To offend or not to offend.
To offend or not to offend.
Teaching note
by Alfredo Behrens
Professor of Cross-cultural Management
FIA Business School
São Paulo.
February, 2011
Synopsis
An American tourist is shot near an isolated village in a Muslim country. The tourist bus she was traveling on detours to a nearby village, where she is offered first-aid in the tour guide’s household. The remaining busload of tourists departs, leaving Anwar, the guide, and the tourist couple behind. The victim and her husband perilously wait until a hospital helicopter arrives to remove them. The husband attempts to offer a gratuity to the house owner for his help, but the money offered is refused.
The case offers insights into culturally defined concepts like honor, dignity, loyalty in business, pragmatism, relationships, debt repayment, and the role of money.
Case use
This case is offered as a first approach to discuss the pitfalls of cross-cultural interaction, in particular with regards to group interaction and compensation. It is aimed at business students and executives yet should be relevant to a wide variety of individuals in international assignments. The case is very short, requiring not more than five minutes of reading time. It is supported by a 70-second clip from the Babel film that addresses the cultural programming that governs much of our interactions with others.
The case may be useful as a primer to trigger cross-cultural awareness, or it may be used among participants with a more than cursory exposure to cross-cultural training. In particular, it will be most useful among participants immersed in the Northern hemisphere Judeo-Christian traditions of dealing with other cultures, particularly Mediterranean participants but including Moslems and Latin Americans.
Analysis
There was no apparent reason for a particular person on the bus to have been shot. Once the bus was fired at, however, anyone aboard could have been wounded.
Anwar, the tourist guide, spoke English; he could well be part of the elite of his home village, but his material wealth could not begin to approach the wealth of the tourists on holiday. Anwar must have needed his job. Yet his boss might have preferred to have him take care of the larger share of the busload than to leave them unattended for the sake of two, one of which might die anyhow. The tourist agency owner is likely to have faced complaints from his clients for having entrusted them to Anwar, an individual who, as it turned out, would abandon them in what the tourists saw as harm’s way. The important question is, will the tourist agency owner fire Anwar or will he be understanding and retain Anwar? How can Anwar’s behavior be explained?
What should Anwar have done? Choose the busload’s safety and abandon Richard and Susan?
Anwar was crucial in ensuring that first-aid and a resting place were provided. However, he was not the only one that helped. There were at least five other people involved. One provided first-aid, someone phoned for help, the old woman provided needed relief, probably hashish, and two other men helped carry the stretcher. Could the American individualist orientation have guided Richard in singling out Anwar to gratify instead of the entire village?
If Anwar had accepted the money in front of so many neighbors, he is likely to have had to share it with others and possibly would have been at a loss in deciding how to do so. It is possible that in refusing to accept the money he helped himself by avoiding the trouble of having to distribute it later.
He would have avoided that discomfiture if he taken the money in private, but it was not offered in private. It would be inappropriate to argue that it was offered in public knowing that it would not be accepted, as it is inappropriate to suppose Anwar did not accept the money in public because the trouble he would have had distributing it would not be compensated by the smaller amount he would have been left with.
One must not overlook the fact that Richard offered Anwar money with his left hand, a proscribed gesture in Muslim countries, where the left hand is the one reserved for personal hygiene. Perhaps that alone would be reason enough to prevent Anwar from wanting to be seen in front of his whole village accepting money from a dirty hand.
We do not know why Anwar refused to accept money from the beneficiary of his good deed. But because Richard offered the money, one must assume he felt indebted to someone, if not the village as a whole.
Debts must be repaid, says a “universal law,”[1] yet by not accepting the debt settlement, Anwar forced Richard to remain forever indebted, arguably an unkind thing to do by someone who had until that moment gone out of this way to help the other. Therefore, one must assume that being offered payment must have made Anwar uncomfortable -perhaps not offended, but uncomfortable nonetheless. Why would that be?
(The following quotes from the scriptures can be projected onto a screen for all to read, or students may be directed to the relevant quotes that accompany the case as Exhibit 2).
The Christian legacy offers guidance regarding the acceptance of compensation for good deeds:
I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. John 5:30 English Standard Version
Would this mean that good to those in need is offered with no expectation of reward and the offer of a reward deprived the doer of the pleasure of having done what was right, as if responding to a Divine call?
Perhaps even more relevant to Anwar as a Moroccan is the following quotation from the Qur’an; its meaning approximately equivalent to that of the biblical John 5:30 above:
It is Allah (God) that gives (you) Want or Plenty, and to Him shall be your return. Qur’an 2:245
Money, because of its liquidity, is the preferred means of payment. But repaying in excess of the principal exposes the taker to usury, formerly condemned in all three monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- and still condemned in Islam.[2] Therefore, paying with money involves measuring the original debt. But some debts, as in this case, cannot be measured. Therefore, in attempting to settle these types of debts with money, the probable result is that too little or too much will be offered, offending the giver in both instances.
The offer of money in compensation for the tourists’ troubles may have offended Anwar, yet the discomfort felt by the beneficiary of Anwar’s kindness might not be less disconcerting. How could the situation be neutralized?
Some may say that in the help offered and in the bonding conversations, a relationship was being built that precluded monetary settlements. If so, a personal gesture could have provided some relief to Anwar and Richard. Perhaps Richard could have offered the guide the pictures of his children that he had shared while bonding with Anwar. Anwar would have been able to keep forever the images of the children whose mother he helped save.
Would that be meaningful? Meaningful enough?
Pragmatists will argue there was not much more that Richard could have done on the spot. But resolving things on the spot may be another expression of a cultural orientation. To those who have a longer, or circular, perspective of time, debts need not be settled immediately, perhaps not even to the same person to whom the beneficiary of a kindness is indebted. Perhaps Richard, once at home, could have organized funding for a school to be built in Anwar’s village and attended the inauguration with his children. The children would then be introduced to the man who helped their family in a time of need.
Life-or-death debts generate these bonds. In the book Synchronicity, Joseph Jaworski tells the story of Manny, an American World War II pilot who shot down an Italian fighter plane on the sea. Manny saw the Italian pilot drop in his parachute and radioed for help besides circling over the floating pilot until his Italian squadron was close enough to realize where their colleague had plunged. Years later, the Italian pilot, who had memorized the squadron identification of the American plane’s wings, tracked Manny down in the USA and told him his life was tied to Manny’s and that they should do business together, which they did.[3]
However, until having a chance to repay the offer received, the beneficiary will remain indebted to the giver. The giver expected nothing in return, and if nothing came his way, religious teachings would say that one day he will be compensated, even if upon his “final judgment.”
Students’ probable responses
Those brought up in America, Canada, or Northern Europe will tend to take a pragmatic stance and to favor universal laws such as “majority rule” and “debts must be repaid.” Regarding the issue of the tourists leaving with the bus and its driver, they will argue that the setting felt threatening and that it is better to save the majority than risk losing all for the sake of one or two. There is a tendency among pragmatists to instrumentalize people as if they were interchangeable widgets.[4] In this case, freeing the majority is better than subjecting all to what was perceived as a likely threat. They are also likely to argue that it would be fair to fire Anwar.
Regarding the issue of paying for the debt, as pragmatists, they will argue in favor of payment with money. They will argue that there was no time for niceties, that Susan and Richard would probably not want to continue on, and that communications were poor, therefore a decision had to be made then and there.
Those brought up in Latin American or Mediterranean countries will more likely give greater weight to issues concerning honor and dignity, will focus less on rewards and the present, will give less weight to the anxiety related to unfamiliarity with the setting, and will take a broader view regarding the debt, seeing it as incurred to the village rather than only to Anwar.
As a result, Latin Americans, Mediterranean people, and others of a collectivist orientation may argue that the driver was wrong in following the “selfish” interests of the other tourists; that the tourist agency owner should not fire Anwar; that Anwar gave without expecting a reward, and that if a reward was due it could not be settled with money, though it could be settled later on through a gift, possibly contemplating the whole village, offering a school building or a library, for example. They will also place more importance on the relationship perspective, perhaps suggesting, as one did, that Richard should have departed with only a gestural expression of gratitude that he could later reinforce with a visit by his whole family. Others, typical of similarly hierarchical societies, suggested that the beneficiary could later have pulled a few strings to have Anwar employed.
The students are expected to individually seek answers to the following questions (sample pro and con answers are provided, culled from real replies from students in class):
1. Why would the bus driver have followed the instructions of the rest of the tourists to leave with the bus, depriving Richard and Susan of an alternative means of transportation?
· “The bus driver did what he was ordered, but the rest of the tourists are at fault for having asked him to leave. After all, each one of them would have wanted to bus to remain with them had it been them who had been shot.”
· “The bus driver is an employee working in a hierarchical society. Over thirty of his boss’s clients ask him to drive them away, so he obeys.”
2. Do you think Anwar will retain his job as a tourist guide?
· “Anwar cannot weigh one life against others. Anwar perceives a group of tourists in angst and Anwar devotes his attention to those most in need: the couple who had been shot. If the tourist agent is a Moroccan he will understand Anwar; if he is answering to a North American or European clientele or bosses, he is likely to weigh the high cost of client attrition to his business and fire Anwar.”
· “Anwar failed to realize that his allegiance is to his boss whose business he must help uphold. In concentrating on two rather than over thirty passengers, he showed lack of judgment and should be dismissed.”
3. If Richard were indebted, was it to Anwar or to Anwar and the village?
· “Richard is indebted to the village at large and specifically to the many people who directly helped him and his wife at Anwar´s request.”
· “Richard is indebted to Anwar. It is up to Anwar to choose whose additional help he will request, and pay for.”
4. Why would Richard have singled out to pay only Anwar?
· “Richard is a pragmatic individualist prone to settle debts with another individual promptly. Besides, there was no time to waste. Anwar, readily at hand, was a good enough recipient for Richard, who probably left it for Anwar to deal with the rest.”
· “Anwar is the only person Richard holds a relationship with, perhaps the only one who speaks English in the village. Who else could Richard have singled out?”
5. Had Anwar accepted the money, what do you think he would have done with it?
· “He would not have kept any and would have split it among those who helped him help the foreigner in need. If they were not to accept the money he would give it away.”
· “I have no idea, it is up to Anwar to decide what to do with it.”
6. Would Anwar have been more inclined to accept the money had it been offered in private?