Cross cultural communication - Essay Example

Cultural differences define the communication, attitude, behavior, decision making process and the leadership style. The impact of these cultural differences on the organization can be understood from the illustration that when a Japanese firm sends its executive to United States as head of operations that executive have to understand the cultural differences of the two countries. Japanese organizational culture can be termed as collectivism where group has priority over individual whereas US is characterized by Individualism.

The individual comes before the group. Due to this difference attitude, behavior, motivation, reward and leadership style is altogether different in the two countries. The Japanese not only has to realize the importance of individual reward and individual contributions but also must recognize the potential conflict in individual and group roles in US. Toyota executives had to face these difficulties in acclimatizing to US culture (Griffin). Despite accelerated globalization organizations only managed to transcend boundaries but they were unable to operate beyond nationality.

What we observe today is a wide range of cultural differences in work related values, attitudes and behavior. This requires an effective cross culture communication so that these cultural differences and workforce diversity can be utilized to maximize organizational benefits. Hofstede has identified five dimensions of cultural differences which influence organizations. They are namely individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, career success/quality of life and Confucian dynamism.

Successful organizations explore these differences and take advantage of these differences (Nancy J Adler). Same is done by Toyota. There is huge difference in the organizational culture of the company in Japan and in America but they have managed it very successfully. At the macro level operations of the organization remains the same it is only at the micro level where the differences exists and they are exploited to the full advantage of the company. Cross cultural communication differences arise because communication style or preferences are deep rooted in our culture which we learn with experiences throughout our life.

Our culture is so much inside us that we expect the whole world to look at it in the same way. Learning a foreign knowledge is not enough for cross cultural communication. Intercultural communication can be improved by developing an understanding of the following three factors. External and internal culture, high context and low context culture and the last is monochromic and polychromic time. Understanding of external culture can be very easily developed through history, politics etc. It is the internal culture which defines our attitudes, behavior and values that creates misunderstandings in most of the cross cultural encounters.

This vast difference in the internal culture of the two societies i.e. Japan and USA is a source of many misunderstandings in the organization. Japan has a culture of respect and politeness and they expect the same in return whereas internal culture of USA is more direct, straightforward and frank. High context and low context cultures also define our communication styl