Motivation and culture interact with one another in pretty interesting ways. One of these interactions I'm thinking of at the moment is self-improvement. Sure, most (motivated) people want to be the best they can possibly be, but the reasons behind why differ from culture to culture. In our Western culture, the concept of self-improvement is largely motivated by the principle of promotion orientation. That is, we focus on striving toward positive outcomes and advancement. Success is what we find important and that idea is usually drilled into our heads from a very young age. Even today at the age of 24, whenever I talk to my parents about something important like an upcoming exam for a difficult course or an intimidating job interview, they still tell me to do the best I can because they know I can do well and go far; they want to see me succeed in the world. So because of that, I have a promotion orientation, as do my parents, and their parents, and so on. This is true for most people in the West. Whenever I think about promotion orientation, the idea of a corporate bigwig inevitably comes to mind. I suppose this can be seen as an extreme example of promotion orientation. I keep thinking of the average white collar employee who starts working for some random company at one of those menial entry level positions, who, because of his over-the-top motivation to succeed in the corporate world, manages to claw his way up through the ranks of the company to an executive position. To get there, he sells out his fellow employees, betrays those at his level and above, and God knows what else. Eventually, he may even become CEO, sitting atop his Ivory Tower with his millions of dollars buying and selling smaller companies, accruing even more wealth.
It's kind of funny because it seems like the exact opposite of someone with a prevention orientation. That orientation is characterized by a focus of avoiding negative consequences, avoiding future failure, and improving one's weaknesses with the overall goal of maintaining social harmony and esteem with others. As you may have guess, prevention orientation is mostly seen in Eastern cultures. Now, I'm not very knowledgeable of Eastern business practices, but I imagine that the scenario of clawing one's way to the top doesn't really exist in those cultures. I can just imagine the reaction of those around if one were to attempt that. I imagine a firing would be in order. As far as I know, while CEOs in North America change fairly often businesses evolve consistently, while CEOs in Japan tend to be more static and are often family members of those who founded the company. I believe that children of corporate executives and business owners are often raised to follow in their father's footsteps and to take his place once he retires or passes on. Family-owned businesses are kind of a big deal in Japan while they are dwindling ever so quickly in North America. Corporate buy-outs likely happen in Japan as well, but we don't really hear too much about it. Likely not as great as here in North America. Nintendo was a family-owned company from its founding in 1889 until 2002, and that was only because Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company's previous president, had no immediate family to take over once he retired, so Satoru Iwata was chosen to head the company, due to his great leadership skills and track record of top-notch work.
Much of the difference in orientation is due to the concept of "face", as in from the phrase "saving face". Translated directly from Chinese, face is the social value given by other people if you fulfill your social obligations and expectations. Here in the West, we generally don't care about what other think about us. Well, we do, but not in the same way those in the East do. I had pretty low self-esteem was I was a kid and teenage and I was really concerned about what other people thought of me. I hated confrontation because I had an almost obsessive fear of "rocking the boat" as well as a fear of rejection and making other people uncomfortable. Hell, I'm still kinda of bad for that. My parents always used to tell me to not concern myself with what other think thought of me and that the only one's opinion of me that mattered was my own. I imagine it would be the opposite if I were raised in Japan. I would probably be told that others opinions really do matter and that my focus should be on doing what I'm expected to and maintain social balance. Thinking about it now, did I really have low self-esteem and an aversion to confrontation? Or did I just have a prevention orientation? Considering the context of culture, I probably just had low self-esteem. I wasn't raised with intention of maintaining social harmony, I was just afraid of other people and consequences. Still, it's interesting to ponder.
Well, that's it for tonight!
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