Now that we are talking about good ol’ Pete and multiculturalism I thought to celebrate the moment and write this in English. SO. Berger and multiculturalism. It has become obvious that he is a cool dude, tolerant, open-minded and very conscious of other cultures. Blah blah blah. You can pretty much sum this all but by citing the article given to our group: “The goal for Berger is to be open minded about other cultures and try to understand the reality from several different perspectives.”  
 
And it is not difficult at all to see why this is crucial for organizational communication. And PR. We are living in increasingly global work and even in Finland many companies – big and small – stretch beyond our borders. And not only to our neighbors. We have a lot of business in Asia where the culture is completely different; so different that a Japanese friend of mine said that when he came to Finland it felt like “arriving on a different planet.” If we approach everything the Finnish way and won't bother to get to know their culture we will end up wasting money, insulting a lot of people we really shouldn’t insult if we wanna do business there and destroy our chances of conquering a new, potential market.
 
I think in our field it is pure common sense to adopt the Bergerian way of thinking. I could wax miles and miles of poetics out of this one but seriously. I am being blunt here, but c'mon guys. You would be stupid not to approach the subject with an open mind, objective curiosity and non-judgmental tolerance. Doing it any other way would just end in a catastrophic failure.
 
And this is not only about advertising and doing PR. The same goes in internal communications and crisis communications. Sometimes we can be blind to the cultural differences that are right in front of our nose. As an international tutor I have noticed this. I know they have been here for only some months, some just a few weeks, but once they get settled into the Finnish way it's so easy to forget they are nothing like us – and whoah, that sounds like I'm comparing exchange students to aliens. But the cultural differences come up at even the smallest of things: when to eat lunch, how to greet people, the size of your personal space, how to talk to people like teachers… And little things count. We all know the example about Japanese and business cards. It's something we Finnish would never think twice about but for them it is a Big Thing.
 
In a multicultural organizational utopia everyone’s needs could be taken to account and there would be time to sit down with everyone to talk about stuff like cultural differences. But let’s face it, with the bigger companies that is hardly realistic. The point is to at least be aware and do a Berger and deal with it in a mature and understanding way.
 
In the end, all people see things differently and think in a different way. And in my opinion, sometimes putting extra weight to the “multicultural” thing might not even be such a good thing since we might have pre-existing attitudes and prejudices about certain nations and their habits. It is not right to put someone under the magnifying class just because of ethnicity and treat him differently or more carefully because of that.  We are all just people. We want to find our place and belong.  
 
Internationally Anna