The New Journey to Jerusalem: Mission and Meaning in the Managerial Crusade to Eastern Europe

The problem for western European trainers, educators and managers working to assist eastern Europe make the transition to a market economy is less a matter of knowledge transfer, and more a difficulty of meaning transfer. It is argued that the western side has grossly underestimated the difficulties involved in the creation of shared understanding because it has scarcely recognized the issue of cultural differences; the assumption has been made that we can be 'sensitive to cultural differences' while remaining ignorant of differences of history and custom, values and ideology. A second assumption is that provided 'a good interpreter' can be found, communication is not a problem; that the language in which culture is encoded and expressed within the experience of the two indi viduals concerned will generate the same meanings for both parties; in short, that there is no difference between langue, language as translated, and parole, language as experienced in a given culture. A simple technique for comparing the parole of two different languages, English and Polish, is outlined, and 5 key words in the business and management vocabulary are used to illustrate the assertions previously made.