...James Rogers From: Eunika Phlegm To: Company Department Leaders Subject Line: Skills Summary on Cross Cultural Communication June, 13, 2016 at 8:50 am Cross-cultural communication has become strategically important to companies due to the growth of global business, technology and the Internet. Understanding cross-cultural communication is important for any company that has a diverse workforce or plans on conducting global business. This type of communication involves an understanding of how people from different cultures speak, communicate and perceive the world around them. Cross-cultural communication in an organization deals with understanding different business customs, beliefs and communication strategies. Language differences, high-context vs. low-context cultures, nonverbal differences and power distance are major factors that can affect cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication is imperative for companies that have a diverse workforce and participate in the global economy. It is important for employees to understand the factors that are part of an effective, diverse workforce. With cross-cultural communication you have to remember the six principles. The first principle is the similarities or the common ground, the next one is differences or the perspective, judgment, or choice. The third principle is diversity or valuing the difference, the fourth one is respect or the basic human need. The fifth one is acknowledgment which is the recognition...
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...Managing cross cultural communication Introduction Globalization is a phenomenon that is in vogue nowadays. In this rapidly changing world to succeed it’s imperative for an organization to adopt the phenomenon of globalization. On one hand globalization cultivates scores of benefits for the organization. On the other hand, it also generates various dilemmas for management. One of these dilemmas is of effective communication management. This phenomenon of globalization presents challenges of understanding and managing cross-cultural communications. According to Stephen Roberts: “Culture is the framework in which we communicate” This suggests that various factors give rise to the problem of cross-cultural communication. These factors include: language, environment, technology, social organization, the perception of authority and non-verbal communications. Having the ability to assess these variables is vital in ensuring for managers to convey messages and conduct business across a wide range of cultures. This paper addresses communication within multicultural project teams and the significance of leadership style in managing cross-cultural communications. The aim of this paper is to reveal different ways or skills that managers need to adopt to make the process of communication effective. Furthermore, this paper sheds lights on variegated barriers that may exist in effective communication process in a cross-culture environment. Literature review Zapf...
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...Cultural Communication Barriers Columbia Southern University The world today has become a much smaller place, the advances in methods of communication and transportation, have made other cultures more accessible. We are able at any time of the day to communicate with someone across the globe. With boundaries disappearing, people of all ethnicities are migrating to different parts of the world, introducing new cultural influences. When cultures intertwine there is bound to be areas of miscommunication and conflict. In the business world dealing with language barriers is very important, not only verbal communication but non-verbal communication also. It is necessary to have knowledge of the culture and understand the differences (Guffey & Loewy, 2015). Spoken language is the first barrier most cultures face when interacting with each other. Those barriers do not have to be between people from different countries, there can be language barriers between people who live in the same country or have the same cultural background. The Spanish language is one example, there are different words for the same object or a word that means one thing in one Latino language may mean something inappropriate in another (Kosur, 2015). Their culture and spoken language differs depending on which area they live and the outside influences on the culture. Even within our own boundaries we see this. In order to do business in today’s world, it is important to be aware of differences between...
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...A STUDY ON BARRIERS OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN ELECTRONICBASED COMPANIES 1 Bibi Noraini Bt Mohd Yusuf, 2Zurina Bt Zulkifli, 3Intan Maizura Bt Abd Rashid, 4Syahida Bt Kamil, 1,2,3,4 School of Business Innovation and Technopreneurship Universiti Malaysia Perlis 1 bibinoraini@unimap.edu.my, 2Zurina@yahoo.com, 3Intan Maizura@unimap.edu.my, 4syahida@unimap.edu.my, Abstract Rapid growths in economic development and trade globalization have necessitate the number of firms to expand and extend their businesses abroad. A sizeable number of firms have been opening new plants in other countries or hiring their employees from overseas, creating a diversity of workforce. A diversified workforce will create cross-cultural differences leading to cross-cultural communication. This research aims to analyze the barriers of cross-cultural communication in electronic-based companies. The subjects for this study, comprising company operators and middle to top management were randomly selected from electronic-based companies domiciled in Northern Peninsular Malaysia. This study adopted a quantitative approach method, where questionnaires were distributed among 200 employees. Analysis of data compiled was carried out using the SPSS version 20.0 mode. Through an in-depth analysis and application of this study, there is a bigger impact of multinational firm communication in the cross-cultural communication. In addition, the dimensions of national cultures, high and low context...
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...The cultural challenges that Europe is facing now Subject: Cultural challenges coming from European integration and globalization processes current in European Union. Introduction In the post war period Europe started to go through many processes of integration. With the time passage this processes started to have a bigger geographical range as well as they started to be present in more dimensions of social, economic and political life. On the top of that strong globalization processes are taking place all over the world, which also has its strong reflection in shape of Europe. Economy, culture and educational become one of the main issues for Europe in globalization and integration processes. The creation and expansion of European Union a form which never was present in any other place in the history is a significant and irreversible creation. European Integration – does it really concern also the way in which we perceive or will perceive our culture? Some scholars started to use term of Europeanization as the less inclusive and less biased than European Integration itself. Will next generations and new European perceive themselves as European? We can multiply such a questions. This short essay will attempt to answer the main question stated in the title in prism of cross-cultural aspects. What is national culture? In a scientific sense it means a certain class of objects, phenomena and processes, or definite ways of behavior. However, in the philosophical sense the...
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...Business Communication between People with Different Cultural Backgrounds Livia Ablonczy-Mihályka, Széchenyi István University, Hungary Abstract At present every aspect of our social, scientific and mental life is subdued to accelerated development. In our globalised world, the amount of cross-national communication increases drastically and in recent years many researchers have emphasised the importance of awareness of different cultural norms as globalisation has brought about a growing trend to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds. This paper argues for a revaluation of how we approach the topic of business communication and for greater emphasis on successful business communication as the goal of better understanding in global business setting. The ideas which are presented in this paper have been derived over a period of two years of our own research and through the reading of research literature. The research to be discussed in the paper is connected to one of the major research lines at Széchenyi István University, titled The dialogue of professional, organisational and national cultures. The purpose of the present paper is to present the results of a survey conducted with professionals who communicate with foreign business partners. The data were gathered by means of a questionnaire. At the root of the argument is the hypothesis that communication rules and norms between people with different cultural background have altered and different cultures have...
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...uni-erlangen.de 2) University of Melbourne, Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, harzing@unimelb.edu.au Acknowledgements This study was supported by funds from the 'Jubiläumsfondsprojekt Nr. 11618 of the Oesterreichischen Nationalbank'. We thank Professor Gerhard Fink and Dr. Markus Pudelko for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Abstract Using data collected from 25 interviews with Austrian employees in the European Commission, we explore the conditions under which cultural differences do and do not influence interactions. Previous experience with culturally-determined behaviour and experience working in a foreign language is found to foster norms that reduce conflict based on cross-cultural differences. Time pressure, on the other hand, makes cultural differences, specifically the way that criticism is delivered and the extent of relational-versus-task orientation, more explicit. Our...
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...hotels, companies around the world, international trade always occurs between different countries, and many organisations’ work environment becomes more multicultural. Eubanks et al. (Samovar & Porter, 2010, p.137) illustrated that ‘cross-cultural or intercultural communication is between individuals and groups whose perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter communication event’. This assignment discusses what the potential communication barriers across cultures could be and what the solutions are to overcome these cultural challenges. Robbins et al. (2011) indicated that language could be the most common problem in cross-cultural communication, even people use same language could have communication problem because of different age and context groups could use words differently. Except language differences, problems relates to language difficulties, could be semantics, word connotations and tone differences. Semantics could cause communication barrier as there could be some uncommon words within different languages that might be difficult to translate, for instance, there is no direct Russian equivalents for the English terms – efficiency, free market and regulation. Connotations could be another reason to result in language difficulties. Individuals from various nations could imply words differently that incur misunderstanding or confusion. such as for Chinese people, to emphasize the importance of customer service, satisfying customer’s needs and setting highest...
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...Globalization Note Series Pankaj Ghemawat and Sebastian Reiche National Cultural Differences and Multinational Business The eminent Dutch psychologist, management researcher, and culture expert Geert Hofstede, early in his career, interviewed unsuccessfully for an engineering job with an American company. Later, he wrote of typical cross-cultural misunderstandings that crop up when American managers interview Dutch recruits and vice versa: “American applicants, to Dutch eyes, oversell themselves. Their CVs are worded in superlatives…during the interview they try to behave assertively, promising things they are very unlikely to realize…Dutch applicants in American eyes undersell themselves. They write modest and usually short CVs, counting on the interviewer to find out by asking how good they really are…they are very careful not to be seen as braggarts and not to make promises they are not absolutely sure they can fulfill. American interviewers know how to interpret American CVs and interviews and they tend to discount the information provided. Dutch interviewers, accustomed to Dutch applicants, tend to upgrade the information. To an uninitiated American interviewer an uninitiated Dutch applicant comes across as a sucker. To an uninitiated Dutch interviewer an uninitiated American applicant comes across as a braggart.”1 Cultural differences, while difficult to observe and measure, are obviously very important. Failure to appreciate and account for them can lead to embarrassing...
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...Abstract “Language was developed out of the need to communicate and interact, and therefore, it is social by nature, and understanding some part of that allows us to more reflectively use the language”. This paper is an applied linguistic article focusing on exploring the relation between socio-linguistics and language teaching. Although there are too much to discuss, the work mainly concerns with a quick look at social theories of language, a definition of sociolinguistics and three aspects of sociolinguistics which is believed to illustrate how sociolinguistics is relevant to the teaching of language. Introduction From the perspectives of theoretical linguists, especially in the traditional approaches in English language teaching, the teaching focuses on language structure including some form of language such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or spelling to name a few. However, things have changed with the arrival of a new approach known as the Communicative Language Teaching, where the features of sociolinguistics in its relation with language teaching and learning are best illustrated. The Communicative Language Teaching has been built on the assumption that being successful in communicating in a second language involves more than just the grammatical competence. In fact, communicative competence (Canale & Swain, 1980) involves the knowledge of discourse and socio-cultural rules of language. That is to say, in order to be successful in real communication...
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...Language an important factor in multinationals: The impact of language across cross-cultural leadership, management and communication Abstract The purpose of this literature review is to analyze the impact of language on various leadership and management contexts in multinational organizations which operates across different cultures. This paper examines the extent of literature which have focused on the study of language and its impact on activities concerned with leadership and management in multinationals. The main focus being the impact on headquarter and subsidiary communication, knowledge sharing and management contexts, this paper details the literature which suggest that multinationals would be better off by focusing on language and developing language policies which better suit its nature rather than taking language as a granted factor. The objective of this paper is to conclude that language difference across different cultures can no longer be left unattended as its as various implication internally as well as externally for corporations which are operating with different cultures and different languages. Keywords: Language, MNC, multinationals, leadership, management, communication, knowledge sharing, language policy Introduction The growing integration of companies from all around the globe is increasing the race towards a global village. Companies that operate beyond borders are the most influential of them all. Multinational companies are crossing their national...
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...economy has intensified international relationships, increasing the importance of cultural dimension. The world is being affected by the globalization of the economy. This phenomenon is bringing movement of companies, assets, services, capital and people. Analyzing globalization this process is taking the world to major changes in the economic, technologic and social areas, which are having consequences in all organizations and societies that participate in this globalized market. It is a process that does not bring equal benefits to all participants. The globalization concentrates more of its actions in some sectors of economic activity and some regions and countries, rather than acting everywhere. With the world getting flatter doing business anywhere in the world is easier today, because of major changes in technology, global politics and expanded educational opportunities. But it is not only businesses that are affected. Governments, NGOs and society itself is changing at a fast pace. Nevertheless going forward can only happen if business managers understand these factors and, more importantly, the cultural factors that make business work because ultimately it is one person making a business with another person therefore personal exchange based on at least two cultures. One of the biggest challenges faced by organizations that operate in the international market is the cultural differences. Definition of...
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...Globalization Note Series Pankaj Ghemawat and Sebastian Reiche National Cultural Differences and Multinational Business The eminent Dutch psychologist, management researcher, and culture expert Geert Hofstede, early in his career, interviewed unsuccessfully for an engineering job with an American company. Later, he wrote of typical cross-cultural misunderstandings that crop up when American managers interview Dutch recruits and vice versa: “American applicants, to Dutch eyes, oversell themselves. Their CVs are worded in superlatives…during the interview they try to behave assertively, promising things they are very unlikely to realize…Dutch applicants in American eyes undersell themselves. They write modest and usually short CVs, counting on the interviewer to find out by asking how good they really are…they are very careful not to be seen as braggarts and not to make promises they are not absolutely sure they can fulfill. American interviewers know how to interpret American CVs and interviews and they tend to discount the information provided. Dutch interviewers, accustomed to Dutch applicants, tend to upgrade the information. To an uninitiated American interviewer an uninitiated Dutch applicant comes across as a sucker. To an uninitiated Dutch interviewer an uninitiated American applicant comes across as a braggart.”1 Cultural differences, while difficult to observe and measure, are obviously very important. Failure to appreciate and account for them can lead to embarrassing...
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...Influence of language difference and clique. Nowadays, as the development of international integration increases under the globalization. The communication between countries are increasingly frequent, and modern technology has also been widely used,people are now able travel to many country in short time. America continues to be the most preferred destination for international students, Many Chinese students choose American colleges as their future college. As a Chinese international student who study abroad in America, a majority of us face a same issue, the issue is international students cannot interacting with local culture. Due to different language and different place for international students, they cannot communicate with native speakers well and do not have many natives friends. The number of international students study abroad increase in recent 10 years, most of the parents rather to pay higher tuition that want their children have a better place to study. International education offers a student a unique experience and exposure to the world by interacting with people from different cultures, religion, and socio-cultural backgrounds. However, international students whose English is not their first language often finds difficulties integrating into the new culture as their ability to communicate fluently and effectively is thwarted. International students use barely English with natives and it is hard to communicate with others. In addition, it is hard to make...
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...COGNITIVE ORGANIZATION AND IDENTITY MAINTENANCE IN MULTICULTURAL TEAMS A Discourse Analysis of Decision-Making Meetings Jolanta Aritz Robyn C. Walker University of Southern California Measuring culture is a central issue in international management research and has been traditionally accomplished using indices of cultural values. Although a number of researchers have attempted to identify measures to account for the core elements of culture, there is no consensus on those measures. This article uses an alternative method—discourse analysis—to observe what actually occurs in terms of communication practices in intercultural decision-making meetings, specifically those involving U.S.-born native English speakers and participants from East Asian countries. Previous discourse studies in this area suggest that differences in communication practices may be attributed to power differentials or language competence. Our findings suggest that the conversation style differences we observed might be attributed to intergroup identity issues instead. Keywords: intercultural communication; intercultural communication; group communication; discourse analysis; intercultural management; group decision making; communication accommodation theory In an increasingly global economy, multicultural work teams are becoming more commonplace, and fostering teamwork in multicultural teams is a growing challenge. The growing body of intercultural research suggests important Jolanta Aritz is an Associate...
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