2.7 The Law of Jante

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

The Power of Team Culture

122 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

The Power of Team Culture

122 ratings

Course 1 of 5 in the Specialization Culture-Driven Team Building

Behind the success and failure of teams lies team culture. But what exactly is culture? How and why does it contribute to success and failure? In this course, you learn how to recognize aspects of team culture of which most people are typically unaware. It is often these seemingly unimportant aspects that have the greatest effect on the outcomes of group tasks. Your recognition of them enables you to form, join and lead teams more effectively. You also come to appreciate the role of ritual and symbols in the daily operation of teams, as well as in situations of change and crisis. Knowledge of the ideas and information in this class enables you to be a better team player and a more effective team leader.

From the lesson

Crossing Cultural Boundaries

Sometimes we must take a step back and view cultural differences from perspectives different from what we're used to. Cultural boundaries exist everywhere. Differences can be found within one culture as well. Have you ever considered that a smile isn't just a simple natural response? In this unit we delve deeper into culture and the differences amongst various cultures, including corporate culture.

2.1 Two Examples of Cultural Boundaries5:16

2.2 Why Police Boundaries4:26

2.3 Culture in Motion4:52

2.4 Golden Arches East4:20

2.5 The Art of Smiling5:32

2.6 The Right to Fire4:41

2.7 The Law of Jante5:16

2.8 Cultural Relativity and Ethnocentrism4:59

2.9 Avoid Stereotyping5:12

2.10 A Checklist of Little Differences for Business4:30

2.11 Gestures as Boundary Marker4:49

2.12 Corporate Personhood4:54

Meet the Instructors

Greg Urban, Ph.D.
Professor
Anthropology

The last three videos involve the classic east meets west cultural boundaries.

We'll be seeing later that cultural boundaries become apparent

even in the case of seemingly simple mergers in the business world.

Moreover, as more and more companies globalize,

cultural boundaries are also part of the internal operation of a corporation.

And they can cause problems when they're not recognized for

what they are and dealt with accordingly.

In this video,

I want to tell you about one globalized company I had the opportunity to examine,

and the interesting culture differences that turned up inside it.

For purposes of maintaining privacy I'll give the company a pseudonym,

Scandinavian Technologies.

It is a good sized company with more than 5000 employees, but

not a huge company, say like Toyota, which has about 350,000 employees.

Scandinavian Technologies is based in Denmark, but

it has branches in different countries, most importantly in the US.

The important difference turned out to hinge on an aspect of Danish culture

of which, until I looked into the matter, I'd really been unaware.

The company was experiencing some difficulties

even though it was a profitable company.

Employees in the American branch were feeling frustrated

because they felt their important contributions to the company were

undervalued by the central administration.

The Danish central office in turn worried that the overall company was becoming

too Americanized.

They wanted to make sure that control remained in Danish hands.

Further exploration of the company turned up an aspect of Danish culture

of which I'd been unaware.

I'll call it here the Law of Jante, or Jante Law.

The name refers actually to a novel, entitled A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks.

It was written by Aksel Sandemose, and was first published in 1936.

The Jante Law has been seen many Danes as an expression of Danish culture.

And I should say not only by Danes.

By this American, it also seemed to me an expression of Danish culture.

Here's the English translation of this set of laws or rules.

First, you're not to think you are anything special.

You're not to think you're as good as us.

You're not to think you are smarter than us.

In fact, another law,

you're not to convince yourself that you are better than us.

You're not to think even that you know more than us.

You're not to think you are more important than us.

You're not to think you are good at anything.

You're not to laugh at us.

You're not to think anyone cares about you.

You're not to think you can teach us anything.

Whoa, let's stop and think for a minute about these laws as if they were

the culture you learned growing up in Denmark.

I think we would conclude that this is not a culture in which

self promotion is highly valued.

Boasting and bragging would be considered bad, maybe even offensive.

Intentionally attracting attention to oneself or

valuing oneself more highly than others would be frowned upon.

If this were the orientation of the central office of

Scandinavian Technologies, how would the American branch of the company appear?

And here I should add that most of the employees in the American branch were

actually born and raised as Americans.

Would the Americans seem to be braggarts and

blowhards, always tooting their own horn, talking about how good they are?

Would they appear to be calling attention to themselves,

asserting their superiority over the Danish central office?

Would they be thinking of themselves as smarter,

more important than those in the central office?

Would they in short be violating Jante Law?

And notice here that we're not talking about east meets west.

Probably most Americans would not think

there would be much in the way of cultural differences between Danes and Americans.

After all, many Americans have ancestors who are from Scandinavia.

The cultural boundary here should also lead us to reflect on

what kinds of things are cultural.

In this case, they are representations of the self.

They should also cause us to think about how we should respond to discovery of

cultural boundaries.

We'll begin to talk about that in the next lecture on cultural relativity.

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