According to Huang (2010), the study of cross-cultural communication examines how people from different cultures can better communicate with each other. This is done by understanding the similarities and differences between these cultures and then producing guidelines and standards that improve communication skills between individuals and companies.
In this paper, I will discuss the global manager's importance of cross-cultural communication, what will happen if this aspect is neglected, and its impact on the business, employees, and the manager himself/herself.
The Value for an International/Global Business Manager:
International communication between companies improves if managers and employees are trained to know their cultural similarities and differences; because of the global open business environment, a successful international manager needs to establish internal training courses in this regard to improve the following:
Communications:
According to (Goman, 2019), how communications are managed differs from culture to culture; for example, some things can be expected when making phone calls or video conferencing. For instance, Americans encourage short side conversations to ask about people themselves before calls, and the British love humor; as for the Chinese, it can be expected that the final decision will not be taken in the same call, except when referring to the general manager or the employer.
Negotiations:
Although negotiations are linked to many factors, in the cultural aspect, the international manager can deal with Oriental culture, as it is more welcoming to people than business. Eating before negotiations is a favorite in Eastern culture but not welcome in Western culture.
Presentations:
When presenting information, it is also possible to prepare it well in a way that suits each culture. Western culture, in general, and American culture, in particular, want to know the future benefits. In contrast, Eastern cultures wish to ensure that a product or service was valid in the past.
The Implications of Developing Communications Across Culture:
For the Business:
There are three main factors in which Communications Across Culture directly affects the business; the first is productivity, which is achieved by increasing cooperation among team members; the second is customer relations, which go according to the companies’ customer mentcompanies'ocustomer'sfinally, customer managing campaigns, for example, wrong translation and a lack of knowledge of culture lead to disasters for the brand's reputation (brand'brand'sFor the Managbrand's017 Indifference to cultural differences leads the manager to mismanage culturally different teams and miscommunicate with partners and clients as well; the manager will be subject to unintended biases in job descriptions and errors of diversity issues in marketing materials; thus, the manager is entirely unfit for work in a culturally different business environment in addition to international work (Munter, 1993).
For the Personnel:
According to (Ascalon, Schleicher & Born, 2008), poor training in cultural communication between employees appears to misinterpret non-verbal signals between culturally different employees, in addition to believing the stereotypes of groups of people, assuming that people of the same cultural background will act in the same manner, in addition, there are deficiencies in understanding due to linguistic differences that have been built on the culture of peoples.
Conclusion
Cultural communication is the exchange of information between individuals of different cultural backgrounds; this communication appears in the way people interact with each other, whether in spoken language or non-verbal signals; in addition to the communication style itself, a successful international manager must set up courses for himself and his diverse team in this regard, where the great benefit in light of the highly intertwined international business environment in the current era.
References
Ascalon, M. E., Schleicher, D. J., & Born, M. P. (2008). Cross‐cultural social intelligence: An assessment for employees working in cross‐national contexts. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal.
Chen, L. (2017). Intercultural Communication. De Gruyter Mouton. (Read 19, p. 415, Anne-Marie Søderberg-- Experience and cultural learning in global business contexts). Retrieved from EBSCO EBook Collection.
Goman. C.K., (2019). Communicating Across Cultures. Retrieved from https://www.amanet.org/articles/communicating-across-cultures/
Huang, L. (2010). Cross-cultural communication in business negotiations. International Journal of Economics and Finance, 2(2), 196-199.
Munter, M. (1993). Cross-cultural communication for managers. Business Horizons, 36(3), 69-79.
Tannen, D. (1984). The pragmatics of cross-cultural communication. Applied linguistics, 5(3), 189-195.