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Crossing the Culture Bars: An Approach to the Training of American Technicians for Overseas Assignments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

John D. Montgomery
John D. Montgomery
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

Some of the 25,000 American businessmen, most of the 30,000 American missionaries, and all of the 33,000 public officials working abroad have received some form of training in “overseasmanship” prior to embarking upon their careers as technical assistants. This training was not supposed to make them better managers, Christians, diplomats, or technicians, but to enhance their usefulness in a strange cultural environment. Such training may be viewed as a specialized form of education designed to influence their performance or behavior. Conveying knowledge about foreign cultures or about the processes of change is an important form of training as well as a legitimate aspect of education; the distinction is one of purpose and focus. Employers are more sympathetic to offering “training” programs than to providing “education” for their overseas agents, even if the subject matter is essentially the same. They expect a specific result—better performance—from their training programs.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , July 1961 , pp. 544 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961

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References

1 A useful list of these factors is found in Cleveland, Harlan et al., The Overseas American, New York, 1960, pp. 123–88.Google Scholar

2 For a provocative examination of this question, see Conrad Arensberg, M., “Assumptions of American Culture,” New York, 1954Google Scholar (mimeographed).

3 This is not to deny the fact that Americans need to have more specific knowledge about their country to be successful abroad than they do in the United States. See Brown, Stuart Gerry, Memo for Overseas Americans, Syracuse, N.Y., 1960Google Scholar, esp. Harlan Cleveland's introduction.

4 Perham, Margery, “The British Problem in Africa,” Foreign Affairs, XXIX, No. 4 (July 1951), p. 638Google Scholar; italics added. This controversial statement is of course confined to “history” in a narrow sense. Cf. Daniel F. McCall, “Non-Documentary Sources of African History” (forthcoming).

5 For a discussion of the “country approach” as a means of adapting administrative and program arrangements to the host society, see Montgomery, John D., “Field Organization, Administrative Relationships, and Foreign Aid Policies,” in Friedrich, C. J. and Harris, S., eds., Public Policy, Vol. x, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.Google Scholar

6 I have written elsewhere about some of the political implications of foreign aid. See Montgomery, , Forced to Be Free, Chicago, 1957Google Scholar, ch. 5; “Gilded Missiles,” Far Eastern Survey, XXVIII, No. 6 (June 1959), pp. 81–89; and “Political Dimensions of Foreign Aid,” in Braibanti, R., Spengler, S. et al., Tradition, Values, and Socio-Economic Development, Durham, N.C., 1961.Google Scholar

7 The most useful are Paul, Benjamin D., ed., Health, Culture and Community: Case Studies of Public Reactions to Health Programs, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1955Google Scholar; Teaf, Howard U. Jr, and Franck, Peter C., Hands Across Frontiers: Case Studies in Technical Cooperation, The Hague, NUFFIC, distributed by Cornell University Press, 1955Google Scholar; Spicer, Edward H., Human Problems in Technological Change: A Casebook, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1952Google Scholar; and Mosher, Arthur T., Technical Cooperation in Latin American Agriculture, Chicago, 1957.Google Scholar On the general characteristics of cases, see Paige, Glenn, “Problems and Uses of the Single Case in Political Research,” University of Minnesota, 1959Google Scholar (mimeographed), and the bibliography cited there. See also Montgomery, , “Flesh for the Bones of Principle: A Socratic Dialogue,” Public Administration Review, XVIII, No. 2 (Spring 1958), pp. 118–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar