AnEmpiricalResearchonCross—cultureCommunication-精品文檔

1、 An Empirical Research on Cross culture Communication IntroductionIn 2008 I worked as an intern in marketing department in TESCO which is an international retailing company in Newcastle ， UK as well as the interns and the other members of the marketing department were from different countries. Actua

2、lly， the marketing department was a cross-culture group. In this paper I will write about the cross-cultural difference and evaluate three main intercultural communication issues happened in my cross-culture group The three aspects I will figure out are the role of cultural context in communication

3、， uncertainty avoidance as well as differencebetween individualism and collectivism. In the weeks I worked in TESCO， I felt amazing how different people in other cultures behave. Not only did I face a few challenges in cross-culture communication ， but also ， together with our group members， achieve

4、d some success during my group work. So as a member of a cross-culturalgroup ， I appreciate this enlightening part A and wonderful experience very much. I will categorize my analysis into two parts is that my group interactions agree with the issues that emerge from previous research and part B is a

5、bout the individuals in my group depart from the previous cultural analyses. Part A The role of cultural context in communication The first aspect I will discuss is the role of cultural context in communication. In the journal of“On the basis of experiences and cases in crossing-cultural business， H

6、all and Reed Hall identify three primary dimensions of cultural diversity： context ， space and time (Hall and Reed Hall ， 1990 ).” As explained by Edward T. Hall， in his book Beyond Culture ， context refers to the situational as well as the informational aspect of message sharing. High-context commu

7、nication employs messages in which most of information is implicit in people. In contrast， low-context cultures communicate by explicitly verbalizing most information in their goal-oriented communication sequences (Hall and Reed Hall ， 1990 ). The journal learning ， lectures as well as my group work

8、 enables me to understand the role of cultural context in communication. High context cultures are more common in the eastern cultures than in western. Our group members come from UK， India ， Japan ， Turkey and China. So ， when we worked together ， the problems occurred by the exchange of informatio

9、n. In our group work members from the eastern countries incline to be reserved which is considered as a kind of compromise. On the contrary ， people who are in low-context cultures from the west countries tend to argue about opinions in the decision-making process and provide just the necessary info

10、rmation explicitly and directly. One thing I noticed in my group work is that when people from high context culture want to refuse some ideas provided by the others they would say “I will think about it ” ， which means I do not totally agree with it， from Chinese point of view. But the western membe

11、rs might be confused by this kind of attitude. On the contrary ， people from low-context culture will directly express their ideas ， saying “ I do not think so. ” And another matter is that， in low context culture ， silence communicates meaning， often regarded as a rupture or problem in the communic

12、ations process( Beamer and Varner ， 2001 ) . So in case of silence members from the western countries would fill it. In contrast ， we oriental regarding to silence is also part of communication. Silence is reasonable when it is necessary and doesnt have to be replaced with communication. So with the

13、 awareness of problems ， in the fourth time group work ， we decided that members from the east should try to avoid silence， to participate with the talk more actively and to express ideas in a more direct and easy way. At the same time ， we Chinese take the responsibility to explain the culture whic

14、h is relative to our communication and individuals from the low-context culture also try to learn the oriental culture as much as possible. We aimed to achieve the transparency and enhancement of trust in our charter. Because the eastern members always try to avoid conflicts ， there are no conflicts

15、 throughout the whole period of group wok. Therefore ， all of those helps to enable our group work more creative. To a certain extent， the potential misunderstand which can be barriers to performance are avoided by the efforts of every member. So from the group work experience and journals I read ，

16、I really understand that context indeed has to do with how much you cannot help but know before you can communicate effectively. Being aware of the individual cultural origin helps to avoid misunderstandings and creates a better foundation for further intercultural cooperation. Individualism-Collect

17、ivism By reading the journal-Work Group Collectivism and the Centrality of Work A Multinational Investigation ， I learn that there is positive relationships between collectivism and work centrality and work pride. Compared to individualism ， collectivism emphasizes human interdependence and the sign

18、ificance of a collectivity （Trompenaars ，1993）. Among different countries， those which have higher work centrality and pride in work that evaluated higher in work group collectivism. Japan and India are both relatively weak in terms of individualism according to both Hofestede and Trompenaars. In we

19、stern culture which tends toward individualism. Personal goals take precedence over group goals and competition rather than cooperation is encouraged. At the beginning of our group work ， our membersr egard the collectivism as a crucial conception for fulfilling our tasks successfully. We reach a co

20、nsensus that we should share the goal and task together. However， there are four members from the east and the other two are from the west in our group. So during the following group work I can find there are distinct problems happened. Though we all decide to obey the principle of collectivism， the

21、 western students used to express their own ideas ， maintain their views and follow their own decisions. Oriental people so abide by the collective spirit that we seldom stress our own ideas. Therefore the group work is， actually ， not active enough. The minority always provides their own ideas and

22、the other four tendto agree with the ideawithout any creative thinking and considerable discussion ， which ， to a large extend ， makes our work ， sometimes ， boring. For example ， we people from oriental countries always agree with every idea provided by the western members by saying “all right ”. S

23、o， in my opinion ， collectivism controls the individuality and diversity by providing a commonid entity. On the other hand， individualismemphasizes the importance of individual and liberty. PART B Uncertainty Avoidance Next I want to briefly examine another dimension in Hofestede research ， namely ，

24、 uncertainty avoidance. From the lecture studying， I learned that uncertainty avoidance defines the extent to which people within a culture are made nervous by situations which they perceive as unstructured ， unclear ， or unpredictable ， situations which they therefore try to avoid by maintaining st

25、rict codes of behavior and a belief in absolute truth （ Hofsted ， 2001）. There is high uncertainty avoidance in most oriental countries such as Japan， China and Turkey. On the contrary ， countries like India ， UK have a low-uncertainty avoidance demand. But there is no large discrepancy upon the unc

26、ertainty avoidance in our group work. All of us try to establish rules to confront the uncertainty ， like to seek consensus and to orientate on the specific rules as well as avoid anything that doesnt go along with the rules we were creating. We establish formal rules at the beginning of the group w

27、ork and enforce the rules strictly. For example ， one of our principles is that task leader to be nominated for each set task to contribute to and oversee proceedings. Due to this principle ， every task could be achieved in an efficient and organized way. Especially when we need to prepare a present

28、ation ， we set more details rules to fulfill the task step by step.It is said thatuncertainty accepting cultures ， is more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to and they try to have as few rules as possible. （ Hoecklin ，1995） However the individuals from India and UK in my group

29、depart from those cultural analyses. They also tend to prefer to plan ahead to avoid uncertainty as members from the oriental countries do. From my point of view， the co-ordination can be achieved through standardization. When we are required to fulfill wonderful jobs in an intercultural environment

30、， some of the customs might be influenced by the others from different cultures during the cooperation. Conclusion Culture strongly influences people s behaviors and how they comprehend what others behave. By evaluating our group work and refer to the literature about intercultural groups I get a de

31、eper understanding of the differences in communication styles across cultures and how these differences can lead to misunderstanding in cross culture cooperation. Besides， I also learn how to be more effectively involved in a culturally diverse group and how to solve some problems happened in misund

32、erstanding to some extent. Though culture difference could not be removed， but during the effective and pure-hearted communication ， in my opinion ， cross-culture cooperation could be carried out successfully. What s more ， enhanced communication in cross culture group has made our group work more active and creative. Finally ， I gained valuable experience about the cross culture work during the cooperation with members from different countries， which would