Outliers Chapter Summary

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The importance of cultural legacies is very prevalent throughout chapter seven of Outliers. The chapter, “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”, discusses the history of Korean Air and the unbelievable number of plane crashes the company had throughout the 1980’s and 90’s. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, then goes on to investigate the causes of the crashes and more specifically the cultural traditions that cause the accidents. Gladwell starts the chapter with a specific plane crash that occurred while flying into Guam but the chapter quickly shifts to Gladwell analyzing what exactly is the source of a plane crash. Gladwell concludes that the accidents are not caused by a singular mistake, but instead a string of mistakes that come from a team …show more content…

Power-distance is important because the higher the distance, the less likely a person is to challenge authority. The challenges are critical in piloting because pilots are supposed to depend on their crewmembers to review their decisions to lead to the best choices. Koreans were taught not to command their boss, so a mistake could be allowed to go on and get worse since the co-pilot would not feel comfortable offering a solution. The other cultural legacy that played a large part in the crashes is the social legacy that Koreans rely heavily on subtle speech. Instead of directly stating a suggestion, Korean co pilots would hint at a problem and if the pilot did not pick up on the indirect hint the problem would continue on. This is evident in the chapter when the Korean engineer tells the Captain, “The weather radar has helped us a lot.” This quote is not just a general observation, but instead a specifically subtle way of telling the Captain to look at the radar and rely on it. The Korean cultural legacies of not specifically stating what they mean and the strong power-distance is what caused the Korean Air pilots to handle difficult flight situations in a very poor manner, causing several

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