Question

DISSERTATION: ‘Identify the barriers of multicultural communication within UK firms, and analyse how cross-cultural management can attempt to tackle this and improve productivity’ (5000 words) 1. Introduction 2. Literature review 3. Research methodology 4. Analysis 5. Conclusion Please include all references used.

Answer 1

Cross cultural management includes the study of the influence of societal culture on managers and management practice as well as the study of the cultural orientations of individual managers and organization members. Cross cultural management helps us to understand people coming for different cultures. It is important because today organizations are going global.

Introduction:

Cultural factors play an important role as invisible barriers. With the continuous globalization the firms should focus on eliminating the invisible cross cultural communication barriers .Solving these barriers is important in order to foster the organizational climate .This will also create opportunities for expansion of the organization and widen their geographical outlook. Many serious problems may arise when people from different countries, races, values, corners of world come together. Working in multicultural team involves many challenges, disagreements and conflicts.These challenges and conflicts affect the performance of the individuals and the entire firm to acertain degree. In a multicultural internal environment the firms need to find out a solution to bring a clarity in communication. Cross cultural communication where people belonging to diverse cultures being in communication with each other needs to be effective in order to avoid disagreements and conflicts and in turn achieve the business objectives. In order to make cross cultural communication effective, a firm has to understand the barriers involved in cross cultural communication process & identifying means of overcoming such barriers in order to make cross cultural communication effective.

SIX KEY BARRIERS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS

1- ETHNOCENTRISM

We all have a natural tendency to look at other cultures through our own lenses. Ethnocentrism happens when we implicitly believe our way of doing things and seeing things is the right and only way. As a result, we negatively judge behaviours that don’t conform to our world vision. We perceive other’s behaviours as odd and improper. Ethnocentrism also creates an “us versus them” mentality that can be detrimental. In a previous company I worked for, countless times I’ve heard the French complain about the Americans in an ethnocentric way and vice-versa.

2- STEREOTYPING

It’s also common to rely on oversimplified clichés about people from different cultures. In fact, there are quite a few cross-cultural trainings in the market that are focused on memorizing cultural differences and can reinforce stereotyping. Learning about differences can be useful as a starting point. But individuals are unique; you can never predict a person’s behaviour based on his or her nationality. When we were moving to the UK, French friends told us, The British never invite you for dinner, which is a common social activity in France. We happen to have the loveliest British neighbours who invite us for dinner often.

3- PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS

To manage cross-cultural teams successfully, you need to flex your own style. It’s not easy to go against your natural preferences. People can feel unauthentic and incompetent. I know the case of a French manager who went to the United States. He found out that his typical French style of giving feedback, focused on what was “wrong” rather than on what was working well, was undermining his team’s confidence. He realised what the problem was, but he felt artificial acting the “American” way. He went back to France as soon as he could.

4- LANGUAGE BARRIERS

All teams have a common language, but when some people are more fluent than others, it creates social distance between members. In global teams, people who are less fluent in English tend to withdraw from communication, which means the team may not get all the input it needs. Understanding what’s said can be challenging if people speak too fast or use too much slang. This also might have an influence on how people’s competence and performance are perceived. I worked for an organisation where non-English native speakers felt that their career progression opportunities were not the same as for English native speakers.

5- GEOGRAPHICAL DISTANCE

In global virtual teams, people don’t get the chance to interact and build relationships with each other as in a traditional office environment. And the less you know about people, the less you share information with them. Collaboration within virtual teams is, therefore, more challenging. Groups outside of the head office can also feel excluded. On the other hand, head office group members might think that other colleagues are not contributing. Differences in time zones also can be challenging. Often if you’re not in the headquarters, you are expected to cope with meeting timings that are less convenient. I know of a highly talented woman who left a global senior leadership role because she got tired of having frequent meetings in the night.

6- CONFLICTING VALUES

Culture is like an iceberg: what you see are the behaviours, and those are influenced by the invisible values under the water line. Cultural clashes happen when other people’s behaviour compromises our own values. Often, when you don’t understand or don’t agree with a behaviour, it means that there are conflicting values under the water line. There is no right or wrong way of doing things; it’s just a matter of cultural norms. Below, you’ll see a (non-exhaustive) list of common conflicting cultural values:

Literature Review:

Cross cultural management mainly focuses on the behavior of people from different culture working together as a group or an organization. Most of cross-cultural management study aims at dealing with the issue of organizational behavior, such as leadership style, motivational approaches, strategy, organizational structure. Three aspects are discussed in this study as follows, communication system, management style, and staff behavior. As to the cultural concept, culture is a complex issue in some fields such as sociology, anthropology and now become a hot topic in management. Several contributions are devoted in this area by some authors, such as Hofstede (1997), Hall (1976, refered by Richardson and Smith, 2007), Golbe (2004). It is no exaggeration to say that Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture theory is a dominant theory. Although a lot of people oppugn Hofstede’s theory and his data are out of time (Holden, 2002, p20), however, the data of dimensions of national culture is not an absolute value but relative values. At least, Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture theory still is a famous and popular theory, which is engaged by a large number of researches. Project GLOBE is a recent study, in which culture is linked to behavior in organization (Shore and Cross, 2005). Globe proposals nine cultural dimensions, some of these are similar to Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Culture (Shore and Cross, 2005). However, Globe’s theory is still a new theory without sufficient test; therefore it will not be considered in this study. Hall’s high context-communication and low context communication can perfectly serve for the cross-cultural communication study and conflict-resolution studies (Kim, Pan and Park, 1998). In this study, both Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Culture theory and Hall’s high context-communication and low context communication theory are involved. Dimensions of National Culture “Culture is the pattern of taken-for-granted assumptions

DATA Analysis

Data and Analysis Based on the theories of previous studies and the data of the sample company, the authors find that cross cultural management barriers occur in the communications between cultures as well as the communications between superiors and subordinates.

CONCLUSION

Organizations should focus on establishing a new enterprise culture. A universally accepted culture in which one understands the other person’s values and beliefs and respects it. The top level management should commit in building organizational climate without conflicts and difference of opinions. Improving the employees cross cultural competence through cross cultural knowledge training and insisting on the mutual benefit policy which is a win- win situation for cross cultural population in workplace. Culturally competent involves a lot of learning about the cross cultures which will overcome the cross cultural barriers.