Cultural Identity and Its Role in Intercultural Business Communication - Article Example

? Reconceptualizing Cultural Identity and Its Role in Intercultural Business Communication and The Business Case for Enterprise Mashups Tutor’s Name Date Reflection 1 The article, “Reconceptualizing Cultural Identity and Its Role in Intercultural Business Communication”, the authors focus on the influence of intercultural identity in business communication. According to the article, the cultural identity is an individual’s sense of self-derived formal or informal membership in groups that inculcate knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, traditions, and ways of life. The article argues that a broad conception of cultural identity should not in any way privilege nationality, but rather balance the components of vacation, class, geography, philosophy, language, and biological aspects. Since cultural identity changes over time and that evokes emotions negotiable through communication, the article proposes the model of cultural identity that highlights components directly related to business, including economic class and professional affiliation. While such a model proves rather viable in eliminating all forms problems related to poor communication in the business, the reality can prove otherwise. Regardless of the policies or measures put in place to divert attention from such issues defining people in organization, the reality is rather opposite. Increasingly, people look at things in a different perspective. For instance, accepting that a person ever committed a mistake is rather odd, especially in organizations that use teams in accomplishing tasks and allocation of duties. In his argument, the author points out that by equating culture with the country, we limit our understanding of business issues, problems and understanding. As we increasingly understand the issues affecting our business, we avoid any factors that negatively affect our business organizations. Mostly, business people avoid the negatives associated with problems of nationality to avoid negative publicity and causing alarm. However, avoiding these factors does not completely eliminate all forms of business problems as language, philosophy, vocation, class, geography and biological factors are not eliminated and will subsequently affect the business. According to the article, “The business case for enterprise mashups”, there are a number of benefits of a business organization that is in the process of mashing up its operations. According to the reasoning, enterprise mashups have the potential of reducing the company’s application backlog, development costs and cycle times, ensuring a smooth flow of work. Because of this, the organization improves in its productivity, as well as enables business users to innovate more effectively in driving business growth. According to the article, these applications offer an opportunity to reuse the existing IT assets and the already existing infrastructure to enable business users create their own applications. However, there is the need to put into consideration the relevance of such technology and infrastructure as time progresses. Technology dynamically changes with time, and as such, becomes outdated. Subsequently, they become incompatible with the new forms of technologies being invented in the modern world. An organization might be compelled to invest more capital and resources than anticipated, increasing the costs of doing business. These applications are tailor made to suit the needs of the business to solve situational problems whenever they occur. With the increase in globalization, there has been a tremendous increase in the overall costs of doing business. The author argues that the compelling capability of the mashup technology as the organization faces difficult times and challenging economic times that challenge scarcity of resources. However, the installation of such technology is an expensive affair. Such technologies require high expertise. Skills required in setting up this these technologies are expensive, and thus makes it a wholly expensive affair for the organization. Therefore, the common belief and notion that mashing up of operations is an easy and inexpensive affair becomes an illusion for such business organizations. Reflection II The ever-rising expansion of businesses creates a problem of culture in many organizations. Many studies conducted by different people seek to offer solutions to business organizations on how bet they could deal with the problem of cultural identity especially among their employees. Cultural influences in business are adverse. Apart from their negative effects on a business entity, they also lead to poor performance and low employees’ output. Culturally sensitive organizations seek to incorporate various elements that successfully eliminate the effects of culture in an organization. In the article, “Reconceptualizing Cultural Identity and Its Role in Intercultural Business Communication”, Jameson seeks to offer insights on the effects of intercultural communication in a business organization. According to Jameson, a person always shows an affiliation to different cultural groups and conforms to different forms of culture, beliefs and traditions. Although these affect a business as the article points out, more business related components such as components directly such as economic class and professional affiliation, have a bigger influence in a business organization. He is keen to note that culture defines people and portrays them as unique from other parties. However, they lose their uniqueness whenever they conform to a particular group. As such, having a narrow concept on the issue of cultural identity negatively affects a business entity. Such effects as the author proposes are solvable through the expansion of cultural identities in an organization. However, no efforts can fully wipe out such effects in an organization. If anything, the best way of resolving such issues is the articles proposal of focusing at individual’s cultural identities such as vocation, class, geography, language, philosophy as well as biological factors. The authors in the article, “The Business Case for Enterprise Mashups” points out that for businesses to be effective in the current business environment and remain relevant in future, they have to adapt the new ways of doing business. Such ways help the organization to complete tasks in a rather fast and way, avoiding lateness. The article argues that the efficiency of the current technologies is comparable to those in use five years ago. They observe that more companies are increasingly changing their operations into mashups to improve efficiency and improve the speed of doing business. There are a number of ways in which businesses can mashup their operations, especially through remixing both the outside and the inside information. They are observant that the web 2.0 applications play a major role in ensuring high quality business and improved levels of operations. However, web 2.0 is rather a new technology that cannot merge with the old technologies easily. Modifications required to make the two compatible are an expensive affair, while maintaining them is yet an extra cost for the organization. Although the long tail principle of web 2.0 is effective in saving costs, it is rather odd to believe that all forms of current technology are easily compatible. To avoid disappointments, the organisation should conduct a feasibility study of the various technological assets and infrastructure laid down that can blend with the existing technologies. Regardless of the costs involved in the exercise, there are numerous benefits associated with mashups. Investing in such systems potentially reduces the time taken to complete work as well as improving the quality of work of the organization. However, the organization needs to understand the developmental processes of both the mashup and traditional IT processes. The main differences lie in the scope, process, users, and technology. Understanding this helps the organization to understand the kind of investments that the organization needs to make. Read More