GM - Chapter 7 - Cross-Cultural Communication and Negotiation Flashcards
Communication:
The process of transferring meanings from sender to receiver.
- On surface appears straightforward
- However, a great many problems can result in failure to transfer meanings correctly
Context
information that surrounds a communication and helps convey the message
- Context plays a key role in explaining many communication differences
- Messages often highly coded and implicit in high-context society (e.g., Japan, many Arab countries)
- Messages often explicit and speaker says precisely what s/he means in low context society (e.g., U.S. and Canada)
Indirect and Direct Styles
- High-context cultures: messages implicit and indirect; voice intonation, timing, facial expressions play important roles in conveying information
- Low-context cultures: people often meet only to accomplish objectives; tend to be direct and focused in communications
Elaborate, Exacting and Succinct Styles
- Three degrees of communication quantity—elaborating, exacting, succinct
- Elaborating style most popular in high- context cultures with moderate degree of uncertainty avoidance
- Exacting style focuses on precision and use of right amount of words to convey message; more common in low-context, low-uncertainty-avoidance cultures
- Succinct style more common in high-context cultures with considerable uncertainty avoidance where people say few words and allow understatements, pauses, and silence to convey meaning.
Contextual and Personal Styles
- Contextual style focuses on speaker and relationship of parties; often associated with high power distance, collective, high-context cultures
- Personal style focuses on speaker and reduction of barriers between parties; more popular in low-power-distance, individualistic, low-context cultures
Affective and Instrumental Styles
- Affective style common in collective, high-context cultures; characterized by language requiring listener to note what is said/observe how message is presented; meaning often nonverbal; requires receiver to use intuitive skills to decipher message
- Instrumental style: goal oriented, focuses on sender who clearly lets other know what s/he wants other to know; more commonly found in individualistic, low-context cultures
Verbal Styles: US, England, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Denmark
Direct, Exacting, Personal, Instrumental
Verbal Styles: Egypt, Saudi Arabia
Indirect, Elaborate, Contextual, Affective
Verbal Styles: Japan, Korea
Indirect, Succinct, Contextual, Affective
Downward Communication
- Transmission of information from manager to subordinate
- Primary purpose of manager-initiated communication is to convey orders/information
- Managers use this channel for instructions and performance feedback
- Channel facilitates flow of information to those who need it for operational purposes
Upward Communication
- From subordinate to superior
- Purposes: provide feedback, ask questions, obtain assistance
- In recent years a call for more upward communication in U.S.
- In Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore upward communication has long been fact of life
- Outside Asian countries, upward communication not as popular
Suggestions for Communication
- Use most common words with most common meanings
- Select words with few alternative meanings
- Strictly follow rules of grammar
- Speak with clear breaks between words
- Avoid using esoteric or culturally biased words
- Avoid use of slang
- Don’t use words or expressions requiring listener to form mental images
- Mimic cultural flavor of non-native speaker’s language
- Paraphrase and repeat basic ideas continually
- At end, test how well other understand by asking him/her to paraphrase
Communication Barriers
1) Language barriers
2) Cultural barriers
- -Be careful not to use generalized statements about benefits, compensation, pay cycles, holidays, policies in worldwide communication
- -Most of world uses metric system so include converted weights and measures in all communications
- -Even in English-speaking countries, words may have different meanings.
- Letterhead and paper sizes differ worldwide
- Dollars aren’t unique to U.S. Also Australian, Bermudian, Canadian, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and New Zealand dollars. Clarify which dollar
Perceptual Barriers
Perception: a person’s view of reality
- Advertising Messages: countless advertising blunders when words are misinterpreted by others
- How others see us: May be different than we think
Nonverbal communication
- Chromatics
- ## Transfer of meaning through means such as body language and use of physical space
