Day 87: Stereotypes

When you're in a multicultural environment like INSEAD, you will invariably encounter and challenge stereotypes of the various nationalities here on campus. Our Organisational Behaviour class today sought to highlight some of the stereotypes that people have of each other and to get people from that culture to help shed some light on these widely held beliefs. Stereotypes are not necessarily negative, they are just widely held simplifying assumptions for a group of people which are often based on some observed truth.
When discussing a topic like this, you can quite quickly tell which cultures are more comfortable laughing at themselves. Quite a fun discussion and a chance for everyone to learn something new about another culture

The following quick example brought out a lot of laughs from my class:

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the cooks British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and it is all organized by the Italians.

As did my Portuguese classmates' admission that the INSEAD culture could be pretty much summed up as:

"Play hard, Party hard" 
(He had meant to say "Work hard, Play hard" but I think it was a telling Freudian slip)


I'm guessing some people might not completely disagree with that statement actually. ;)