Intercultural Communicaton

With the rapid development and integration of global economy, intercontinental trades become increasingly frequent and complex. More and more organizations are finding themselves sourcing from another country and establishing subsidiaries all over the world. Meanwhile, misinterpretations and troubles take place, as global business in many aspects makes the businessmen of diversified cultural backgrounds confuse about the different values, attitudes and behaviors in contextual business situations. Therefore, intercultural communication competence has become a requisite ability for the business to possess in order to prosper and succeed. Generally speaking, I totally agree with this opinion because a good understanding and appreciation of the intercultural communication is instrumental to know the cultural differences of negotiating parties, to overcome communication barriers and to learn the business etiquette in today’s global context.

Intercultural communication helps the business negotiators to understand and map the local culture with their own business strategy so as to reach more agreements and establish lasting strategic business relationships and alliances. On the one hand, intercultural communication let businessmen take different pace in the decision-making process between cultures into consideration. For example, in the process of business negotiations, most Americans perceived that Japanese were too slow in making decisions and giving reply towards the content of the conference(Kobayashi & Viswat 2011) as the Americans generally consider that slow stands for inefficiency(Lewicki et al. 2006). As a result, they may get irritated and then, leading to a complete breakdown of the process and relationship between the parties. But if either side is equipped with intercultural communication competence, they will know Japanese rely on a collectivist mind-set while individualism is highly prized in the U.S. It may take longer to come to a consensus in a collectivist environment where the people make decisions based on mutual benefits. To understand this can inevitably iron out misunderstandings between two sides. On the other hand, intercultural communication help the businessmen to analyze differing business negotiations’ purpose rationally. For instance, Westerns view the aim of negotiations as a way to obtain more legal contracts while Asians view the negotiation achievement is measured in terms of human contacts (Managing in Cross Cultural Business Negotiation 2013). Hence, when Asians consider it is a reasonable requirement to alter the contract for the sake of reflecting interpersonal relationships, Westerners could think it as a tendency to violate a treaty. It is intercultural communication that tell the negotiators Asia is a “feminine” culture, business hinge more on personal relationships rather than on pure efficiency and written contracts, and the “masculine” cultures, like Westerns, where achievements is more important than building a long-term relationship. Above all, it seems that to cultivate intercultural awareness and competence for the business negotiators is an urgent task to exercise sensitivity and avoid unnecessary misunderstandings in all countries globally.

In addition, intercultural communication plays a crucial role in eliminating communication barriers in order to not offend other cultures and gain economic benefits in the long term. For one thing, stereotyping of cultural traits works when applied to the business in the global marketplace. In America, the white naturally consider all African-Americans are violent; therefore, the white become so scared that keep a distance from them (Zaidman 2000). Obviously, such kind of negative stereotype in international business prevents communication and give offense. However, intercultural communication awareness enables communicators to transmit information readily and evaluate their counterpart behavior in an overall cultural context. For another thing, businessmen from different cultures process and disseminate information differently. Chaney and Martin claimed that in high-context cultures, such as Asia and Middle East, message is delivered through facial gestures, body language and voice inflection at conferences, while in a low-context culture of like Britain, it is through mountains of words (Chaney & Martin 2011). Through intercultural communication, businessmen can understand that information may be presented in verbal and nonverbal forms and be prepared to bear a reasonable degrees of inconsistency in the conversation. Only if the communication is effective, the product or service can be appropriately tailored to the global customers’ expectations, which eventually brings about more purchasing power and considerable profitability.

Last but not least, intercultural communication contributes to learning the business etiquette, thus allowing a businessperson to concentrate on the deal at hand rather than worrying about peripheral distractions while conducting business. Firstly, there is a must for businessmen to get acquainted with the physical greeting etiquette before conducting business. For instance, the giant retailer Wal-Mart was forced to withdraw from the German marketplace in 2006 (Macaray 2011) mainly because the checkout people in Wal-Mart always smiling at the customers, as distinguished from the Germany customers misunderstood smiling as philanderer. Accordingly, becoming aware of intercultural communication is the key to know each culture has its own form of acceptable greeting behavior as well as to reduce the risk of managerial failure. Besides, a company’s image is manifested by the employees’ understanding of clothing etiquette. Gaining an insight into intercultural communication is a very important way for employees to shape the image and to instill themselves with confidence to handle almost any situation in any culture. Employees can comprehend that Denim is not regularly acceptable for professional business meetings or power dressing won’t acquire any points at the negotiating for women in most places (Mitchell 2009). Good image will help companies achieve a favorable position in the fierce competition market, which is the main factor to measure the company whether it can be successful or not.