CHAPTER 5
THE CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT
I.
The Communication Process
Communication is a critical factor in cross-cultural management, particularly
when dealing with interpersonal issues: motivation, leadership, group
interactions and negotiation. Culture is conveyed and perpetuated through
communication.
Mintzberg notes most managers spend 50-90% of their time on interpersonal
communication.
II.
Communication: The process of sharing meaning by transmitting messages
through media, such as words, behavior, or material artifacts.
Anything that serves to undermine the communication of the intended
meaning is typically referred to as noise. Noise stems from the fact that the
sender and receiver each exist in a largely private world called his or her life
space, which is based largely upon each person’s culture. The more
dissimilar the culture of the sender and receiver, the greater the noise in the
communication process.
Cultural Noise in the Communication Process
Because we are concerned with cross-cultural communication, we are
concerned with cultural noise; noise introduced into the communication
process as a result of cultural differences between sender and receiver.
When a member of one culture sends a message to a member of another
culture, intercultural communication takes place.
A. Cultural Variables in the Communication Process
Cultural variables that can influence a person’s perceptions have been
identified through research. The cultural variables are: attitudes,
social organization, thought patterns, roles, language (spoken of
written), non-verbal communication (including kinesic behavior,
paralanguage, proxemics and object language) and time.
Attitudes: Ethnocentric attitudes are a particular source of noise in
cross-cultural communications.
Stereotyping: When a person assumes that every member of a society
or subculture has the same characteristics or traits. This is contrasted
with a sociotype.
Sociotype: A means of accurately describing members of a group by
their traits — which is useful to provide some initial basis for
understanding people in a new encounter.
Social organization: Our perceptions can be influenced by differences
in values, approach or priorities relative to the kind of social
organizations to which we belong.
Thought patterns: The logical progression of reasoning varies across
cultures.
Roles: Societies differ considerably as to what they consider the role of
a manager.
Language can be a barrier to communication when one party has
difficulty understanding the other’s language, when there is a lack of
understanding of local idioms through a failure to understand body
language or from using poor or faulty translations.
More than just conveying information, language also conveys cultural
and social understandings from one generation to the next. Examples
of how language reflects what is important in a society include the
6,000 different Arabic words used to describe camels and their parts
and the 50 or more classifications of snow used by the Inuit Eskimos.
International managers need a good command of the local language or
competent interpreters. The direct translation of specific words does
not assure the conveyance of meaning. For example, in Asian culture
the word “yes” means only that I have heard you.
Politeness, the desire to say only what the listener wishes to hear, adds
noise to the communication process.
Non-verbal communication (Body language): Behavior that
communicates without words. Studies have shown that subtle
non-verbal messages account for 65-93% of interpreted
communication. The media for non-verbal communication can be
categorized into four types: (1) kinesic, (2) proxemics, (3)
paralanguage, (4) object language.
Paralanguage is the meaning conveyed by how something is said as a
result of the rate of speech, the tone and inflection of voice, other
noises, laughing or yawning, etc.
Object language (or material culture) refers to how we communicate
through material artifacts or design.
III. Managing Cross-cultural Communication Effectively
Steps in the development of effective intercultural communication include the
development of cultural sensitivity, careful encoding, selective transmission,
careful decoding and appropriate follow-up.
A.
Developing Cultural Sensitivity:
When acting as a sender, a manager must make it a point to know the
receiver and to decode the message in a form that will most likely be
understood as intended. This requires an awareness on the manager’s
part of his or her own cultural baggage.
Cultural sensitivity (discussed in Chapter 4) is really just a matter of
understanding the other person, the context, and how the person will
respond to the context.
B.
Careful Encoding:
In translating his or her intended words into symbols for
cross-cultural communication, the sender must use words, pictures or
gestures that are appropriate to the receiver’s frame of reference.
Senders should avoid idioms and regional sayings (e.g., go fly a kite).
Literal translation is only a limited answer to language differences.
Language translation is only a part of the encoding process; the
message is also expressed non-verbally.
C.
Selective Transmission
The type of medium chosen for the message depends on the nature
of the message, its level of importance, the context and expectations
of the receiver, the timing involved and the need for personal
interaction, among other factors.
For the most part, it is best to use face to face interaction for
relationship building or for important transactions. Personal
interactions give the manager the opportunity to get immediate verbal
and visual feedback and to make rapid adjustments in the
communication process.
D.
Careful Decoding of Feedback
Checking the decoded message by feedback is essential to ascertain
whether the intended message has gotten across.
Decoding is the process of translating the received symbols into the
interpreted message. The main causes of incongruence are (1) the
receiver misinterprets the message, (2) the receiver encodes his of her
return message incorrectly, or (3) the sender misinterprets the
feedback.
E.
Follow up actions
Managers communicate both through action and inaction. To keep
open lines of communication, managers must follow through with
action on what has been discussed and then agreed upon — typically a
contract, which is probably the most important formal business
communication.
The management of cross-cultural communication depends largely on
a manager’s personal abilities and behavior. The behaviors
associated through research with intercultural communication
effectiveness are listed below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
respect
interaction posture
orientation to knowledge
empathy
interaction management
tolerance for ambiguity
other-oriented role behavior.