“Cross culture communication”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Modern societies are confronted with communication problems caused by cultural misunderstanding and cultural contrast. Intercultural training tries to solve such problems by preparing personnel and private people for working abroad, dealing with migration or accomplishing projects in multinational teams.

An example for a cross-cultural communication strategy is "the contrast-American technique",^[1] developed by the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) and the actor Cajetan DeMello.

Cross-cultural miscommunication

With business becoming more and more global, the way business is being done is becoming fragmented. A successful business requires sophisticated multi-cultural teamwork to become successful on the global platform. The cross-cultural business leverage by people from different cultures develop new solutions or strategies toward old problems. By integrating different cultural knowledges, the cross-cultural team could benefit from examining the problem dynamically through different cultural lenses. Unlike a single culture team, a cross-culture team normally encounter significant and complex conflicts between each culture. Every individual adopts different ways of communication, which influenced by their culture, personality, experience and other factors. The following parts of the research paper will use primary data and research to demonstrate the relationship of people’s communication styles and the culture they belong to, and provide recommendations on how to minimize the process loss caused by cultural difference. At the same time, this paper will prove recommendation on how to facilitate efficient communication process to maximize the process gain within cross-culture teamwork.

To efficiently communicate within a cross-cultural team, the organization could share the information and experiences to adapt to different situations, improving the decision-making process. The global organization could leverage the diversity of skills and knowledge from team members and deliver creative solutions. The sophisticated heterogeneous teamwork could diversify the problem-solving ability and reduce duplication of solutions. However, to cooperate at sophisticated levels, individuals in the cross-cultural team need to understand cultural diversity, develop awareness of individual cultures, and cultivate mutual acceptance. Only with comprehensive cross-cultural training, the cross-cultural team could improve its efficiency in the communication process.

Even when people from a different location that speak the same language, there are cultural differences between them. For example, American and Britain both speak English, but there are still cultures differences exist. The effective communication between cross-culture team members starts with understanding with cultural diversity. Individuals need to realize that difference in culture and background of sender and receiver through the communication process. Understanding cultural gaps and differences could avoid unnecessary misunderstanding within multi-cultural communication. Individuals need to comprehend the importance of understanding other culture for successful and effective cross-cultural communication. Moreover, individuals in the cross-cultural organization need to develop awareness of individual cultures. Understanding basic etiquette and habit from other culture are necessary for improving cross-cultural communication process. Nowadays, many global organizations offer cross-cultural training to help employees from different culture integrate into the company’s conduct business. The cross-cultural company should help employees expand their knowledge and understanding of other cultures. The inappropriate habit or behavior from one culture’s perspectives might be culturally appropriate in other culture’s perspectives. The individuals from a different culture may need different holidays, religion events, working hours. Also, the time zone difference within a cross-cultural team requires the leader to balance and optimize the schedule. For example, because a part of the team work in Germany, the communication from Canada may be delayed for a couple of hours. In another case, the Chinese office observes different holidays as American office. (Such as Chinese New Year and Chinese National holidays) Cross-cultural team members need to develop cultural empathy to fully considerate from other cultural perspectives. “Cultural empathy is extremely important in the system of cross-cultural communicative competence.”^[2] The cultural empathy could mitigate the conflict between a different culture which is one of the necessary requirements for the effective cross-cultural communication process. With genuine support and understanding toward different culture, the cross-cultural team could mitigate and avoid the misunderstanding and barrier within the communication process. Individuals involved in cross-cultural communication need to cultivate mutual acceptance toward different cultures.

To conclude, cross-culture communication can bring tremendous benefits to a teamwork, it is also associated with several barriers. As the world become more and more globalized and socially interconnected. It is essential to build an effective teamwork with minimizing culture barriers. Developing a comprehensive strategy is needed when it comes to facilitating a healthy and sustainable team building, which requires take the difference in social customs, ideals, beliefs, habit, and behavior might create misunderstanding between each team member into consideration. The team leader needs to develop cross-cultural training for the team member to understand cultural diversity, develop awareness of individual cultures, and cultivate mutual acceptance. By comprehensively understanding cultural empathy, the cross-cultural team could mitigate unnecessary misunderstandings and barriers during the communication process. Only by mitigate those barriers and understanding within cross-cultural communication, the cross-cultural team could manage projects, develop ideas, solve tasks, and optimize decision with more open visions and perspectives.

According to Michael Walsh and Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Western conversational interaction is typically "dyadic", between two particular people, where eye contact is important and the speaker controls the interaction; and "contained" in a relatively short, defined time frame. However, traditional Aboriginal conversational interaction is "communal", broadcast to many people, eye contact is not important, the listener controls the interaction; and "continuous", spread over a longer, indefinite time frame.^[3]^[3]^[4]

Cross-cultural miscommunication

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