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DIFFERENCES IN CULTURE

What is Culture?

1. Culture has been defined a number of different ways. In this course we will view culture as a system of values and norms that are shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living.
2. While culture is a characteristic of society as a whole, it shapes individual behavior by identifying appropriate and inappropriate forms of human interaction.
3. The fundamental building blocks of culture are values and norms.
4. Values are abstract ideas about what a society believes to be good, right, and desirable. As was discussed in Chapter 2, values affect political and economic systems as well as culture. Values include attitudes towards concepts like freedom, honesty, loyalty, justice, responsibility, and personal relations including marriage.
5. Norms are social rules and guidelines that prescribe the appropriate behavior in particular situations. Norms shape the actions of people towards one another. Norms can be divided into folkways and mores.
6. Folkways are the routines conventions of everyday life, but generally have little moral significance. Examples would be dress, eating habits, and social graces. Foreigners may be easily excused for making a few faux pas. Timeliness is a good example, and you can discuss when timeliness is critical (test days) as well as when one may be expected to be "fashionably late." If students come from different parts of the country or world, you can ask for opinions on when they should arrive for a party if the invitation says 8pm. Even typically American students have different concepts about lateness. The concept of time as a commodity is peculiar to Western society. Time can be spent, saved, wasted. That is quite different from many other societies, especially some areas of Latin
   America, where time is seen as an item to be enjoyed and savored.
7. Mores are more serious standards of behavior, the breaking of which may be very inappropriate or even illegal. Examples would be theft, adultery, murder, or use of mind-altering substances (including alcohol, caffeine, and marijuana). Mores can vary greatly between countries: what in one country may be viewed as an innocent flirt in another may constitute a serious affront to someone's dignity or even harassment. While it is acceptable, and even expected, to consume alcohol with business associates in Japan, where evening business contacts often border on drunkenness, such actions would be disallowed in the United Arab Emirates.
8. Norms and values are an evolutionary product of a number of factors that are at work in a society, including political and economic philosophy, social structure, religion, language, and education. Culture affects both of these factors and is affected by them.
9. The nation-state is only a rough approximation of a culture. Within a nation-state multiple cultures can easily exist (as we can only too painfully see in the former Yugoslavia), and cultures can also cut across national borders. That can often be easily illustrated by describing the differences that exist between people in a country. It is quite easy to get a class of students in the Western US to agree that the people in New York are really different and generally rude, while Eastern students will comment on Californians or Southerners, etc. Likewise, students in Stockholm will have clear opinions about how different Swedes are from the far North or far South. In virtually any country or state students will easily be able to describe the differences between city-folks and country-folks,
   and some students will “defend” their culture while making disparaging remarks about the other.



Read more: MGT520 - International Business - Lecture Handout 15

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WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)
PAKISTAN & WTO – II

Anti-Dumping

In economics, "dumping" can refer to any kind of predatory pricing. However, the word is now generally used only in the context of international trade law, where dumping is defined as the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at an unfairly low price.

Antidumping Duty

A penalty charge on imports to protect domestic industry against disruptive pricing practices by foreign firms (see dumping). An antidumping duty is supposed to be set equal to the margin of dumping, defined as the difference between fair value and the actual sales price. GATT Article 6 permits members to levy antidumping duties, while the GATT Antidumping Code attempts to standardize and discipline importing governments' activities in this area. See also circumvention and injury test.

During recent years, Pakistan’s exports especially of textile and clothing have been subjected to anti-dumping and safeguard measures in Japan, EU and USA. EU is presently investigating a dumping case against Pakistan bed-linen exporters.

There is prima facie evidence that cases of imposition of ANTI Dumping Duties (ADDs) against different sub-sectors of the textile industry have been registered in orde4r to protect jobs of textile industries of developed countries. This is seriously impacting on Pakistan’s economy. Even in cases where investigations do not lead to eventual imposition of definitive ADDs, trade is disrupted in the interim period and valuable customers are lost.

Given the backdrop of increasing anti-dumping measures against our exports, we need to implement anti dumping measures to protect domestic industry against the onslaught of unfair competition. In this context, following ordinances have been promulgated in Pakistan;

• Anti dumping law 2000
• Countervailing Duties Ordinance 2001
• Safeguard ordinance 2002.



Read more: MGT601 - SME Management - Lecture Handout 42