Intercultural Communication
1. Introduction
The continuing growth in international business relations increases the occurrence of business negotiations among people from different countries and cultures. This creates significant challenges for international managers unfamiliar with the norms of different groups. Many of the difficult challenges in conducting international human resource management arise from the differences in the country’s culture. The cultural characteristics of the country and multinational enterprises vary significantly. Oftentimes, these differences clash and are even worsen with lack of knowledge and sensitivity of business people towards these differences. As a result, the frequent mistakes both in the business and personal interactions take place. Even when the differences are understood, some mistakenly assume that their own way of doing things is the best way to conduct a business. Thus, decisions are made that alienate the foreign counterparts or the people to whom they interact form other countries.
1.1 Intercultural Communication Theories
Intercultural communication is basically the communication between different cultures which is also known as cross-cultural communication. Intercultural communication theories posit that globalizing forces of economic integration, tourism and migration are important forces that provide a rationale for increased intercultural communication. However, this form of communication is complex for a number of reasons. First it is difficult to communicate across social boundaries because of factors such as social stereotypes. Second, the concept of culture itself is already complex. It is a socially sensitive subject such as people who tend to approach it from the viewpoint of their own culture ( & , 2002, ).
1.2 Definition of Culture: Defining Culture
Culture provides predictability of humankind. Since human life can be quite inefficient, culture offers predictable pattern so of behavior that leads to cooperative expectancies. Each culture provides predictability, thus changing culture can quite become difficult unless the cultural value being changed has proved to be of less value or not useful to the group. Cultures also test ideas and introduce changes. For instance, the introduction of English on a worldwide basis for business and international trade has threatened some cultures (, 2004, ).
Culture is the most important issue in the successful conduct of both the international business and international HRM. The knowledge and understanding of culture affects the outcome of business more than any other aspect. The absence of insights into the ways of others it is less likely to develop credibility and inspire a workforce. The culture affects how businesses are run, what characteristics are to look for in the selection of employees and how to manage them and work with teams.
2. Cultural Assumptions
Every culture has its own set of values that determines goodness and badness. For instances, Japanese people assign goodness to collectivism while Americans value individualism. Such values are related to cultural assumptions but refer to the existence of phenomena rather than the assignment of value to them. So in terms of the said example Americans assume the existence of individual identity as necessary for individualism to exist while the Japanese assume the existence of collective consciousness as necessary for collectivism occur. There are five dimensions of cultural assumptions: relationship of people to the environment, to each other, to activity, to time and to the basic nature of human beings (, 1998, ).
3. Significance/Importance of Intercultural Communication in Multinational Corporation
One of the major factors influencing companies to go global is to exploit market opportunities. However, operating in these countries requires multinational corporations to communicate cross culturally. It is for this reason that intercultural communication becomes important to multinational corporations.
By understanding the cultural uniqueness of a country, one will be able to use the most effective message, format and channel of communication to deliver that specific message.
For instance, Chinese expatriates work on both high context (Chinese) and low context culture (Americans). High context cultures depend greatly on non verbal communication while the low context cultures depend on verbal communication. The negotiation behavior in a high context culture involves social and economic status and other implicit cultural norms. They use contracts to reflect relationships while low context used contracts to define relationships (, 2000, ). Moreover, high context negotiators treat their counterparts as persons and take on informal settings to settle important issues. The process of building relationships is more important than technical or formal solutions. Such understanding of cultural differences will enable multinational corporations to negotiate and transact effectively with a particular culture.
3.1 The Influence to People Around the World
Intercultural communication is influences and changes ones’ view of other cultures through increased exposure to people of other cultures and co culture. At a larger context, it helps in the discovery of shared humanness through examining, allowing and respecting differences. In addition to the building understanding through valuing differences, cross cultural comparison supplies the necessary information to help people who are learning to live and work in new situations.
4 The Practice of Intercultural Communication in Multinational Corporation
In MNCs, businesspeople from different cultures interact. They step outside their cultural and business environment and create new context. With this, MNCs understand the impact of key organizational concepts such as hiring practices, promotion policies, decision making, negotiation styles, regulations and business laws on the intercultural communication process. They bring with them their own corporate cultures and from these cultures emerges a new transaction culture. It is through intercultural communication that they are able to understand the way of doing business in a particular cultural setting.
5. Key Elements of Intercultural Communication
According to (2004) intercultural communication consists of three major elements: (1) worldview (2) language and (3) nonverbal communication (particularly the use of space and time). Worldview is the orientation of people to things and issues with the concept of being. Another significant element is language which is the medium through which a particular culture expresses its worldview. The importance of language is greater especially when cultures speak different languages. The differences in meaning across culture can also become significant when each culture uses the same language. For example, a British may tell an American to put things in the boot. The American may not understand that the British told him to place the things in the trunk of the car. Finally, nonverbal behaviors differ from culture to culture. For instance, in the Chinese cultures, continued eye contacts are strongly emphasized. Americans on the other hand, consider such gesture as a sign of aggression
6. Identifying Cultural Conflicts
In the context of intercultural encounters, conflict is perceived as the actual incompatibility of values, expectations, processes or outcomes between two or more parties from different cultures over substantive issues. Intercultural conflict usually starts off with miscommunication which leads to misinterpretations and pseudo conflict. If the miscommunication goes unmanaged this can lead to interpersonal conflict (, ).
6.1 Resolving Cultural Conflicts
Effective conflict management requires people to communicate effectively, appropriately and creatively in different world views and ways of dealing with a conflict situation. This requires sensitivity to the differences of low context and high context communication patterns and to attune them to the appropriate negotiation rhythms of individuals (, , ). It is also important to be aware of the goal oriented and process oriented conflict negotiation pathways and requires careful attention to the close relationship between cultural variability and different conflict communication styles.
7. Core Factors that Enhance and Hinder Effective Intercultural Communication
One of the detriments to communication is language. Aside from the verbal language, understanding non verbal behavior is also a requirement since non verbal cues constitute the majority of the individual’s communication process. However, the meanings attach to these forms of communication vary from culture to culture.
Stereotyping is also one of the common factors that hinder the effective communication. It is a generalization about a group of people based on their membership. It assigns identical characteristics to any person within the group regardless of actual variation among members of that group. Research suggests that stereotypical beliefs are rigid, unresponsive to reality and resistant to changes ( & , ). There are four ways in which stereotyping damages communication:
- It can be assumed that the widely held beliefs are true when in fact they are not.
- If a stereotype is accepted, then it is likely for one to believe that every person in that group conforms to that stereotype.
- Stereotypes lead to self fulfilling prophecies. That is, if one is labeled according to the stereotype then he will behave towards that label.
- Behaviors are likely to be interpreted according to the stereotype which ignores other possible interpretations of their behavior.
One of the steps is to avoid ethnocentrism. This is the belief that one’s own race is superior to others, a natural attitude inherent in all cultures. For example, it is logical to think that time is money and that it should not be wasted. This is why American business people in Asian countries feel irritated over the time spent over coffee or other social rituals before business transactions are initiated. In such cultures, time is viewed differently and personal relationships must be established before negotiations may proceed. Ethnocentrism causes people to judge others by their own values. People with such attitude expect others to react and act as they would. As a result, misunderstandings may occur (, 2006, ). Ethnocentric reactions can be reduced by acquiring knowledge of other cultures and developing an increased intercultural sensitivity.
Developing intercultural competence also requires changing attitudes. One must remember that culture is learned and it is through interaction with can new attitudes be learned and behaviors can help bridge the gap between cultures. Tolerance is a desirable attitude that can help achieve intercultural proficiency. Closed minded people cannot look beyond their own ethnocentrism. But as global markets expand and the society becoming more diverse, tolerance becomes especially significant. Being tolerant also involves patience. If a foreigner is struggling to express himself in English, Americans must avoid finishing the sentence for them and provide the word which they assume is wanted (, 2006, ). When words are put into the mouths of foreign counterparts, they often agree out of politeness but the word may not express their thoughts.
Lastly, the messages must be adapted to the intercultural audiences whether they may be verbal or non verbal. As opposed to non verbal skills, verbal skills can be mastered if one studies hard enough. On the other hand, non verbal skills are much harder to learn. They include areas such as eye contact, facial expressions, posture, gesture and the use of times, space and territory (, 2006, ). Thus, it is necessary to be conscious of the use of language as they may be interpreted differently in other cultures.
8. Conclusion
Communicating cross culturally requires a great deal of cultural adjustments. It is necessary that managers grasp a degree of understanding as to the culture of the people and the environment they will work on. The lack of knowledge and insensitivity to the culture will likely to result in frequent mistakes both on business and personal interactions. Thus, a framework of the possible barriers and implications of decisions must be studied in order to deal with future problems. With the greater awareness and understanding of the culture from these countries, managers will be able to acquire the ability to coexist peacefully with people even if they do not necessarily share their values. In this respect, culture plays a pivotal role in effective communication. By understanding the cultural uniqueness of a country, one will be able to use the most effective message, format and channel of communication to deliver specific messages and work harmoniously with people of differing cultures.
9. Recommendations
- Understand the culture of other people. This would enable one to communicate effectively without appearing offensive or disrespectful of the culture
- Create awareness of one’s culture and how it contrasts with others. People must also refrain from ethnocentric attitudes and respect differences in culture in terms of values and traditions
- Recognize the barriers in accommodating intercultural communication and overcoming them. As discussed above, some of these barriers may occur naturally and it takes conscious effort to surmount them. However it may be difficult, it is necessary to become intercultural competent because this will lead to a more productive and effective working relationships in a diversified workplace.
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