VIII. Status (or achievement vs. ascription)


Status describes the positioning of individuals/groups in their society. The fundamental/base can be what someone DOES, or what someone IS. There are big differences how societies respect or focus on someone’s status. In the USA, Germany and Finland people are measured by how successful they are in their jobs and what an individual has done. Most of these culture members interact with people relating to their functions someone’s profession/role is, like to a marketer or controller and less to the individual as a whole person. Those „powerful positions“ are taken by people because of their skills, knowledge and talents.


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In comparison to ascriptive cultures like China, measure other’s behaviour on the groups into which they were born or attributed by birth right, gender, caste or age but also to your interpersonal relationships and your ranking in society. They relate status to highly qualified, older more experienced persons. Senior employees of a company are highly respected because of who they are and their length of service but the trend towards shows slightly towards an achievement development. The individual is something special and hardly to compare with others, independent from a specific position or task. The main differences in this dimension has affection to who is expected to speak in a particular situation and how much weight might be put on their words.