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Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
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Lecture Notes
Chapter 11: Intercultural Communication in Business, Health Care, and
Educational Settings
Learning Objectives
11.1. Discuss how dimensions of the cultural context affect organizations across cultures
11.2. Compare managerial styles of Japanese, Germans, Mexicans, and Chinese
Chapter Outline
I. Intercultural Management
A. Ability of managers: Successful cross-cultural management depends on the ability
of managers to communicate effectively.
B. Communication is especially important during the initial stages of a business
relationship.
E. Agreement and disagreement communication: How agreement and disagreement
are communicated is another important factor during cross- cultural negotiations.
i. Rosenzweig points out that U.S. managers tend to favor forthrightness
during negotiations. In many other cultures, such directness may be seen as
rude and discourteous.
F. Businesses and organizations: Most businesses and organizations can be thought of
as mini-cultures, each representing a pattern of values held by a recognizable
group of people with a common goal that is pursued by means of a collective
verbal and nonverbal symbol system.
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i. Organizations in large power distance cultures will be status conscious,
will employ top-down communication, and will be mindful of employee
welfare.
I. Participatory style of management: In small power distance cultures, such as the
United States, employees are routinely asked for their opinion on work-related
issues.
i. This style of management is labeled participatory.
ii. The thought is that if workers are allowed to participate in decision–
making, they will be more committed to the decision.
J. Organizational culture: An organized pattern of values, beliefs, behaviors, and
communication channels held by the members of an organization.
K. Environmental context: The geographical and psychological location of
communication within some cultural context.
L. Perceptual context: The attitudes, emotions, and motivations of the persons
engaged in communication and how they affect information processing.
II. Management Practices Across Cultures
A. Japanese Management Practices
i. Principle of wa: It literally translates to harmony.
ii. Taiso: Japanese work groups begin their day by exercising together, an
activity called taiso.
a. Interestingly, the primary purpose of taiso is not for physical benefit
but to engage the group members in coordinated activity.
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v. Japanese salaryman: The salaryman the core of Japan’s economy, where
they are expected to put the company first, even before family.
vi. Karoshi: It literally translates as overwork death in Japan.
vii. Key features of Japanese organizations:
a. Lifetime employment (shushin koyo): The lifetime employment
system is based on a psychological contract between the
employees and the company about the employees’ lifetime
dedication to the company in exchange for lifetime job security
from the organization.
• Job status also is an important factor determining the
evaluation for lifetime employment.
viii. Based on these principles, the Japanese company is seen as a custodian
of employee security and welfare.
ix. Gaijin: Common attitude among Japanese businesspersons is that
foreigners are always outsiders, called Gaijin.
B. German Management Practices
i. Northern and southern Germany: The northern and southern regions are
particularly different, so generalizing about Germany is difficult.
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v. Doors: Cultural symbol: Doors are an important cultural symbol to the
Germans. Doors provide a protective shield between the individual and
outsiders.
vi. Concentrate on specialization: German firms concentrate on
specialization, doing one thing and doing it right.
a. German corporations with large shares of specialized markets can
focus on design, quality, and service rather than on competitive
pricing.
C. Mexican Management Practices
i. Group oriented: They are exceptionally concerned about any behavior that
would upset the harmony of their household, church, or workplace.
ii. Individual effort and self-starting are met with suspicion.
D. Chinese Management Practices
i. China: Hierarchical society.
ii. High-context orientation: The environment in which business is conducted
is important.
a. Where the meeting takes place, who is invited, and who is
presenting all are critical ingredients in a successful business
meeting.
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iv. Business transactions: Business transactions in China are based on the
quality of interpersonal relationships.
v. Contracts: Not a binding: Chinese managers ignore contracts but instead
interpret the terms and conditions of the contract within the context of the
relationship.
vi. Flexibility at work: The Chinese prefer flexibility by virtue of their
personal relationship.
III. Cultural, Intercultural Communication, and Health Care
i. New medical device: Researchers in Switzerland have developed a new
medical device that identifies irregularities in heart rate and can, within
seconds, alert doctors and patients via their smartphones.
iv. The high obesity rates among these women are often attributed to cultural
factors, such as a preference for high-fat and high-calorie foods, a distorted
frame of reference for normal and healthy body weight, and a lack of
physical activity.
B. Lay Theories of Illness
i. Cause for illness:
a. Factors within the individual, such as bad eating and exercise habits;
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b. Factors within the natural environment, such as air and water
pollution;
c. Societal factors, such as intergroup conflict, poor health care
facilities, and the like; or
d. Supernatural factors, including religious beliefs, fate, and
indigenous beliefs.
iv. Supernatural conditions: Supernatural conditions, such as religion, pure
fate, and indigenous belief systems, are also thought among certain cultures
to be the origin of illness.
a. Here, one’s ill health is believed to be caused by the intervention of
a supernatural being. This is also referred to as the personalistic
approach.
C. Health Care and Resources Across Cultures
i. Dominant force: Health care is clearly one of the dominant forces that
people in all cultures must manage.
D. Health Communication
i. Health communication: The study and use of communication strategies to
inform and influence individual decisions that enhance health.
ii. Biochemical model of medicine: This approach uses physical evidence
such as laboratory results, X-rays, MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging),
and surgery to diagnose and treat illness.
iii. Patient–provider communication: Face-to-face interaction between the
patient and his or her individual health care provide.
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are responsible for managing the interaction with patients, while the
patients are generally passive.
a. This approach, which was dominant throughout the 20th century, is
called paternalism.
ii. Consumerism or mutual participation: The patient sets the agenda and
shares responsibility for decision-making.
iii. Participation model findings:
iv. Three physician decision-making styles:
a. Passive approach: The physician makes the decision.
b. Shared decision-making approach: The patient and physician decide
together.
c. Autonomous style: The patient decides from a set of medically
appropriate alternatives.
v. Sources of problematic communication: Sources of problematic
communication included a lack of patient understanding of the language, a
lack of medical knowledge by the Aboriginals, and marginalization of the
Aboriginals by the health care workers.
vi. Research: Patient-physician communication among races – A comparison:
IV. Intercultural Communication and Educational Settings
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A. Ways in which students learn: Students can learn by seeing, hearing, reflecting,
experiencing, reasoning, memorizing, and even intuiting.
B. Ways teachers adopt to teach: Teachers can teach by lecturing, demonstrating,
discussing, questioning, and applying principles.
C. Classrooms is filled with various cultures: In the United States and abroad, grade
school and high school teachers, as well as college professors, are finding their
classrooms filled with students from various cultures.
i. According to the Institute of International Education, in the 2017–2018
academic year, there were over 1 million international students attending
U.S. colleges and universities.
D. Learning Styles Across Cultures
i. Basic human cognitive processes are universal: It means, cognitive
processes are not cultural.
ii. Learning styles: An individual’s unique way of gathering, storing, and
retrieving information to solve problems.
iii. Experimental learning theory: Learning occurs when knowledge is gained
via the transformation of experience.
a. Kolb argues that knowledge, and hence learning, results from:
• Grasping experience and
• Transforming experience.
iv. Grasping experience: It means to seize or take hold of it. This includes:
v. Transforming experience:
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vi. Development of preferred way of learning: Humans develop a preferred
way of learning based on their past experiences and especially their
socialization. Specifically, one’s choice of grasping experience (i.e., CE or
AC) and one’s choice of transforming experience (i.e., AE or RO) define
that person’s preferred learning style.
vii. Types of learning styles:
a. Diverging: The person adopting a diverging style of learning
combines CE and RO.
b. Assimilating: The assimilating learning style is the combination of
AC and RO.
• These learners prefer to put information into concise logical
form.
• They prefer theories that are logically sound, without much
regard for their practicality. They prefer to focus on ideas
rather than people.
viii. Yamazaki’s extensive research: Relationship between culture and
experiential learning styles.
a. Learning styles of Japanese: Prefer diverging style.
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b. He attributes these preferences to the Japanese tendency toward
collectivism, high context, and strong uncertainty avoidance.
E. Teacher Immediacy in the Classroom and Across Cultures
i. Immediacy: The physical and psychological distance/closeness between
interactants.
ii. Teacher immediacy: It refers to the verbal and nonverbal communication
expressed by teachers that reduces the physiological and psychological
distance between teachers and students.
iii. U.S. classrooms: In the United States, verbal immediacy behaviors
include the judicious use of humor, self-disclosure, narration (storytelling),
and the prosocial use of certain types of power, such as expert power and
referent power.
iv. Research findings: One of the most consistent findings in the literature is
that teacher immediacy has a positive effect on perceived cognitive
learning, affective learning, and behavioral intentions of students to engage
in the lessons, theories, and behaviors taught in class.
a. But the research has also shown that moderate amounts of
immediacy produce more positive learning outcomes than does too
much immediacy.
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order) but that each of the three cultures considered nonverbal
immediacy as a requisite part of effective teaching and as
positively correlated with effective teaching.
vii. Jim McCroskey’s study: Compared teacher nonverbal immediacy and
affective learning outcomes across four cultures: Puerto Rico, Finland,
Australia, and the United States.
a. Their results showed that the Puerto Rican and U.S. teachers did not
differ from each other but were perceived as significantly more
nonverbally immediate than teachers in Australia and Finland.
viii. Research on teacher immediacy: What the research on teacher
immediacy shows us is that while perceptions of teacher immediacy vary
across cultures, teacher immediacy is almost always associated with
positive learning outcomes.
F. Some Recommendations for the Intercultural Classroom
i. Teachers across cultures have different teaching styles.
ii. Felder’s recommendation for teachers in an intercultural classroom:
a. Motivate learning. Felder recommends that when teaching new
material (i.e., material that is new to the students), one should try
to teach the material in the context of students’ experiences, both
past and future.
d. Balance structured and unstructured activities.
Instructor Resource
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• Use teaching approaches that emphasize formal training with
open-ended, unstructured activities that emphasize
conversation and the students’ cultural context.
e. Make liberal use of visuals.
• Use photographs, films, videos, and live dramatizations to
illustrate lessons.