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News of the Academy This page contains a monthly newsletter column and other news of interest to members of the Academy. While the site is moderated by the webmaster, any opinions are those of the various authors and do not necessarily represent official positions of the Academy. |
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Newsletter for July, 2001 Memories of a Diversity Conference in Berlin Harry C. Triandis I was invited to a conference (July 5, 6, 2001) on "diversity" in Berlin. Since I like Berlin and had not been there since 1992 I eagerly accepted. The conference was organized by the University of Potsdam, which used to be in the East German part of Germany before the wall came down, and three other Berlin universities and financed by major German corporations, such as Siemens Electric. A charming graduate student, who took me to my hotel, met me at the airport. It was situated on the river, and had a wonderful view. The tourist ships sailed on the river, so the tourists could view the various castles, and more modest homes (including one where Albert Einstein spent his summers). After settling at the hotel we went to the university. It is 10-years old and is trying a different way of organizing studies. Instead of departments it has "subjects." For example, one of the subjects is nutrition. That forces people from different disciplines to talk to each other. At the university we met the other graduate student who was responsible for organizing the conference. THE professor had better things to do, so these two graduate students did everything (from paying the bills to moving the tables). While they were charming and very bright, they had too little experience organizing conferences. For example, the letter of invitation mentioned that they would pay my expenses, but they paid for my air ticket in DM at the official rate (what is shown in the newspaper) of 2.26. When I changed them to US $at the airport, the rate was 2.5 and thus I lost about $170. It was not a big deal for me, but still this is something that would normally not happen to experienced organizers, especially when there was no fee attached to the speaking invitation. During the first four days I went site seeing. Central Berlin looks like a construction site. There are hundreds of construction cranes. It looks like every multinational corporation in the world wants to have offices near Potsdamer Platz. At the center is Humbolt University, which at one point in the 1920s had 20 Nobel Prize professors. The museums were wonderful. For example, the Pergamon Museum, in addition to having the whole altar of a temple from Pergamon, had whole Roman temples from Militus, Greek mosaics (very rare), and a gate from 6th Century BC Babylon and amazing materials from 15th Century BC Assyria, and from cultures I had never heard of. The Islamic museum was organized by period, so you got a sense of the evolution of Islamic art. The Egyptian Museum was very rich, with the famous bust of Nefretiti conveniently located immediately to the right of the entrance, so that busy tourists can run in and see her and run out to catch their bus! The entrance fees of about $4 were nominal, and included a tape in 11 languages, that operated by pressing 3 numbers. Each important exhibit had these 3 numbers in front of it, so by pressing the numbers and a green button one would get a 2-minute lecture on that object. The cultural life of Berlin seems as rich as New York, though the population is one quarter as large. I went to the opera twice and it was as good as the Metropolitan or Vienna, and the price ($50) was excellent. In Chicago I pay twice as much and I am three times as far from the stage. I went to a concert of music by Bach, at a church just 10 miles from Brandenburg (of Brandenburg concerti fame). It felt so right to be there, and it was free! I ate in elegant restaurants (e.g., Dressler's) in Unter den Linden for less than $25, and at a wonderful Greek restaurant near my hotel for $10. If you are in Potsdam I recommend that you try the Athos Restaurant. It has very authentic peasant Greek food, and it is very reasonable. At the conference I gave the first paper, a warmed up version of my chapter in the 4th volume of the Handbook of Industrial / Organizational Psychology, with some additions that discussed social identity theory, the curse of categorization ("us" and "them"), dominance theory (Sidanius), ethnocentrism, and how to overcome the problems that these factors create in dealing with diversity. Of course, there was some discussion of cultural distance, and how cultural differences of various kinds create difficulties in dealing with diversity. No questions were asked by the audience. The next speaker was Marty Chemers, who is Dean at University of California, Santa Cruz. He considered the role of culture in leadership situations, and recommended various strategies for overcoming the difficulties created by diversity. Since, as he pointed out, he learned a lot about these topics when he was Fred Fiedler's and my student in Illinois, some 35 years ago, there was quite a lot of agreement between the two of us. Then came a paper by Prof. Dr. G. Krell, on the current situation in managing diversity in Germany and Europe. Basically, up to about 10 years ago these issues were ignored. But now they realize that they do have a diverse work force. It will be more diverse in the future, because with a stagnant population they are bringing new blood in the form of computer professionals from India and other places. So, now they want to develop some literature on the subject. They think that a conference like this one can result in a book that will be the first one dealing with this topic in Germany, and possibly in Europe. Then came a paper by one of the two graduate students, who organized the conference. In fact, he had just passed his final exam for his doctorate the previous week. He said that he obtained the first doctorate in Germany on diversity. His topic was mostly economic, What are the costs and economic importance of dealing with the topic? Next, was a video connection with Prof. Dr. David A. Thomas, of the Harvard Business School. He was in Boston, and we saw him in Potsdam. The connection was poor, and it was more interesting as a technical feat of speaking in Boston and being heard in Berlin, than in terms of its content. The next speaker was Prof. Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, who is a Minister in Iran. She is in charge of women's problems in Iran. She wore a scarf over her hair, and was accompanied by her husband and some body-guards. Her topic was "Diversity in gender, religion, and art: An Islamic-feminist perspective." I was, of course, very eager to hear that one. However, she spoke in Farsi, and was translated into German. My German is good enough for everyday conversation, but it can not deal with scientific topics. I stretched to listen carefully. I did not hear a thing about women! I heard that the Quoran is holy, and there were extensive quotes from it. But nothing about women! I thought that I might have missed something, so I asked a German professor sitting next to me. "Did she say something about women?" "No. She did not even say "she"," said my neighbor. So, I asked the graduate student who organized the conference. He has dual citizenship in Iran and Germany. He said: "In that culture it takes time to get through the preliminaries. Since she had 50 minutes for her talk, and it was translated, she had effectively only 25 minutes for her talk. She just did not get to the part of her lecture where she talked about women." Speaking about cultural differences, I was amazed at the level of trust there was in Berlin. I had one of these tickets that allow you to use all the transportation system (bus, train, boat, tram, etc) throughout Berlin for 3 days. No one asked to check if I had such a ticket. At the hotel there was a superb breakfast, with at least 50 items. No one asked if I lived in the hotel. The graduate students came and had breakfast with me, and no one asked them to pay. Some of the students wanted to talk to me after my talk and they came for breakfast, and no one asked them to pay! Perhaps the cost of labor, which is the highest in the world, makes it impossible to check on such matters. At that point the conference went into German. They discussed "best practices" in managing diversity in Germany. Representatives of several German corporations, such as Lufthansa, Daimler-Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Shell, Ford, British Telecom, each had something to say on various panels. As I said I struggled to understand. I finally asked if this is going to continue. The organizers said: "We are very sorry. We thought that everybody would speak in English, but we can't control these people." So, I can report that this is a hot topic, many German corporations have departments for dealing with it, mostly associated with the personnel department. But I did not get most of the details. Too bad. I wish I could give you a better report. THE 2003 CONFERENCE. The 2003 conference will be held in Taipai, Republic of China . Conference co-ordinator is Oliver Tzeng. Members and others are urged to contact Oliver with suggestions for panels and other organizational issues. XXV International Congress of Applied Psychology, Singapore, 7-12 July 2002 The Congress in Singapore has taken shape and form, and is ready for viewing at http://www.icap2002.org Registration can be completed electronically via the web or a hard copy of the registration form can be downloaded. For an abstract to be included in the final program, the paid registration must be submitted by 31 March 2002. An outstanding selection of psychology researchers, practitioners and academics will be presenting their work at the Singapore Congress. Details can be read from the Scientific Program, which sets out the names of Keynote and Invited Speakers, as well as thematic symposia. The rich cultural heritage in Singapore draws its roots from the ancient civilizations in China, India, Indonesia, as well as from the spice and silk traders from the Middle East and Europe. The variety of beguiling cuisines and very high standards of hygiene, cleanliness and general safety records, makes this a must as a tourist destination. On behalf of the Singapore Psychological Society and the National University of Singapore, I look forward to welcoming you to Singapore for the XXV ICAP. Dr Elizabeth Nair MEMBER PUBLICATIONS AND OTHER STUFF: Landis, D., Barrios, B., Curl, L., Black-Guttman, D., and Chesterton, P. (2001). The cross -cultural generality of equal opportunity climate: A study of college students. International education, 30(2), 5-18. MEMBER GRANTS AND OTHER AWARDS: Dan Landis has received a grant in the amount of US$111,190.00 from the Office of Naval Research to continue studies on the effects of culture and ethnicity on small work-group productivity. The period of performance is 1 June, 2001--30 May, 2002.
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