Chapter 4 summary--International Business

Chapter 4:

Communicating Across Cultures

**The ability of a manager to effectively communicate across cultural boundries will largely determine the success of international business transactions or the output of a culturally diverse workforce**

I The Communication Process

v Communication: the process of sharing meaning by transmitting messages though media such as words, behavior, or material artifacts.

® It is vitally important for a receiver to interpret the meaning of a particular communications in the way the sender intended

II Cultural Noise in the Communication process

v Cultural noise: the cultural variables that undermine the communications of intended meaning—will enable us to take steps to minimize that noise and so to improve communication.

v Attribution: the process in which people look for an explanation of another person's behavior

III The Culture-Communication Link

v KEY=Trust

® The meaning and level of trust for new people varies drastically

® When asked do you believe "Most people can be trusted?"

· Nordic countries and China had the highest levels of trust

· Brazil, Turkey, Romania, Slovenia, and Latvia had the lowest.

v Attitudes underlie the way we behave and communicate

® Ethnocentrism is one of the greatest types of cultural noise

® Another major problem is stereotyping…attributing general principles to individuals

v Other key cultural variables

® Social Organizations

® Thought Patterns

· Have to be open that your culture isn't universal àie double lines in Thailand do not indicate that you cannot pass, they just mean that that is the center of the road.

® Roles

· Vary from culture to culture…power distance…etc..

® Language

· Basic/major translation errors "come alive with pepsi" =Come out of the grave with Pepsi.

· You either need to be fluent or get a good translator for major deals

v Nonverbal Communication

® Kinesic behavior

· Body movements—sticking your tongue out in China is a sign of surprise

· Eye-Contact, not as important in other cultures…

® Proxemics

· Influence of proximity and space on communications

¨ American culture àcorner office, French àCentral office, Asian àintermingled offices

¨ South Americans, Souther and Eastern Europeans à high contact cultures

Ø Less personal space

Ø More touching

® Paralanguage

· How something is said, not what…. Use of silence, Chinese are more comfortable with silence than Americans are

® Object language

· How we communication through material artifacts

v Time

® Monochronic cultures:

· Switzerland, Germany, USA

· Time is linear, used, wasted, stored, made-up

® Polychronic cultures:

· Latin Americans, Arabs

· Many things can occur simultaneously…meetings are less structured…friends/family take priority over work…can mix the two

v Context

® Context in which the communication takes place affects the meaning and interpretation of the interaction

IV Managing Cross-Cultural Communications

v Developing Cultural Sensitivity

® A manager must make it a point to know the receiver and to encode the message in a form that will most likely be understood as intended

v Carefully Encode a message

® Use words, pictures, etc, that the receiver will understand

v Selective Transmission

® The closer the contacts, the better, face to face, web-chats, etc…all help

v Carefully Decode Feedback