Chapter 3: Communication Challenges in a Diverse, Global Marketplace
Chapter 3 explores the opportunities and challenges that a diverse business environment presents to
today’s professional communicators, including the importance of developing cultural competency and
recognizing all the dimensions of diversity. The chapter closes with advice for adapting to other business
cultures and improving intercultural communication skills.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of Communication in a Diverse World
The Opportunities in a Global Marketplace
The Advantages of a Diverse Workforce
The Challenges of Intercultural Communication
Developing Cultural Competency
Understanding the Concept of Culture
Overcoming Ethnocentrism and Stereotyping
Recognizing Variations in a Diverse World
Contextual Differences
Legal and Ethical Differences
Social Differences
Nonverbal Differences
Age Differences
Gender Differences
Religious Differences
Ability Differences
Adapting to Other Business Cultures
Guidelines for Adapting to Any Business Culture
Guidelines for Adapting to U.S. Business Culture
Improving Intercultural Communication Skills
Studying Other Cultures
Studying Other Languages
Respecting Preferences for Communication Style
Writing Clearly
Speaking and Listening Carefully
Using Interpreters, Translators, and Translation Software
Helping Others Adapt to Your Culture
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of Communication in a Diverse World
Learning Objective 1: Discuss the opportunities and challenges of intercultural communication.
Diversity includes all the characteristics and experiences that define each of us as individuals.
Merck identifies 19 separate dimensions of diversity in its discussions of workforce diversity.
Intercultural communication is the process of sending and receiving messages between people whose
cultural backgrounds could lead them to interpret verbal and nonverbal signs differently.
The Opportunities in a Global Marketplace
Two trends contribute to the importance of intercultural communication: advances in economic
globalization and the increasing diversity of the workforce.
Chances are you’ll be communicating across international borders sometime in your career:
Local markets are opening to worldwide competition.
You’ll face cultural and language barriers among customers and employees.
The Advantages of a Diverse Workforce
Many innovative companies have changed the way they approach diversity, from being a legal
requirement to provide equal opportunities, to being a strategic opportunity:
Connecting with diverse customers
Taking advantage of the broadest possible pool of talent
Diversity:
Brings a broader range of viewpoints and ideas
Helps companies understand and identify with diverse markets
Enables companies to tap into a wider range of employee talents
The Challenges of Intercultural Communication
Diversity can affect employee behavior on the job, which presents challenges to:
Supervisors (communicating with diverse employees, motivating them, and fostering
cooperation and harmony among them)
Teams (working together closely)
Companies (coexisting peacefully with business partners and the community as a whole)
Cultural diversity affects how business messages are conceived, planned, sent, received, and
interpreted in the workplace.
The interaction of culture and communication is so pervasive that separating the two is virtually
impossible.
Culture defines many aspects of communication, including the:
Meaning of words
signiticance of gestures
Importance of time and space
Rules of human relationships
Culture influences the ways in which one encodes and decodes messages. The greater the difference
between cultures, the greater the chance for misunderstanding.
Misunderstandings arise when:
Senders encode messages based on the assumptions of their own culture
Receivers decode those messages based on the assumptions of their culture(s)
Class discussion question: Have you ever felt frustration during a cross-cultural communication
exchange, such as when you couldn’t understand what someone else was saying or when your values or
interests clashed with someone else’s? How did you respond? Would you respond differently now? What
did this episode teach you about the challenges of intercultural communication?
Section 2: Developing Cultural Competency
Learning Objective 2: Define culture, explain how culture is learned, and define ethnocentrism and
stereotyping.
Cultural competency includes:
An appreciation for cultural difference that affect communication
The ability to adjust one’s communication style to ensure that effort to send and receive
messages across cultural boundaries are successful
You are already an expert in your own native culture, which:
Is positive, because you understand how your culture works and how people are expected to
communicate within this culture
Is potentially negative, because your communication habits are based on your own culture,
so you rarely think about how culture influence you
An important step toward successful intercultural communication is becoming more aware of the rules
imposed by your own culture and of how those roles influence your communication.
Understanding the Concept of Culture
Culture is a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, and norms for behavior.
Your cultural background:
influence the way you prioritize what is important in life
Helps de$ne your a-tude toward what is appropriate in a situation
Establishes rules of behavior
You belong to multiple cultures (e.g., country, ethnic, religious, professional).
Understand three characteristics of culture:
Cultures are automatic; that is, people learn culture directly or indirectly from other
members of a group—whether they are explicitly told which behaviors are acceptable, or
they learn by observing which values work best in a particular group.
Cultures tend to be coherent; that is, they are fairly logical and consistent throughout.
Cultures tend to be complete, providing most of their members with most of the answers to life’s big
questions.
Class discussion question: Do you consider yourself in the same culture or cultures as your parents or
other close family members? If not, what differences do you perceive?
Overcoming Ethnocentrism and Stereotyping
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge all other groups according to your own group’s standards,
behaviors, and customs.
Xenophobia is a more extreme reaction—actually fearing strangers and foreigners.
Stereotyping is assigning a range of generalized attributes to an individual on the basis of membership
in a particular culture or social group, without considering the individual’s unique characteristics.
Cultural pluralism is the practice of accepting multiple cultures on their own terms.
Try to overcome ethnocentrism and stereotyping by cultivating a few simple habits:
Avoid assumptions.
Avoid judgments.
Acknowledge distinctions.
Be aware that overcoming ethnocentrism and stereotyping is not a simple task, even for people who
are highly motivated to do so.
Section 3: Recognizing Variations in a Diverse World
Learning Objective 3: Explain the importance of recognizing cultural variations and list eight categories
of cultural differences.
Cultural variations include differences in perceptions of:
Context
Legal and ethical ma0ers
Social ma0ers
Nonverbal communication
Age
Gender
Religion
Ability
Contextual Differences
Cultural context is the pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli, and implicit understanding that
conveys meaning between two members of the same culture.
To convey meaning in high-context cultures (such as Japan, China, Arab countries, Greece, Mexico,
Spain), people tend to rely less on verbal communication and more on the context of nonverbal
actions and environmental settings to convey meaning.
In high-context cultures:
The rules of everyday life are rarely explicit, so individuals learn how to recognize situational
cues and how to respond as expected.
The primary role of communication is building relationships, not exchanging information.
To convey meaning in low-context cultures (such as Germany, Scandinavia, U.S., Canada, England,
France), people tend to rely more on verbal communication and less on circumstances and cues.
In low-context cultures:
The rules of everyday life are usually spelled out through explicit statements.
The primary role of communication is exchanging information.
Contextual differences affect:
Decision-making practices
Problem-solving techniques
Negotiating styles
Communication tactics that work well in a high-context culture may backfire in a low-context culture
and vice versa.
Legal and Ethical Differences
Contextual differences also affect legal and ethical behavior.
Low-context cultures tend to:
Value the written word
Consider written agreements binding
View the law strictly
High-context cultures tend to:
Put less emphasis on the written word
Consider personal pledges more important than contracts
View the law with more flexibility
Keep intercultural messages as ethical as possible by applying four basic principles:
Actively seek mutual ground.
Send and receive messages without judgment.
Send messages that are honest.
Show respect for cultural differences.
Social Differences
Rules of social etiquette may be formal or informal:
Formal rules are specifically articulated.
Informal rules are usually learned over time as people watch and imitate how others are behaving.
Social norms vary and affect the following areas:
A-tudes toward work and success
Roles and status
Use of manners
Concepts of time
Future orientation
Openness and inclusiveness
Use of technology
Nonverbal Differences
Nonverbal communication can be considered reliable only when the sender and receiver assign the
same meaning to nonverbal signals.
Enhance your nonverbal communication across cultures by observing the ways people behave in
these areas:
Greetings
Personal space
Touching
Facial expressions
Eye contact
Posture
Formality
Age Differences
Communicating between a youth-oriented culture and a seniority-oriented culture can require
flexibility on both sides.
Today’s workplace can have as many as three or even four distinct generations working side by side:
The Radio Generation (born 1925 to 1945)
Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)
Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980)
Generation Y (born aFer 1981 to 1995)
Generation Z (born after 1996)
Gender Differences
The perception of men and women in business varies from culture to culture.
Gender bias can range from overt discrimination to subtle and even unconscious beliefs.
The percentage of management roles held by men increases steadily the further one looks up the
corporate ladder.
Whatever the culture, evidence suggests that men and women tend to have slightly different
communication styles. Speaking in very broad terms:
Men tend to emphasize content in their communication effort.
Women tend to emphasize relationship maintenance in their communication efforts.
Outdated concepts of gender and sexual orientation continue to be a source of confusion, controversy,
and discrimination:
Many people do not $t or wish to be $t into a simplistic heterosexual, male/female
categorization scheme
Discriminatory company policies and the behaviors and a-tudes of supervisors and
coworkers can deprive these individuals of a fair and satisfying work experience.
Many companies have taken steps to ensure equal opportunities and fair treatment for
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) job applicants and employees.
Religious Differences
Religion in the workplace is a complex and contentious issue, and it’s getting more so every year—at
least as measured by a significant rise in the number of religious discrimination lawsuits.
Companies vary widely in how they approach the subject and their policies for allowing religious
activities and expressions at work.
Ability Differences
Colleagues and customers with physical or cognitive disabilities that affect communication represent
another important aspect of the diversity picture.
Companies can use assistive technologies to help people with disabilities interact with computers and
colleagues.
Designers can also emphasize web accessibility, taking steps to make websites more accessible to
people with limited vision.
Class discussion question: Culture is an extremely complex topic, and a single chapter or lecture can
only scratch the surface of the many factors that make individuals and groups unique. Did any of the
descriptions of cultural differences in this chapter clash with your own experiences and perceptions? If so,
how did they differ?
Section 4: Adapting to Other Business Cultures
Learning Objective 4: List four general guidelines for adapting to any business culture.
Adapting your approach is essential to successful intercultural communication.
Guidelines for Adapting to Any Business Culture
There are four general guidelines that can help all business communicators improve their cultural
competency:
Become aware of your own biases.
Ignore the “Golden Rule”—treat people how they want to be treated, not how you want to
be treated.
Exercise tolerance, +exibility, and respect.
Practice patience and maintain a sense of humor.
Guidelines for Adapting to U.S. Business Culture
Businesspeople adapting to U.S. business culture should keep several points in mind:
Individualism. U.S. culture expects individuals to succeed by their own effort, and it rewards
individual success.
Equality. Equality is considered a core American value.
Privacy and personal space. Americans expect a fair amount of privacy and personal space.
Time and schedules. U.S. business values punctuality and the eJcient use of time.
Religion. Many religions are practiced throughout the country, and people are expected to
respect each other’s beliefs.
Communication style. Communication tends to be direct and focused on content and transactions, not
relationships or group harmony.
Section 5: Improving Intercultural Communication Skills
Learning Objective 5: Identify seven steps you can take to improve your intercultural communication
skills.
Improve your intercultural communication by:
Studying other cultures and languages
Respecting preferences for communication styles
Learning to write and speak clearly
Listening carefully
Knowing when to use interpreters and translators
Helping others adapt to your culture
Studying Other Cultures
Effectively adapting your communication efforts to another culture requires not only knowledge
about the culture but also both the ability and the motivation to change your personal habits as
needed.
When learning about another culture, you don’t need to:
Learn about the whole world all at once—many companies appoint specialists for specific
countries or regions, giving employees a chance to focus on just one culture at a time
Learn everything about a culture—even a small amount of research will help you grasp the big picture
Try to approach situations with:
An honest e’ort
Good intentions
An interest in learning more about other cultures
To learn as much as you can about traveling and working in specific cultures, check out
Websites
Guide books
Newspapers, magazines, music, and movies of another country
Studying Other Languages
Successful businesspeople commonly have multilingual skills, but different countries emphasize the
need for language diversity to different degrees.
Many companies are teaching their English-speaking employees a second language to facilitate
communication with co-workers.
Learning the basics of the language spoken by your colleagues or customers:
Helps you get through everyday business and social situations
Demonstrates your commitment to the business relationship
A wide variety of apps and websites are available that help with essential words and phrases,
grammar, pronunciation, text translation, and even real-time audio translation.
Don’t assume that two countries speaking the same language speak it the same way.
Respecting Preferences for Communication Style
Communication style varies widely from culture to culture and, among other factors, includes the:
Level of directness
Degree of formality
Preferences for written versus spoken communication
In international correspondence, U.S. businesspeople should probably be more formal than they
would be when writing to people in the United States.
Writing Clearly
To write more clearly when communicating across cultures:
Choose words carefully.
Be brief.
Use plenty of transitions to help readers follow the +ow.
Address international correspondence properly.
Cite numbers and dates carefully.
Avoid slang, idiomatic phrases, and business jargon.
Avoid humor and references to popular culture.
Speaking and Listening Carefully
When communicating with people whose native language is different from yours, get insight into
speaking more effectively by remembering what it’s like trying to listen in these situations.
In addition to the guidelines for writing more clearly, use the following guidelines to help your
intercultural conversations be more effective:
Speak slowly and clearly.
Don’t rephrase until it’s necessary.
Look for—and ask for—feedback.
Don’t talk down to the other person.
Clarify what will happen next.
To listen more effectively to speakers who may have accents different from yours:
Pay attention to vocal pattern.
Accept what you hear first, without jumping to conclusions about meaning or motivation.
Don’t interrupt—let people finish what they have to say.
Ask the person to repeat something if you don’t understand it.
Using Interpreters, Translators, and Translation Software
On occasion, you may need to use interpreters (for spoken communication) or translators (for written
communication).
Some companies use back-translation to ensure accuracy.
Machine translation is any form of computerized intelligence used to translate one language to
another.
Helping Others Adapt to Your Culture
Do whatever you can to help colleagues with different native languages adapt to your communication
and culture.
Simplify the communication process if language is a barrier (e.g., writing instead of speaking).
HIGHLIGHT BOX: COMMUNICATING ACROSS CULTURES
Us Versus Them: Generational Conflict in the Workplace
1. As with all conflict involving culture, the first step is for each side to understand the other’s point of
view. A more experienced manager might have perspectives on data security, con$dentiality, and
legal ma0ers that a younger employee has not yet experienced, and the younger employee might
have be0er insights into how emerging tools can help the business. AFer that, establishing common
ground with a shared interest in the company’s success (while avoiding legal problems) should help
each person move toward a middle ground that addresses at least some of the employees’ concerns
without compromising important issues for the company.
2. The informal names given to the various generations are a good clue to the in+uence of technology
on communication, from the radio being the major communication innovation in the early lives of
the very oldest workers, to the Internet for the first generation born aFer the invention of the World
Wide Web (Generation I or the Net Generation).
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
Real-Time Translation
Students should be sure to check out the latest advances in real-time translation, such as the Pilot from
Waverly Labs, which is introducing a wireless in-ear device for real-time translation. In addition to
exploring the capability and potential of real-time translation, students might want to comment on the
potential downsides of this technology, such as losing the opportunity to learn more about a country or
a culture that comes with the process of learning a language.
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT KAISER PERMANENTE
Individual Challenge
Here are four possible responses for addressing the situation involving Mihai Ciceu (a Romanian
immigrant who is a brilliant pricing and underwriting analyst but resists working with other employees),
along with the likely outcome of each response.
a. Stay out of the way and let the situation resolve itself; Ciceu has to learn how to get along
with the other team members. This is not a helpful response. Ciceu obviously lacks the
motivation or the skills needed to work well with other team members, and doing nothing won’t
change anything.
b. Tell the rest of the team to work harder at getting along with Ciceu. Not only is this not fair—
team communication is everyone’s responsibility—but it might cause you to overlook an
underlying problem. For instance, Ciceu might believe that team communication is a waste of his
valuable time. Encouraging the team to communicate even more would only exacerbate such a
situation.
c. Tell Ciceu he must work with others or he will not progress in the company. Without an effort
to understand the situation, attempting to impose a solution could backfire. For instance, Ciceu
may enjoy his current work so thoroughly that he doesn’t want to progress in the company.
d. Talk privately with Ciceu and help him understand the importance of working together as a
team; during the conversation, try to uncover why he doesn’t participate more in team
efforts. As is always the case in intercultural communication, understanding what’s really going
on is absolutely vital. Mistaken cultural assumptions can lead to disastrous results. This is the best
approach.
Team Challenge
Here are four possible responses to the situation in which employees are breaking into ethnically based
cliques, along with the likely outcome of each response.
a. Ban the use of languages other than English at work. This will have limited success; if people
aren’t comfortable communicating in English, for whatever reason, they will revert to their own
languages whenever they have the opportunity. Moreover, it will isolate people who aren’t yet
able to converse well in English.
b. Do nothing; these cliques are normal behavior, and any attempt to disrupt them will only
generate resentment. This is not a helpful response because ignoring the problem will only
allow it to grow worse, particularly as various groups begin to perceive that cliquish behavior is
acceptable.
c. Send all of the employees to diversity training classes. This could help, but not as much as (d).
Training will help employees understand the importance of working together, but creating
situations in which people need to work together will create a stronger inducement to actually do
so.
d. Structure work assignments and other activities (such as volunteer projects) in ways that
bring people from various cultural groups into regular contact with one another and make
them more dependent on one another as well. This is the best response out of these four
options. However, this approach has an important caveat: you’ll need to support these team-based
activities with diversity and language training. Throwing people with multiple languages and
ingrained habits together without support is a recipe for trouble. On the plus side, however, giving
people the opportunity to work together—and making it vital for them to cooperate in order to
succeed—can go a long way toward building familiarity and breaking down barriers.