Business Practice in Sri Lanka - Example

Business Practice in Sri Lanka Name: Student Number: Course Code: Word Count: Date of Submission: Executive Summary Cultural issues pertinent to socio-cultural business environments vary from one nation to another and this essay makes Sri Lankan to objective focus to detail its case. This is achievable by see the sights of the scopes to which the cultural differences impact international business, with the Sri Lankan culture as the point of interest. The report introduces a brief background of the Sri Lankan community to establish a connection with the socio-cultural issues identified for discussion. Such issues include Sociology of Family and Cost of Motherhood in Sri Lanka, The Inherent Religious Culture of Sri Lankans, Population Diversity as a Revolutionary Culture and Evolutionary Language Dynamics in Sri Lankan. The first issue, which revolves around motherhood, childbearing, parenting and family, is tenets or essential factors that contribute to the formation and completeness of a society. This paper emphasizes the necessity of understanding families and motherhood costs in Sri Lanka since personalities like therapists need the information to make their work easier and successful. On matters religion, according the utmost value to faith is an inherent culture of the Sri Lankans. Realizing how interestingly this report studies the subject country, the other two issues are fairly discussed and a comprehensive conclusion gives a proper summary of the same. Cultural Issues Pertinent To Socio-Cultural and Religious Business Environment Introduction This essay intends to explore the extents to which the cultural differences impact international business, with the Sri Lankan culture as the point of interest. Sri Lanka is chosen for this because it is an industrial nation with most of its industries in the leading edge on global markets. Intercultural interaction is therefore, more evident with Sri Lanka. Religiously, it composes of Buddhists, Muslims Protestants and Christians among others (Crabtree and Pelham 2009, p.1). This uncovers the subject of intercultural business communication. Putting it in a global perspective creates a universal picture of the idea, which enhances the beauty of diversity. Intercultural communication is an interactive exercise that takes place when persons from different cultures engage each other in a communication process in which they use a common language or register. To concretize all these theories and ideas, the essay is basically divided into three sections; an introduction that develops a basis or theory for the discussion, the body that supports and informs the topic from a philosophical perspective and a third segment that draws conclusions. Sociology of Family and Cost of Motherhood in Sri Lanka Motherhood, childbearing, parenting and family are tenets or essential factors that contribute to the formation and completeness of a society. They influence the social aspects of mankind and communities at large. Subsequently, in particular to the Sri Lankan society, many discussions and various publications such as Linda et al. (2001, p.147) address the different elements of the society or family, especially motherhood and other social problems. The interest of this study is in relation to the economics or simply cost issues around motherhood, considering that today’s society is more conscious economically than ever before. In the case of the Sri Lankan society, as a general statement would hypothesize, if anyone knew beforehand that having a child would cut down the amount of money they make over a lifetime, by a given ratio, then they would question themselves if they would still have one. Motherhood is a key factor in family and so a discussion on family origin itself complements arguments on the same (Hunter and Mason 2000, p.21). For the Sri Lankan community, the layout of the family is important as it illustrates the relationship between members. It also describes what these members are products of as suggested by their behaviours, ways of life, beliefs and religion, amongst others. A Genogram is a family tree representation of the links between parents and children. The unlimited interaction gives the subject its complex nature (Parsons and Bales 2000, p.10).Without appreciation of the family, not only do people devalue societies but conflicts rise as well. Intercultural communication respects the different areas of interaction where societal differences are appreciated.An intercultural communication model by Chen and Starota (2000) holds that intercultural sensitivity is the affective dimension and it refers to the emotional desire of an individual to acknowledge, appreciate and accept family as a socio-cultural concept The Inherent Religious Culture of Sri Lankans . It is embedded in their culture that religion plays a vital role in the wellbeing of their daily lives. The major religions that are dominant in Sri Lanka are Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, with the latter being the most dominant. According to a research by Crabtree and Pelham (2009, p.1), under the institution of Gallup World, Sri Lanka is the third most religious country in the world. Buddhism was introduced to the island from India and now most of the Sinhalese, the locals, subscribe to this religion. The religious diversity of Sri Lanka is owed to the number of olden times that it has experienced over the years. Interestingly, Sri Lanka is not only very religious but the believers of the different faiths can freely visit each other’s temple. This shows the much respect that is mutual, in terms of religion, between the people of Sri Lanka. The government policies of the country accords allowances to the believers of the Buddha religion. This idea is inscribed in the country’s constitution and the basis is that most of the national laws are tied to observations in the Buddhist order. Population Diversity as a Revolutionary Culture Modern societies and workplaces are ethnically diversified in terms of personnel composition. In the Sri Lankan case, the idea of adopting government policies that are agreeable to most international communities was like a revolution against individualism. It therefore. Became a revolutionary culture of fighting individualism and promoting sensitiveness for others as well, including those not of Sri Lankan origin. The product of this revolutionary culture is that the country now consists of people from many cultural background, hence a diverse population. When this is projected to the aspect of differences in ethnicity between the communicators, the competences that are necessary to learn are; ability to adjust and accept differences in ethnicity, understand the extents to which the aspects of life like behaviour and reactions are under conditioning by culture, and the skills of identifying and solving problems in intercultural. Most of the intercultural issues in Sri Lanka that are evidenced by the chosen ways of communication include respect for one’s culture, ease of doing business in the country and probable effects on economic growth (Sivers and Hoole 2014). In some view, the importance of intercultural communication tries to bridge the gaps created by intercultural issues and differences. The thinking is that intercultural communication skills are the answer to the complex issues that cultural diversification present to us today contemporarily.Schlesinger (2006) claims that this relation between the messages sent and the relative culture of the sender determine the response of the receiver.Diversity based on culture and ethnicity is becoming an inevitable element of the modern society, including Sri Lanka. It is, thus, only civically important that this difference is appreciated and celebrated. In this direction, people gain knowledge about other cultures.The other important thing to note is the aspect of sociology that has carpeted the Sri Lankan community at large. The social nature of the modern society is a vital aspect that has to be taken into consideration in almost all agendas. In a social setting, the various institutions and entities relate and interact with respect to each other’s boundaries. The environments of relation and interactions are defined; the sociological environments are even predetermined. Evolutionary Language Dynamics in Sri Lankan Language is definitely a facet of a society as it contributes to understanding or misunderstanding amongst people. Language does not have to be the spoken word but just any way that people of one society of community communicate to one another. It gets even interesting when a society is made up of people speaking different languages. This is because it brings the issues of differing cultures interacting and differences in social values. At the end of the day, it gives the society a new social look in some way (Welch, &Piekkari, 2006). The Sri Lankan community comprises of three major languages and these are Sinhala, Tamil and English. To further explain this, consider the scenario where many far-off companies, including those of with Sri Lankan origin, have invested in the Sri Lanka market. They have therefore employed locals as well as foreigners and this is such a situation that presents language barrier and thus communication challenges. This constructs a cross-cultured environment and so validates the impact of intercultural communication which is to necessitate organizational learning as important for managers to implement. Conclusion Evidently, in every social setting there are factors that determine socio-cultural business environments. As this discussion choses to look at it, some of these issues pertinent to socio-cultural and religious business environment include Sociology of Family and Cost of Motherhood, Religion, Sociology and Ethnic Diversity and Language Dynamics.These factors vary from one country to another and this discussion achieves the objective of detailing those of Sri Lankan. The most dominant issues are those of Religion, Ethnic diversities, language differences and institutes of sociology. With respect to the latter, one can think of the institution and environment as basic elements of sociology. This group of entities which share a predetermined territory, culture or morals is referred to as a society. The development of a society may be based on its primary means of continuing to exist or on its political structure. In this case, the means of existence of a society is by holding up the social prospects. Reference List Crabtree, S and Pelham, B. 2009. What Alabamians and Iranians have in common: A global perspective on Americans’ religiosity offers a few surprises. [online] Available at: [Accessed 2 September 2014]. Hunter, Jean E. and Mason, Paul T. 2000. The American Family: Historical Perspectives, Virginia: The University of Virginia. Linda, Mooney. A. David Knox and Caroline Schacht. 2001. Understanding Social Problems. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Parsons, Talcott and Bales, Robert F. 2000.Family Socialization and Interaction Process, London: Psychology Press. Redmond, M. V. 2000. Cultural distance as a mediating factor between stress and intercultural communication competence. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Vol. 24, no. 1. Schlesinger, A. M. 2006. The necessity of intercultural communication. New York: Sage. Sivers, D. &Hoole, E. E. 2014. Sri Lanka 2014: New Information and Cultural Insights Entrepreneurs Need to Start a Business in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Wood Egg LLC. Welch, C., &Piekkari, R. 2006. Crossing language boundaries: qualitative interviewing in international business. Management International, Vol. 46, no. 40. Read More