A Gulf Project Revisited
From Cultural Advice to Cultural Judgment
I was once asked to contribute to a formal examination of why relations between a major German industrial contractor and its customer in one of the Gulf countries had become strained during the execution of a major project.
Looking back at that case today, I see something that we could not see explicitly at the time. Although most of the practical recommendations were reasonable, the more interesting question still relates to the reasoning through which we arrived at them.
Intercultural knowledge can tell us that hierarchy, personal relationships, local presence or face-to-face communication may matter in a Gulf business environment, and certainly not only there. The problem begins when such knowledge moves too quickly from a general cultural tendency to an explanation of a particular person’s behavior and from there directly to a prescription for action.
That gap between cultural knowledge and action is where Cultural Judgment becomes necessary. And when the situation contains two apparently contradictory but simultaneously valid requirements, Cultural Judgment alone is not sufficient. This is where Connecting Contradictions becomes relevant.
The Setup
The German company had a small resident office in the country and a manager with many years of experience in the region. I considered this a sensible arrangement. For significant projects in the Gulf, a permanent local presence is usually more effective than managing the relationship through occasional visits or leaving non-technical issues to technical staff.
On the other side, the customer’s project manager had considerable experience in managing Gulf construction projects but was not himself a technical specialist. When delays occurred, he tended to complain forcefully, often in general terms, and sometimes threatened legal action. In many cases he was overdemanding. My interpretation at the time was that this reflected his understanding of strong management: when something went wrong, a strong manager on the customer’s side demonstrated control by applying pressure due to the cultural expectation of the hierarchical relationship between a customer and a supplier.
Because the German company had someone permanently in the country, many problems could be addressed quickly and personally. I nevertheless recommended that the company should also retain a national employee of the host country, perhaps as a Government Liaison Officer, who could intervene occasionally where local legitimacy, institutional access or knowledge of the local administrative environment mattered.
Even today, these recommendations may still have been right. What I would ask today is whether the reasoning was sufficiently differentiated.
Cultural Judgment
The central question is not simply whether a cultural observation is true in general. The question is how much explanatory weight it should receive in the particular situation.
This becomes necessary because observed behavior is rarely produced by culture alone. What we see is usually the result of an interaction between cultural influences, the particular person involved, and the concrete situation in which the behavior occurs.
This is expressed in the CuPS logic — a model from cultural psychology research, which forms part of the foundation for Cultural Judgment:
Culture × Person × Situation → Behavior
The purpose of the model is not to reduce behavior to three variables. It is to prevent us from treating culture as the automatic explanation whenever behavior appears culturally familiar.
Consider the project manager’s forceful complaints. Cultural expectations concerning authority and managerial strength may have influenced his behavior. But culture is only one possible part of the explanation.
He was responsible for the project and may have needed to demonstrate internally that he was holding the contractor accountable. Because he lacked technical expertise, pressure may have been one of the few instruments available to him when technical explanations became difficult to evaluate. Previous project experience may have taught him that escalation produces results. His own personality and leadership style may also have mattered.
Cultural Judgment does not replace the cultural explanation with these other explanations. It prevents us from deciding too early which explanation is the crucial one.
This matters because action depends upon interpretation. If the German company treats every legal threat as merely a culturally familiar form of pressure, it may underestimate genuine contractual risk. If it interprets every threat literally and immediately transfers the matter into legal channels, it may turn a manageable relationship problem into a formal confrontation very early.
The same applies to the recommendation to employ a national of the host country. The first question should not be, “Do we need a national?” It should be, “What capability is missing?”
If the missing capability is access to government institutions, local credibility, knowledge of administrative procedures or an ability to interpret informal signals within the local environment, nationality may indeed become highly relevant. But nationality should not itself be confused with competence.
Looking at the case today, I would not automatically recommend employing a national simply because the project is in the Gulf. I would first identify the missing function. If the problem is lack of institutional access, local credibility, knowledge of government procedures or the ability to interpret informal signals within the local environment, then involving a national of the host country may still be the right decision. But that person might be a permanent employee, an external adviser or a liaison brought in for specific situations. The recommendation may still be right, but it should be reached through functional diagnosis rather than cultural prescription.
That is the distinction between applying a cultural rule and exercising Cultural Judgment.
Connecting Contradictions
The case contains a second kind of problem. Some difficulties cannot be solved simply by improving the interpretation of the behavior because two different requirements remain legitimate at the same time.
The first tension concerns speed and accuracy. The customer wanted an immediate response when a problem occurred. The German technical organization needed time to investigate before giving a reliable technical answer.
Traditional adaptation could lead to the recommendation that the Germans simply respond faster. But speed cannot replace accuracy. An immediate answer which is not thoroughly calculated might create a different and more complicated problem.
The response therefore has to preserve both logics. The resident manager can react immediately, acknowledge the issue, explain what is known and what remains uncertain, and give a precise commitment for the next steps. The customer receives an immediate response, but the technical answer follows only after the necessary investigation.
The second tension concerns hierarchy and expertise. Senior involvement may communicate seriousness, authority and organizational commitment. Yet the person who actually understands the technical problem may sit several levels lower in the organization.
Neither can replace the other. The senior manager can own the problem and represent organizational responsibility, while the technical expert provides the substantive explanation.
The third tension concerns relationship and contract. Once legal threats are made, the German company has legitimate reasons to document the situation and protect its contractual position. At the same time, the project relationship must continue to function.
The contractual and relational logic therefore must coexist. Formal notices and documentation may proceed through one channel while the resident manager continues the relational work through another. Protecting the contract should not automatically communicate withdrawal from the relationship.
These are examples of Connecting Contradictions because the difficulty cannot be solved by deciding that one logic is correct and the other is wrong. Both remain relevant.
What the two concepts add
The value of traditional intercultural knowledge should not be underestimated. It may alert a manager to the importance of hierarchy, personal relationships, local legitimacy, face-to-face communication or different expectations of managerial behavior.
But cultural knowledge does not determine what a particular behavior means.
Cultural Judgment addresses that problem. It asks how cultural knowledge should be interpreted in relation to the person, the situation and the available evidence before it is translated into action.
Connecting Contradictions addresses a different problem. It becomes necessary when two apparently contradictory logics remain relevant simultaneously and the situation cannot be adequately handled by choosing one and abandoning the other.
Explore the Cultural Judgment Framework
Cultural Judgment
The conceptual foundation for understanding how culturally complex situations are interpreted, evaluated, and translated into action.
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How to work with apparently contradictory but interdependent logics that remain relevant simultaneously.
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Further applications of Cultural Judgment and Connecting Contradictions to concrete intercultural situations.
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