CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Since business is a collaborative activity, intercultural communication has developed into being an essential part in the business world. Understanding how to communicate effectively with people from other cultures has become a priority for many organizations as individuals from different cultural backgrounds do not only have different languages, but also different rules and strategies of interacting. As a consequence, problems of intercultural misunderstanding often arise in multinational organizations because of the difficulty of finding appropriate ways to communicate intentions, expectations, attitudes, feelings, and beliefs. The paper gives an overview of the interdisciplinary field of intercultural business communication by focusing on some key cultural dimensions identified by Geert Hofstede, such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, as well as the concept of low- and high-context cultures developed by Edward T. Hall.

Keywords

• intercultural business communication; low- and high-context; power distance; uncertainty avoidance; individualism/collectivism; masculinity/femininity