Professional-personal-private boundaries in a Supervisor - PhD student relationship - The influence of cultural backgrounds

Abstract

In any job that requires contact with people, there is a need to find a “healthy” balance
between professional and personal life in order to function at work. In a way, the PhD
student-supervisor  case  is  not  different  from  such  jobs.  As  stated  in  a  recently
published article, “Because of the delicacy and complex power dynamics, supervisor-
student relationships need clearly defined boundaries.”  
The  requirements  and  understanding  of  where  that  balanced  line  or  boundary  lays
might depend on the individual person, but those differences seem to be milder within
a  particular  culture.  In  this  sense,  the  PhD  student-supervisor  situation  might  be  an
extreme case due to the often multicultural environment of an international university.  
There  is  very  little  information  in  the  Internet  about  specific  boundaries  between
professional-personal-private  life  in  a  PhD  student-supervisor  context.  Some
information  about  how  these  boundaries  differ  between  cultural  backgrounds  or
nationalities  can  be  found  in  the  “Guide  to  mentoring  graduate  students  across
cultures” developed by the Western Teaching Support Centre, University of Western
Ontario,  Canada. 2  This  handbook  highlights  general  differences  in  personal-
professional  boundaries  among  different  nationalities.  For  example,  while  in  North
America people distinguish between work friends and personal friends and socialize
separately, students from Central America and Mexico expect supervisors to take care
of them as part of an “extended family”. A parental supervision style is also expected
among Chinese students, who find it appropriate to ask for a loan or to borrow the
supervisor´s  car.  In  return,  these  students  show  firm  dedication  to  the  supervisor´s
work.  
In our work, we decided to conduct interviews with the aim to explore how specific
boundaries might change for people, with a special focus on the cultural background
of the interviewees. For this purpose we have developed two parallel questionnaires,
one directed to graduate students and the other one directed to supervisors, to try to
figure out if there were any changes in such boundaries regarding nationalities, gender,
age  and  years  of  experience.  The  questions  have  focused  in  six  different  criteria,
named  1-personal  relationships,  2-dual  relationships,  3-political  view,  4-personal favors,
5-  financial  situation,  6-health.  For  each  criterion,  an  open  question  and  a
yes/no question were asked. The latter was done to be able to quantify some of the
answers.  We  have  interviewed  11  supervisors  (9  Swedes,  2  Non  Swedes)  and  14
graduate students (8 Swedes, 6 Non Swedes).