1, What worked well, and to what extent can you explain this from cultural aspects?
The most impressive work that my group has done is the idea of our product, because all of us a
gree with this idea proposed by Taiwo. The idea of developing a charitable product touches everyo
ne due to our universal fundamental concerns about health. As well as that, we as human beings e
mpathize with the impaired and are willing to help. Our agreement on “Freebola” which is a produ
ct concerning about the lethal virus- Ebola, associates with doctors without border and other charit
ies shows the first layer of the inverted pyramid model. Discussion about this current world-wide i
ssue referring to empathy and love worked very well.
With this universal point of view, we set up ideas of developing a product. Because we're from
different countries, grew up in different collective cultures, we generated and presented different v
iews(presented in our commercial) about the freebola product. whereas, we are individuals who de
finitely have our own perspectives which may differ from the collectives and our individual belief
s are shown in our outward expression.
Taiwo comes from Nigeria and that he supports Freebola because he find it important that we ar
e prepared for (unknown) health threatening issues and those to come in the (near) future so that w
e are able to solve them on time and easier. From his outward expression, Taiwo has pretty high co
mfort ability in ambiguous situations or facing unfamiliar risks and risky investments.The West-Af
rican countries have in the Uncertainty avoidance index an average score. Therefore there could be
a certain amount of people in these cultures that could actually feel appealed to what Taiwo was re
ferring in the commercial and also to support fighting against Ebola. Marcel has a philippine back
grounds which has high score in the masculinity, however, he differs from his collective culture an
d has a more feminine character which concerns about social welfare, human rights and internatio
nal aids. As a result, he says, "I support Freebola, because we believe that the quality of life is imp
ortant and no one deserves this kind of life. Pleas support now!" Another group member, Varol, ha
s a Turkish background and his country index shows a below average score on group attachment. I
t shows the country has a strong collective characteristic. The messages that Varol conveys to audi
ence is to collaborate together for a greater outcome which also differs from the collective culture.
He suggests, "The Ebola virus is not only a West African problem, but a world-wide issue".
Overall, because we all share one universal fundamental concern of empathy.The outward ex
pressions we carry out in our commercial can be related back to this fundamental universal layor.
2, What did not work well, and to what extent can you explain this from cultural aspects?
To address the drawbacks of this group work, I have to talk about the individual layer of the inv
erted pyramid model. In my opinion, the difficulties or the drawbacks of a team work is always ass
ociated with different individuals of the team. Although we, as a group, work together for the CCA
project, we are different individuals with different concerns about going to school, learning this co
urse, distinct values about getting a high mark in CCA and also different individual outward expre
ssions. While working together, we valued the final grades differently and we had different levels
of motivation due to our different backgrounds and life experience, therefore, we just tried to avoi
d conflicts and finish this project thoroughly. consequently, we value harmony and coherence, tho
ugh we are individually different. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly fol
low the word of the leader and discourages any disagreement with the consensus. As a result, grou
pthink was formed in the group work.