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Cultural Patterns and Communication Breakdowns

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The Impact of Cultural Communication
Barbara E Wilson
January 5, 2016
COM-223
Deena Shehata,

The Impact of Intercultural Communication
Case Study One
Sweden/China
Sweden is the Parent Company to China which is one of many Subsidiary Companies around the world, in which they provide high quality products worldwide. They easily communicate problems, they prefer to use a project team to solve problems that arise, and for major projects they involve all departments. (Liu, 2010)
The Sweden management style is known for their high standards, to where China is more flexible looking only to the outcome. The main issue for the company is the tremendous cultural gap due to the way the subsidiary company in China is managed.
China
Chinas way of communication is more a routine there is no personal initiatives. When there is a problem it is reported to a superior then the superior makes the decision on how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, the subordinate wait for official orders. The only time that a problem is handled without notification to a superior is when it is an emergency and there is no time to wait. As for the context of communication, understanding, as well as relationships amongst the people is the high and low context.
The high context culture individuals are usually deeply involved with each other however, the relationships between them is complicated especially when it involves the work place. Keep in mind that communication between individuals in the group is spoken freely and without hesitation.
Nevertheless, the relationships do not exceed outside the group therefore any involvement with others outside the group rarely happens. This also leaving managers from low context culture a major hurdle to jump when dealing with high context cultures.
Case Study Two
The True Meaning to What is Communicated This case study is rather short

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