INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS

COMMUNICATION

Module 1
 Communication in multinationals

 BRAINSTORMING
 Mother companies/Headquarters
 Subsidiaries
 Management
 Culture
 Language
 Conflict
 Introduction
Horizontal communication in multinationals
 Comment on the following:
 Horizontal communication between subsidiaries of the same
multinational corporation (MNC) is a Problem faced by staff as the
demands for communicating across borders are pushed downwards
in the organizational hierarchy. Although the choice of English as
the common corporate language alleviates some of the horizontal
communication problems, it does not solve them all-particularly not
when many subsidiaries are located in non-English speaking
countries. In that situation, horizontal communication between
subsidiaries can be a significant casualty.
 (study: Making initial contacts across cultures, Laura M. English, pp
15-29.
 Interviews with staff globally revealed problems not only for non-
native speakers, but also for native speakers of English. Illustrative
interview data suggests that corporate training schemes should
focus on the broad spectrum of international communication rather
than on increasing a systematic knowledge of any language.
 (Study: the culture onion: Derek Utley, pp 33-42. )
 Intercultural communication
Situation
USA and Japan
 Many large Japanese-owned multinational corporations have established
successful subsidiaries in the United States, but distinct ethnic and
cultural differences have caused communication problems between
Japanese managers and American laborers and business people.
 Many top executives of the Japanese subsidiaries are sent to the United
States on a temporary basis from the parent company in Japan.
 - No adequate skills in English
 - Inexperienced in working with heterogeneous groups, such
 as the racially mixed labor force found in many American
 factories.
 - Japanese businesses also operate on a culturally ingrained
 principle of consensus, in which all labor and management
 personnel participate in decision making.
 Situation
USA and Japan
 Americans in middle management in these subsidiaries
find this principle inefficient and time consuming.
 The immediate reaction by American business people is
that Japanese managers should adopt American
management methods.
 But, in spite of the communication problems, the
Japanese management methods may have a great deal
to offer in revitalizing the American business economy.
Japanese and American businesses should learn from
each other the most efficient but "culturally compatible"
methods for running businesses in the United States.
 Task
 Pick up a culture you want to represent in
multinational communication
 Communicate horizontally and vertically-
exchange letters, hold meetings, travel
 Identify sources of conflict
 Find solutions and communicate them to
the class
 Write a report about your experience in a
multinational
 BUSINESS CULTURE and
COMMUNICATION – theoretical
background
 definitions of culture
 characteristics of culture
 cultural dimensions – Hofstede G
 - Hall E., T.
 - Schwartz etc.
 stereotypes (European culture versus
Japanese culture)
 business protocol
 CULTURE
 The word ‘culture’ is often used loosely in
everyday language to describe a number
of quite distinct concepts; for example,
the word is often used to describe
concepts such as :
 ‘organisational culture’ as well as ‘arts and
culture’.
 CULTURE
 Historically, the word derives from the Latin
word ‘colere’, which could be translated as
 ‘to build’, ‘to care for’, ‘to plant’ or ‘to cultivate’.
Thus, ‘culture’ usually referred to something that
is derived from, or created by the intervention of
humans – ‘culture’ is cultivated.
 The word ‘culture’ is often used to describe:
 something refined, especially ‘high culture’, or
describing the concept of selected, valuable and
cultivated artefacts of a society. (Dahl, 1998,
2000)
 CULTURE and COMPANIES
 On a more basic level, ‘culture’ has been used to describe:
 the modus operandi of a group of people, such as implied by organisational
culture.
 A company can be said, for example, to have a ‘highly competitive culture’
thus implying that
 competitiveness is valued highly within that company,
 it forms a core value within the company as a whole.
 ‘competitiveness’ is a shared value among those people working in that
company.
 the company as a whole will behave very competitively in the way it is
conducting its business.
 Thus the concept describes both the underlying value as well as the
behaviour that can be observed.
 the concept does not necessarily imply that all employees share the
same value to the same degree, but it does imply that the employees will
be more likely to share the common value, and express it, if not necessarily
individually, then collectively.
 CULTURAL PATTERNS
 Interest in other cultures is probably as old as
the exposure of human tribes to other tribes,
and therefore an exposure to ‘foreignness’.
 However it was not until the late 1950s that a
more structured approach was adopted from
which a theory was derived as to how to classify
cultural pattern.
 In his review of the history of intercultural
communication, Hart (1997) dates the beginning
of intercultural communication in the year 1959,
the year that Hall’s “The Silent Language” was
published.
 Basic cultural concepts and
patterns
 A number of mostly behavioral concepts has
been identified that can be used to distinguish
between cultures. These include:
 the differences in the usage of
 -kinesics (body movements),
 - proxemics (space organisation),
 - oculesics (eye movement),
 - haptics (touching behaviour) as well as
 - paralinguistic concepts, such as accents,
intonation, speed of talking
 Concepts and patterns
 1. For example, eye contact is an important
part of the communication process in Western
cultures. It is often seen as an affirmative action
of what is said.
 However, maintaining eye contact is not usually
acceptable in certain Asian cultures, where, for
example, a woman can only maintain eye
contact with her husband. Clearly a woman from
such a culture will cause confusion, if not
disbelief, when communicating with a Western
interlocutor. (Comment !)
Eye contact in business
 Thought patterns
 2. Another frequently examined concept is “thought patterns”:
 logical or pre-logic, inductive or deductive, abstract or
concrete (Maletzke, 1996).
 For example, inductive or deductive thought patterns may have a
profound impact on argumentation and communication styles, but
also on the way the world is seen and understood. According to
Maletzke (1996) Anglo-Saxon thought patterns are predominantly
inductive, Latin American and Russian thought patterns are
predominantly deductive.
 Whereas inductive thinking aims to derive theoretical concepts
from individual cases, deductive thinking aims to interpret
individual cases within previously derived theoretical concepts.
 thinking within the Aristotelian logical tradition, which is
dominant in most Western cultures may not be understood by
people from a culture which emphasizes a more holistic approach to
thinking.
 Hall’s classic patterns
 Based on his experience in the Foreign Service, Edward T. Hall
published two books,
 “The Silent Language” (1959)
 “The Hidden Dimension” (1969)
 he identified two classic dimensions of culture.
 1. Firstly, he identified high-context and low-context
cultures, where the high and low context concept is primarily
concerned with the way in which information is transmitted/
communicated.
 High context transactions feature pre-programmed information that
is in the receiver and in the setting, with only minimal information in
the transmitted message.
 Low context transactions are the reverse. Most of the information
must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is
missing in the context (Hall, 1976, p.101)
 Consider Romania on a scale from 1 to 10 - debate
 Hall’s classic patterns
 2. Hall's second concept, polychronic versus
monochronic time orientation, deals with the
ways in which cultures structure their time. The
monochronic time concept follows the notion of
“one thing at a time”, while the polychronic
concept focuses on multiple tasks being handled
at one time, and time is subordinated to
interpersonal relations.
 Consider Romania on a scale of 1 to 10.
Debate.
International culture
 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
 The most famous and most often cited work in this area
is the research by the Dutch organisational
anthropologist Hofstede.
 Hofstede derived his culture dimensions from
examining work-related values in employees of IBM
during the 1970s. In his original work he divides culture
into four dimensions at culture-level:
 power distance,
 individualism /collectivism,
 masculinity/femininity
 uncertainty avoidance.
 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
 Power distance is defined as "the extent to which the less
powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country
expect and accept that power is distributed unequally". (Hofstede,
1994, p. 28)
 Individualism/Collectivism.
 The concept is one of the most frequently discussed and researched
concepts. Hofstede defines this dimension as: "individualism
pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose:
everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her
immediate family. Collectivism as its opposite pertains to societies in
which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong,
cohesive in-groups, which throughout people's lifetime continue to
protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty." (Hofstede,
1994, p. 51)
 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

 Masculinity/femininity
 "masculinity pertains to societies in which social
gender roles are clearly distinct (i.e., men are
supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on
material success whereas women are supposed
to be more modest, tender, and concerned with
the quality of life); femininity pertains to
societies in which social gender roles overlap
(i.e., both men and women are supposed be
modest, tender, and concerned with the quality
of life
 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
 Uncertainty avoidance is the final
dimension present in Hofstede's original
work. "the extent to which the members
of a culture feel threatened by uncertain
or unknown situations." (Hofstede, 1994,
p. 113)
 This dimension is fairly easily grasped, and
can often be seen reflected in business
negotiations.
 Project work on uncertainty avoidance!
 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
 In his later work, Hofstede (1991) introduces a fifth
dimension.
 The long-term orientation dimension is the result of
his co-operation with Michael Bond, who links this
dimension to the work of Confucius.
 Hofstede describes long-term orientation as
characterised by persistence, ordering relationships by
status and observing this order and having a sense of
shame, whereas short-term orientation is
characterised by personal steadiness and stability,
protecting your "face”, respect for tradition and
reciprocation of greetings, favours, and gifts.
Business and culture
 Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner
 Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997)
classified cultures along a mix of behavioural
and value patterns.
 Their research focuses on the cultural
dimensions of business executives.
 In their book "Riding The Waves of Culture"
(1997), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner
identify seven value orientations. Some of these
value orientations can be regarded as nearly
identical to Hofstede's dimensions. Others offer
a somewhat different perspective.
 Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner
 The seven value dimensions identified were:
 - Universalism versus particularism
 - Communitarianism versus individualism
 - Neutral versus emotional
 - Defuse versus specific cultures
 - Achievement versus ascription/
 task oriented
 - Human-time relationship and
 - Human-nature relationship
 Shalom Schwartz
 A different approach to finding (cultural) value
differences has been taken by Shalom Schwartz (1992,
1994).
 Using his “SVI” (Schwartz Value Inventory),
Schwartz did not ask for preferred outcomes, but asked
respondents to assess 57 values as to how important
they felt these values are as “guiding principles of
one’s life”.
 Schwartz’s work is separated into an individual-level
analysis and a culture-level analysis, a major
difference compared to the works of Hofstede and
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner who sometimes fail
to clearly distinguish between the two levels, although
generally claim to work at the culture-level.
 Shalom Schwartz
 Schwartz distinguishes between value types
and value dimensions.
 A value type is generally a set of values that
can conceptually be combined into one
meaningful description, such as egalitarian
commitment at the culture level. Values located
in that value-type have other values that are
located at the opposite, or in the opposing value
type. In the case of egalitarian commitment, this
would be hierarchy at the culture-level. Together
these two value types form the value dimension
of ‘egalitarian commitment versus hierarchy’.
 Shalom Schwartz
 From data collected in 63 countries, with more than 60,000
individuals taking part, Schwartz derived a total of 10 distinct value
types
 power,
 achievement,
 hedonism,
 stimulation,
 self-direction,
 universalism,
 benevolence,
 tradition,
 conformity
 security
 at an individual-level analysis
 GLOBE Study
 GLOBE – Research Program- Robert J.
House-University of Pennsylvania 1991
 Global Leadership and Organizational
Behavior Effectiveness
 2004- first volume: Culture, Leadership
and Organizations: the GLOBE study of 62
societies – 17.300 middle managers from
951 organiz. in the food processing,
financial services and telecommunications
services and industries
 GLOBE
 2007- 2nd volume: Culture and Leadership
Across the World:the GLOBE Book of in-
depth studies of 25 societies- completes
the first volume
 Cultural Dimensions and Culture Clusters
 GLOBE -dimensions
 Performance Orientation
 Uncertainty Avoidance
 Humane Orientation
 Institutional Collectivism
 In-Group Collectivism
 Assertiveness
 Gender Egalitarianism
 Future Orientation
 Power Distance
 GLOBE clusters
 Eastern Europe
 Albania
 Georgia
 Greece
 Hungary
 Kazakhstan
 Poland
 Russia
 Slovenia
 GLOBE clusters
 Latin America
 Argentina
 Bolivia
 Brazil
 Colombia
 Costa Rica
 Ecuador
 El Salvador
 Guatemala
 Mexico
 Venezuela
 GLOBE clusters
 Latin Europe
 France
 Israel
 Italy
 Portugal
 Spain
 Switzerland
 GLOBE clusters
 Confucian Asia
 China
 Hong Kong
 Japan
 Singapore
 SouthKorea
 Taiwan
 GLOBE clusters
 Nordic Europe
 Denmark
 Finland
 Sweden
 GLOBE clusters
 Anglo
 Australia
 Canada
 England
 Ireland
 New Zealand
 South Africa
 USA
 GLOBE clusters
 Sub-Saharan Africa
 Namibia
 Nigeria
 South Africa
 Zambia
 Zimbabwe
 GLOBE clusters
 Southern Asia
 India
 Indonesia
 Iran
 Malaysia
 Philippines
 Thailand
 GLOBE clusters
 Germanic Europe
 Austria
 Germany
 Netherlands
 Switzerland
 GLOBE clusters
 Middle East
 Egypt
 Kuwait
 Morocco
 Qatar
 Turkey
Business behavior
 II Stereotypes
 American culture vs. Japanese culture
 1. Americans
 Their cultural values are prevalent throughout the
globe
 Have successful business techniques and models
(IBM, General Motors, Silicon Valley culture)
 Dominant American pattern:
 individualism
 Equality
 Materialism
 Science and technology – the major tool for
understanding and improving life
 Progress and change – they strongly believe in it
 Competition – being number one
 Require personal space
 Informal
 Casual clothing
 Greet professors by first names
 Stereotypes
 Doing Business with Americans
 Express ideas freely, expect the same from
others
 Focus on concrete not abstract things
 Separate private from professional life
 Chain of command more important than
relationships
 Transparent organizations
 Personal performance important (criterion of
hiring people)
 Punctuality
 Lack of protocol
 No discrimination (!?)
 Focus on short term performance,
immediate profits
 Stereotypes
 2. Japanese people
 Due to geographic isolation Japan’s political
and cultural doors were closed for centuries
 Developed a set of values enabling them to
peacefully coexist within their boundaries:
group harmony, consensus, achievement
 Forbidden things: criticizing in public,
dominating others,
 Interrupting others, pointing out mistakes or
errors, speaking loud, being aggressive
 Use persuasion not pressure in negotiations
 High-context culture
 Personal loyalty
 Stereotypes
 Doing business with the Japanese
 Bow
 The seating arrangement is very important
 Do not write in red
 Strive for a stylish look
 The company is something like a giant
 Precise protocol
 Deal only with members of their group
 Networks of hierarchical relationships
 Decision-making takes a long time
 Avoid confrontations
 Seniority is important
 Working overtime
 Patriotism
 Time track seen as a circle- slow and repeated
actions
 Morality important
 Stereotypes
British American
 Confrontation
 Comment on the following letter:

 To
the citizens of the United States of
America From Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
 In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent
candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves,
we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence,
effective immediately. (You should look up "revocation" in the
Oxford English Dictionary.) Her Sovereign Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states,
commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not
fancy). Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a
Governor for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
 A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any
of you noticed.
 To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following
rules are introduced with immediate effect:
 British American Confrontation

1. The letter "U" will be reinstated in words such as "colour," "favour,"
"labour" and "neighbour." Likewise, you will learn to spell "doughnut"
without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "-ize" will be replaced by the
suffix "-ise." Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to
acceptable levels. (Look up "vocabulary").
 2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises
such as '"like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form
communication. There is no such thing as U. S. English. We will let
Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted
to take into account the reinstated letter "u"'
 British American Confrontation
 3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
 4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact
that you need so many lawyers and
therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for
shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist,
then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
 5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a
vegetable peeler, although a permit will be
required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
 6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts (sens giratoriu), and you will
start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with
immediate effect and without the
benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the
British sense of
humour.
 British American Confrontation
 7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been
calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to
it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French
fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling
potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick
cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup (ketchup) but with
vinegar.

 9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only
proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer,
and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred
to as Lager. Australian beer is also acceptable, as they are
pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can
only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British
Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will
be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's(tiny thing) Urine, so that all can be
sold without risk of further confusion.
 British American Confrontation
 10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast
English actors as
good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast
English actors to play English characters. Watching
Andie
MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings
and a Funeral was an experience akin (similar) to having
one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
 British American Confrontation
 11. You will cease playing American football. There is
only one kind of proper football; you call it
soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be
allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to
American football, but does not involve stopping for a
rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body
amour like a bunch of nannies
 British American Confrontation
 12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not
reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a
game which is not played outside of America. Since only
2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your
borders, your error is understandable. You will learn
cricket, and we will let you face the Australians first to
take the sting out of their deliveries.
 13. You must tell us who killed
JFK. It's been driving us mad.
 British American Confrontation
 14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her
Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the
acquisition of all monies (silver coins) due (backdated to 1776).
15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups,
with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies)
and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
 God Save the Queen!
 PS:
This is to be shared with friends who have a good sense of humour
(NOT humor)!
 Intercultural communication
 We live in a multilingual and
multicultural world
 We speak and we understand best
our native language
 Languages are changing along
with time and technology
 New dialects are born as cultures
collide
 The roles of languages:
transactional, literary, cultural,
conquering
 The common transactional
language is English.
 The role of English in international
business communication
 English speakers have a global competitive advantage
 It is sure that things that belong to a certain culture can only be expressed
fully and properly in the language that is the basis of that culture
 Major languages of the world (The English Language Today, p 12)
 Language gives a certain way of thinking – it is a reflection of culture
 Communicating in a foreign language implies a lot of other things besides
knowing the symbols (words) of that language, mainly a certain perception
of the universe and the awareness that meaning may change from culture
to culture and from one age to the other.
 500 most used words in English can produce over 14,000 meanings.
 The role of English in international
business communication
 In Asian countries a minimal verbal communication is encouraged –
highly contextual language
 In Asia the focus is on human relationships, in Western countries
focus is on object/objectives
 In Japanese there are words used only between husband and wife,
etc.
 African people use proverbs, even in the business discourse
 People transfer their language specifications to the English they
speak: Arabs – intonation, Africans – proverbs, Greeks praise
rhetoric, Japanese speak little and not loud
 There is a great number of idioms in English
 English is a diversity of voices (comment on it)
 Co-cultures

 There are differences between the discourses performed by women and

those performed by men
 A. women
 Equality
 Support
 Questioning
 Sustaining conversation
 Responsiveness
 Personal and concrete style
 Tentativeness
 Main purpose is to establish and maintain relationship with others
 B. Men
 Main purpose is to manipulate, control and improve their image and status
 Problem solving orientation
 Superiority and control over conversation
 Directness and abstractness of discourse
 Native and non-native speakers
of English
 In the 21-st century English is considered more and more a language of
communication than a foreign language controlled by native speakers (comment on
it)
 A growing number of people have access to English; the tendency is to emphasize
their own local variety of English when English is spoken as a second language:
Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines etc.
 Pidgin varieties of English
 Lingua franca
 Standardized English (statistics L. Andrei, Varieties of English, p.83)
 Is there a standardized variety of English? (comment on it), English as a lingua
franca, nuclear English, global English etc.
 Does English belong to native speakers of English? Are there differences between
standards of English? British, American, Canadian (see L.Andrei op. cit. p. 97-104).
The world-wide spread of English
Varieties of English
 Pidgin
 WHAT IS A PIDGIN

 A Pidgin is essentially a contact language, a variety which had no native

speakers and developed for some practical purpose among groups of
people who did not know each other languages;.
 -Mc Mahon (1994:253) states that pidgins 'develop in a situation where
different groups of people require some means of communication but lack
any common language. Crucially, a pidgin is nobody's first language; all
its speakers learn it as adults as a second or further language, and all have
native speakers of their own'.
 -Fernandez (1998:212) states that 'a pidgin is a language made up of
elements of several other languages (at least, more than two), and
used mainly for “trading contacts”; in other words, it is an auxiliary
language that has no native speakers'.
 Pidgin
 -De Camp (1971, quoted in Romaine 1993:23) defines a pidgin as 'a contact
vernacular, normally not the native language of any of its speakers ... it is
characterized by a limited vocabulary, an elimination of many grammatical
devices such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features'.
 Hymes (1971, quoted in Romaine 1993:24) states that 'pidginization is that complex
process of sociolinguistic change comprising reduction in inner form, with
convergence, in the context of restriction in use ... pidginization is usually associated
with simplification in outer form'.
 Todd (1974, quoted in Romaine 1993:24) defines a pidgin as a 'marginal language
which arises to fulfill certain restricted communicative needs among people who have
no common language'.
 Romaine (1993) states that 'a pidgin represents a language which has been stripped
of everything but the bare essentials necessary for communication'. However,
there is no real agreement as to what exactly a pidgin is since it is unclear how these
varieties have arisen.