here's the funny thing about working abroad...

• you're a visitor in another country and culture, so naturally you have to defer to that culture; you can't run in and act like you used back home: on the road, in the workplace, in a restaurant, etc.
  
  
• likewise, you are working abroad, meaning you have a role to do. You have stuff to get done. 

You may think that these two statements don't have much to do with each other, but they really do. After working awhile, particularly after that "visitor in another culture" starts to wear off, work becomes work and you to want to do it the way you knew best how to do it.

For me, growing up where I did and working in the places that I did, that means maximizing efficiency, voicing complaints, giving ideas on how to improve things. 

Well, there comes a point where you don't know what to attribute to the culture and what to attribute to the workplace.

For example, at this university, there is bureaucracy beyond belief in how things get done, and individual instructors (particularly foreigners) get no say in a lot of things: what's on exams, how grading is done, and what assignments to give.

But it's easy to see that transparency and efficiency aren't valued as much as back at home. There is a culture of not wanting to "lose face", to have trust in the system, and to not make waves. 

As a foreigner, it can be very frustrating. You can spend a day revising a test, only to find out that a higher power didn't even read your test and reverted to the old "safe" one. You may want to give high grades on a project, because the students did well and worked hard, but find out that you need to lower the grades because they are too high. You find out halfway through a course that 60% of what you taught isn't going to be on the test, but rather things that you didn't teach are, because you didn't write the tests.

You want to make waves and say "come on! this is ridiculous!" but you don't want to be pegged as that foreigner (and believe me, many foreigners that live abroad too long do take that route).

Efficiency, transparency, and willingness to change -- are these Western constructions and ideas, or do they extend beyond culture? Should they be valued in every workplace, or can they defer to local culture? Are these ideas (that have developed primarily in the West) objectively "better" in some way?

I'm not quite sure anymore.

People say the best way to make change in foreign cultures is to start with that culture and work from there. It's harder than one might think. 

Does anyone have a similar experience and care to share?