CDP Cultural Competence & Awareness 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Geert Hofstede's cultural dimension of 'Uncertainty Avoidance' measures:
- How comfortable a society is with ambiguity and unpredictability (Correct answer)
- How much a culture avoids international business risk
- The degree to which cultures avoid discussing diversity
- Levels of workplace safety compliance
Correct answer: How comfortable a society is with ambiguity and unpredictability
Uncertainty Avoidance reflects the degree to which members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous situations and seek rules and structure.
Question 2: Which practice BEST demonstrates cultural awareness during the onboarding of international employees?
- Requiring all new hires to adopt local customs immediately
- Providing cultural orientation that acknowledges both the new culture and the employee's background (Correct answer)
- Assigning a buddy only from the same country of origin
- Skipping culture topics to avoid making employees uncomfortable
Correct answer: Providing cultural orientation that acknowledges both the new culture and the employee's background
Effective onboarding acknowledges cultural backgrounds while also orienting employees to the new environment, signaling respect and inclusion.
Question 3: An organization notices that employees from certain cultural backgrounds rarely speak up in meetings. A culturally competent intervention would be to:
- Require those employees to attend assertiveness training
- Assume silence indicates agreement and satisfaction
- Redesign meeting formats to allow multiple modes of contribution (Correct answer)
- Reassign quiet employees to individual-only tasks
Correct answer: Redesign meeting formats to allow multiple modes of contribution
Redesigning participation structures (e.g., written input, small groups) respects different cultural norms around authority and speaking up.
Question 4: The 'contact hypothesis' in diversity research suggests that:
- Physical proximity alone eliminates bias
- Meaningful intergroup contact under positive conditions can reduce prejudice (Correct answer)
- Contact with diverse groups always increases conflict
- Bias is fixed and unaffected by social interaction
Correct answer: Meaningful intergroup contact under positive conditions can reduce prejudice
Gordon Allport's contact hypothesis holds that positive, equal-status contact between groups can reduce intergroup prejudice under the right conditions.
Question 5: Which behavior is an example of a 'microinvalidation'?
- Denying a promotion based on race
- Telling an Asian-American colleague 'You speak English so well!' (Correct answer)
- Excluding a person from a meeting intentionally
- Using slurs in the workplace
Correct answer: Telling an Asian-American colleague 'You speak English so well!'
Microinvalidations are subtle communications that negate or dismiss the experiences, feelings, or identities of marginalized people, such as implying someone is foreign.
Question 6: Power distance, as a cultural dimension, primarily affects workplaces by influencing:
- Office square footage allocation
- The degree of deference employees show to authority and hierarchy (Correct answer)
- Company electricity usage
- Product pricing strategies
Correct answer: The degree of deference employees show to authority and hierarchy
High power distance cultures expect significant hierarchy and deference to authority, affecting communication, decision-making, and feedback norms at work.
Question 7: Which of the following best illustrates 'cultural encapsulation'?
- Celebrating multiple cultural holidays in the office
- A counselor who applies only their own cultural framework to all clients (Correct answer)
- Translating corporate materials into multiple languages
- Forming an employee resource group for a specific culture
Correct answer: A counselor who applies only their own cultural framework to all clients
Cultural encapsulation refers to imposing one's own cultural lens on others without recognizing or valuing cultural differences.
CDP Cultural Competence & Awareness 3
Geert Hofstede's cultural dimension of 'Uncertainty Avoidance' measures: