1. Lesson 1.4: Power Distance
Cultural Dimensions
Lesson 1.4: Power Distance

2. Essential Question What is power distance?
How can you see power distance in different cultures?

3. Activation
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You will be divided in to thirds.
Group One will describe the classroom. Group 2 will describe the students. Group Three will describe the teacher.

4. Why do you feel like you do about this classroom?
In an ideal class:
The class should ______________.
The teacher should______________.
The students should ______________.

5. The reason we often share a concept of why the ideal classroom looks the way we mentioned generally has a lot to do with a cultural concept called power distance.

6. Consider the following
What is power?
What does it mean to be powerful?
When you think of the word “power,” what do you think of?
If a person is powerful, what does that mean?

7. So, What is Power Distance?
It is “…the extent to which the less powerful members of society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.”
The fundamental issue is how a society handles inequalities among people.

8. People in societies exhibiting a large degree of power distance accept a hierarchical order in which everybody has a place and which needs no further justification.
In societies with a low power distance, people strive to equalize the distribution of power and demand justification for inequalities of power.

9. Power Distance Activity
Look at the statements on the handout and try to discern whether or not they are high or low power distance.

10. Power distance Research Activity
Examine one country in your pairs from a particular group and try to determine where the country would fall on the Power Distance continuum.
The higher the number you give the lower you believe the power distance to be in that country!
For example, the U.S. has an index value of 40.

11. Arabic Spanish Chinese Egypt (pg. 148-158) Kuwait (pg. 288-298)
Saudi Arabia (pg )
Spanish
Colombia (pg )
Mexico (pg )
Spain (pg )
Chinese
China (pg )
Hong Kong (pg )
Taiwan (pg )

12. Journal
Watch this short video and answer the following questions regarding power distance.
What is power distance?
How do you feel that difference in power distance would impact you if you lived in one of the countries you have briefly looked at today?