Intercultural Communication Issues - Coursework Example

Running Header: Intercultural Communication Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Intercultural Communication Introduction Culture is the diversification of various aspects of life between different types of people. Jrank org. (2008) has details that Culture refers to different ways of life between people which includes interaction, language, thought, and spirituality among others. Culture is total social behavior patterns, beliefs, arts and human work and thought products. Cultural issues may include the difference in language, social beliefs, culture, religion, attitude, and other ethnic aspects. All those factors hinder effective communication between various teams hence leading to ineffectiveness in the organization. Therefore, it is crucial to know these cultural issues in order to address them and reduce their effect on the performance of the organization. A team of Japanese and Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage has diversified culture. Their interaction as a project team may result to total conflict. Therefore, there is a need to know how the difference in culture will influence the effectiveness in communication. According to Elizabeth and James (2008), Organizational culture is set of meanings or understanding that is shared by a team of people which are mostly understood among its members. The process of globalization is forcing organizations and businesses to rethink of their strategies in intercultural communication. Intercultural communication plays a great role in organizations success. Intercultural communication refers to a wide-range of communication issues which rise in an organization made of people from diversified ethnic, religious as well as social backgrounds like Japanese and Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage. Economic globalization process makes it impossible for the organization to function alone hence the need to interact with the rest of the world in order to survive. Intercultural communication is a necessity but not an option for an international organization. It is vital to know the communication skills and ways of different people. This will help in improving their communication skills and eventually improved performance. Cultural Issues and communication Working with people across different cultures or working with a global team helps in the raise of challenges that demands new skills and attitudes. There is a need to realize the cultural differences in order to increase the effectiveness. The principles of intercultural communication steer the method of exchanging unambiguous and meaningful information over cultural boundaries. It does this through a process whereby mutual respect is preserved as well as minimizing antagonism. The globalization phenomena have helped in reducing the diversity of culture hence reduced misunderstanding opportunity. Therefore, having people of different cultural backgrounds with the difference in language should not be a hindrance towards performance and success of an organization. There is a need to establish a common language of communication between Japanese and Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage in order to improve communication between those groups with diverse cultures. Understanding and analyzing the impact of culture on employee communication and culture is extremely significant for success of culturally diversified and multinational organizations. Analytic-tech (2004) maintains that high context culture usually refers to groups with individuals having connections that are close over a stretched time period. There are long-term relationships in high-context culture like Japanese with strong boundaries emerging between them and Australian Torres Strait. In high-context, knowledge is situational and relational between involved people. Low-context culture refers to society where people tend to have several connections within a short period of time for some reasons that are specific. Cultural beliefs and behavior of this society need to be spelled out in order to know how people behave when they join. In low-context culture, it is task-centered with activities and decisions focusing on what needs to be done as well as division of responsibilities. There is transfer of knowledge within low context culture. In low-context culture, there is separation and sequencing of space, time and activities. There is a codification of knowledge which is external, public and even accessible. There are more interpersonal connections within shorter duration. It is difficult for a person who is new in a team to be readily accepted in a high-context culture especially if an outsider. This may results to low communication among those team members. Therefore, low context culture is encouraged for a team of workers from diversity in culture especially from Australian indigenous tribes. Hall and Mallen (1987) argue that Japanese have high-context culture, and they like interacting with every person especially in the working area. However, Torres Strait Islander from Australia does not mind a lot on the interaction with other people. This will encourage effective communication between all members. Different cultural issues affect communication between team members especially in a team composed of people from different cultures to work on a project. These people have low-context culture mainly because they are sequencing and separation of activities within the team. When people from different cultural backgrounds meet and work as a team in an organization, there is a need to know what exactly is their impact on the relationship other team members. Australian indigenous individuals may have different social ways of life that differs very much with their other partners in the team. A low-context culture is what forms a project team. There is transfer of knowledge between different people as they go on to work collectively on a variety of projects. There is a sharing out of duties between team members. There always arise problems when people with high and low-contexts interact. Individuals with low-context culture are in most occasions vulnerable to breakdown in communication between the team members. Communication between different people in the team is thus affected by low and high-context cultures. According to All-about-counselling.com (1998), there is the importance of looking at cultural issues within an organization with great care and attention. This will help in avoiding poor performance, great expenses, and untenable conflict that may arise among team members. Cultural issues must be addressed by the leadership of an organization as well as those involved in the institutions change. Difference in language due to diversification of culture may lead to barrier in communication. Language difference is a major hindrance between team members. Team members from Australian indigenous community and Japan with variety language groups will have language being the main factor behind the barrier to effective communication. Therefore, there is a need for those two diversified groups use a common language in order to improve communication between them. The differences of culture in terms of social factors and language encourage individualism. Individualism in an organization may result to ineffective performance of the organization. Individualism hinders communication among team members because it does not encourage team work among team members. Therefore, there is need to ensure such cultural differences are reduced and at the same time develop collectivism in an organization. Collectivism is a situation whereby groups have strong cohesiveness among themselves. Collectivistic emphasizes on group work and harmony in an organization. There is importance of reducing all cultural differences like social, language, beliefs and different ethnic views. Language is an issue that encourages individualism rather than collectivism especially when people from different ethnic tribes in Australian meet and there are unable to communicate effectively due to the language barrier. This leads to some kind of isolation among them. People with same social backgrounds will tend to form one group and remain the same isolated with others with diversified social aspects. Japanese tend to be individualistic in their culture while Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage is collectivist. Japanese do not like associating a lot with people from other cultures, and they like being in a team of their fellow Japanese. This may hinder a lot towards effective communication within the team. Cultural dimensions describe various sorts of differences or value perspectives between various cultures of people. Cultural dimension theory assists in understanding variations in culture on how people behave and think. Diversity in cultural dimensions results to uncertainty avoidance between groups of people in a team. Cultural dimensions are value constructs or psychological dimensions. Cultural dimensions are used to describe a certain culture. People from diversified cultures have different ways of thinking and importantly with respect to their authority relationship. Cultural dimensions includes peoples acceptance to take care of others. This theory is usually associated with social values by different people. Social value as a cultural issue defines how different people perceive masculine or femininity in their place of work or in an organization. Altitude as an issue of culture defines how uncertainty and certainty a person is and how a person is willing to accept a certain style of life in an organization. The attitude of a person towards other team members determines how effectively he communicates with others. A person with uncertainty about his fellow colleagues does not readily accept to communicate well with them hence a barrier of communication arises. Japanese and Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage have different cultural dimensions. Hall and Mallen (1990) maintain that Language as an issue of culture determines how a person communicates with others. However, some cultural dimensions like individualism contribute greatly on how a person is ready to know and use the common language of communication within a working place. It also determines how a person is willing to communicate frequently in order to gain knowledge through consultation with his colleagues. Japanese can interact with Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage in order to get more knowledge towards effective pursues of the project. Japanese dedicate all their efforts towards transferring knowledge to those people willing to learn in projects and those in their teams. Therefore, this enhances good communication within the team. Monochromic culture is the culture whereby people like doing one event at a time. Individuals with monochromic culture have value and orderliness of being in the proper place and at a suitable time when doing everything. Individuals with monoculture may differ with individuals in their team who may have polychronic culture. Japanese have Polychronic culture while Torres Strait Islander from Australia indigenous heritage has monochromic culture. Polychronic culture involves doing numerous things at the same instant. If people in a certain team have both polychromic and monochromic, then there is the likelihood of some problems arising. This affects greatly communication between different people with different cultures. Polychromic and monochromic culture is mainly influenced by attitude and values of individual’s ethnic background. Some people believe they cannot do same things at the same time. If such people meet with others who can do several things together, this definitely leads to a conflict. This definitely leads a barrier in communication between team members, which are a threat to production of an organization. Values and attitudes of people may also be affected by their tight and loose cultures. Tight culture refers to that kind of culture that strictly follows rules, behaviors and norms of the organization. Loose culture has few norms, standards and rules. When a person does not follow a rule, he breaks a norm or even ignores a standard. In tight cultures, those people who ignore rules are likely to bed punished or criticized. Individuals may have a diversified culture. This is because some may prefer tight culture that requires agreement about the norms. If individuals who like loose culture met with those who like tight culture, then there is the likelihood of conflict arising. Japanese are people who have a strict culture and they like adhering to the norms and rules of an organization they are working. They in most cases ignore those people who ignore and not follow the rules and norms that are set by the organization. In our situation, Japanese individuals in a team will not be able to interact well with the other members with Australian culture who do not strictly adhere to the norms and rules of the organization. This may result to poor communication between team members. This is mainly through some of them ignoring rules and laws of the organization. Some individuals believe that some people who do not adhere to the rules of the organization are not effective. This eventually leads to poor means of communication due that variation in culture. People whose culture has been tight, their values, perception and other personal values including attitudes may vary with other people from different cultural background. This becomes a barrier when it comes to communication between those people. Tightness is required towards regulating functional of a team. This is through behavior regulation in order to make people capable of interacting smoothly with extremely little conflict between them. This will definitely result to good communication between members of a team. Conclusion Effective communication of any organization is determined at a great extent by cultural issue like language, attitude, and social values among others. An organization or a team that wants to perform accordingly, it must take into consideration those issues. There is a major relationship between cultural theories and cultural issues. Evaluation of cultural issues requires evaluation of cultural theories as well. They work together, and they are related with each other. Cultural theories include high or low context culture, individualist or collectivist culture, tight or loose cultures, monochromic or polychromic cultures and cultural dimensions. Organizations must analyze the issues hindering effective communication within the team members and get ways of improving them. For an organization to perform effectively, it has to analyze all cultural aspects of its individuals and team members. References All-about-counselling.com 1998, Cultural Issues, Viewed 23 April 2010, http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/culture.htm#cul1 Analytic-tech 2004, Differences in Culture, Viewed 23 April 2010, http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/cultural.htm Elizabeth, T & James, O, Intercultural Communication for Business, New York: Cengage Learning, 2008. Hall, E & Mallen, H, Hidden Differences, Doing Business with Japanese, Anchor Press, Doubleday: New York, 1987. Hall, E & Mallen, H, Understanding Cultural Differences, Intercultural Press, Inc., 1990. Jrank org. 2008, Culture and Communication-The Relationship Between Communication and Culture, Characteristics of Culture, Glimpse of Culture, Viewed 23 April 2010, http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6491/Culture-and-Communication.html Terpstra, V & David, K, The Cultural Environment of International Business, Southwestern Publications, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2001. Read More