Chance and Fortune
探讨全球化背景下类似术语因文化差异导致的误解，分析“机遇”与“运气”在盎格鲁-撒克逊与拉丁管理文化中的不同含义及其对管理成本的影响。
Attributing equivalence to similar yet slightly differing concepts is a management risk factor in a global economy. Semantic problems may have been overcome through the use of English as the universal language, although the same cannot be said regarding the culturally conditioned interpretation of words and expressions. The confusion between what you meant to say and what is interpreted may create more than bad feelings. It can contribute to management expense and waste. Due to accelerating processes of economic integration, executives involved in planning and logistics and, in the international areas, those who deal with marketing and people management, find themselves faced with culturally different sentiments and reactions with respect to the same expression. Let us examine the word ‘globalization’. This word has acquired a plethora of meanings: (i) the internationalization of the economy (Central Europe, Latin America); (ii) the universalization of the Western or American way of life (Asia); (iii) the global integration of the media and information flows (USA); (iv) the consolidation of supranational economic and commercial events (Latin America); (v) the cultural homogenization, by the imposition of North American values (France, Italy, Great Britain); (vi) the universalization of the economic form of liberalism (Asia, UEA) and (vii) the crystallization of global capitalism (USA).1 In each of these regions and countries, executives work and operate with different concepts and sentiments when dealing with globalization. In what follows, I argue that difficulties arising from misunderstanding the meanings of similar terms are a natural consequence of the globalization process. Culturally-conditioned interpretations are inevitable in the current economic and organizational context. Specifically, I examine the meanings of the concepts chance and fortune and the consequences ensuing from failure to differentiate between them in relationships between Anglo-Saxon and Latin administrative cultures. I contend that Volume 12(4): 590–600 ISSN 1350–5084 Copyright © 2005 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)