Management : Communication Across Culture
For this paper we decided to focus on the communication aspect in management.Even
more precisely, we also wanted to have a look at communication across cultures, as we
thought it would be interesting to see how hard this can differ between different cultures
and how managers deal with that. To get a good view on this, we used three different
books: ‘Management: Total Quality in a Global Environment’ (Stahl, 1995), ‘Management
across Cultures’ (Seen et al., 2010) and ‘Communication across Cultures’ (Christopher,
2012).
In ‘Management: Total Quality in a Global Environment’, Michael Stahl devotes one
chapter to communication in managerial processes. In this book there isn’t a lot of text
dedicated to the differences in communication across different cultures. It gives a more
general explanation on communication, so we can use this book as some kind of
introduction.
Stahl begins by explaining what communication is and focuses thereafter on the problems
and barriers which arise in communication. The big problem nowadays according to him,
is that due to the development that organizations become more diverse, the importance of
good communication increases. Especially managers who lead and direct many different
employees with various backgrounds need to be aware of barriers that may occur in
conversations in order to overcome them. Managers usually have higher levels of formal
education and broader experience levels so they have to ensure that the chosen way of
communication can be encoded easily by the receiver. In addition to these perceptional
differences other barriers have to be overcome, for example an inappropriate language
level and information overload.
Noises in face-to-face conversations need to be avoided. One should communicate only
when all participants have undivided attention. Furthermore, two-way interpersonal
communication including feedback is preferred to ensure that the counterpart understands
the meaning of the request. Good managers also allow bottom up communication and
listen actively without being prejudiced. Moreover, it means paraphrasing the encoded data
of the conversation and giving feedback to avoid misunderstandings. Managers who ignore
concerns of their employees are not able to counteract negative developments within their
organization and improve processes.
Another important point is the choice of the communication channel, dependant on the
information capacity and the message complexity one wants to transmit. Newsletters are
appropriate for sending simple messages whereas complex information needs a rich
channel like face-to-face conversations. Having a physical presence makes it also able to
encode nonverbal communication. Seeing someone’s face is a possibility to recognize if
