Some Notes on Para-Technical Factors in Cross-Cultural Consultation

Abstract

Technical consultation, in the framework of economic development programs, is a vitally important arena of cross-cultural encounters. Aside from the academic interest in learning of the dynamics and ramifications of events in this seminal “acculturation situation,” a study of the processes occurring in the technical consultation could be of practical importance. The most excellently conceived development plans must depend for their implementation on human factors, one set of which come into play in the cross-cultural consultation—Western consultant on the one hand, and non-Western consultee on the other. While the formal criteria for determining transactions in this relationship are purely technical, the actual agenda (and thus the outcome) are determined in part by a host of other factors, here termed “para-technical”