, at the end of the process, the relative cultural standards that result from the comparison between two cultures, in this case German and Portuguese culture. These results, only valid when comparing two cultures, do not allow generalizations or extrapolations in the comparison with other cultures. That is, they cannot be used to characterize a culture, as is the case of Germany, in general terms, as it is done in the dimension-based models. The results obtained, relative cultural standards, concerning German culture from the Portuguese perspective, are a contribution to those Portuguese who have to work with Germans and need to better understand the differences between the two cultures. Moreover, this work could be a reflection for all Germans who come to Portugal or that somehow have to deal with the Portuguese, allowing them to reflect on the issues that Portuguese regard as the most significant features of German culture, when compared with the Portuguese one.