Acknowledgements of Intercultural Communication through Real Case Scenario

Acknowledgements of intercultural communication through the real
case scenario.
Under globalization, collaboration and interaction of people from diverse cultures emerge
prevalently (Azmi 2007). Thus, intercultural communication becomes an essential aspect, helping
us to understand the attitude and behaviour of individuals having various cultures (Yeke &
Semercioz 2016). However, communicating in a multicultural environment is never easy. Harzing
& Feely (2008) argued that the more culturally diverse team is, the higher possibility of
communication difficulties is. Since people act and behave favorably and comfortably to their
cultural values, traditions, and norms (Maity 2018), leading to the cultural misunderstanding.
Therefore, cultural misunderstanding is an unavoidable issue that individuals will face in a
multicultural environment (Andarab & Mahmoudi 2015).
Enrolling in the International Business Program, it is important for me to pay intensified attention to
intercultural communication, which will help me to connect and deliver information effectively to
diverse cultural friends and lecturers, as well as my future career working in a multicultural
workplace. Previously mentioned towards cultural conflicts, I was no exception. I could not avoid
facing misunderstanding my foreign friend’s behaviour in the Managing International Business
Responsibility (MIBR) course. I feel lucky after studying the Cross Cultural Management course
since I can acknowledge the importance of intercultural communication and it drove me to the
better perspectives of that real case scenario in the previous course.
My weakness in the MIBR course gave me an insightful reflection of myself in managing a cultural
diversity team. It was about being unable to recognize cultural differences. I was leading the team
of five, including me and two other friends of mine from different regions in Vietnam, and a pair of
American students. My happiness peaked at the beginning of the course. With diversity of cultures
in my team, I was confident to gather additional breadth of insights, perspectives and experiences,
facilitating the creation of new and better ideas for the last assignment (Rijamampianina 1996).
However, life is not like a dream. The arguments occurred when I aggressively distributed the tasks
for other members, and I misinterpreted when two American friends directly contributed their
opinions. Fortunately, we still fulfilled our outstanding assignment thanks to the empathy with our
mistakes and differences in culture. Thus, the MIBR course gave me not only the understanding of
responsibility in managing an international business, but also the experience of solving intercultural

misunderstandings.
Reflection on different perspectives
To have a deeper understanding of my weakness, I will describe my reflection from different
perspectives according to Eastern-Western culture.
Playing as team leader, I hosted meetings and task allocation. I was considering my ideas the most
important and allocating members’ tasks without asking if they were capable. Vietnamese members
listened to my allocation and did not ask for further requirements or negative reactions. Oppositely,
American members fiercely reacted to my “command” and criticized me for not respecting their
opinions. In the meeting, while my Vietnamese members had a friendly attitude, foreign members
attended and contributed under an aggressive and straightforward attitude, creating a discomforting
environment and members were hesitant in discussing. Eventually, after realizing we had different
cultural backgrounds (Eastern-Western culture), I was then understanding that different cultural
norms affect our behaviours. Because of a lack of intercultural communication skills, I didn’t fully
understand the attitude and behaviour of foreign members (Yeke & Semercioz 2016).
To illustrate, Vietnamese members follow the leader’s ideas without asking for further expectations.
They perceive leaders have greater power to make the optimal outcomes and members are afraid of
raising their voice to contribute ideas (Cox & Rowley 2014). So my friends imply I am the only
person who provides a specific direction. However, in Western culture, leaders are the ideas
collectors and instructors, not playing more crucially than the members. Members will come up
with creative ideas and play an extremely significant role in the meeting (Czarniawska-Joerges
1993). Still, with Eastern cultural norms, Nguyen (2011) argued that Vietnamese people use a gentle
and friendly tone of voice to avoid negative effects on relationships. Thus, with different cultural
backgrounds, it is understandable that we feel discomfort when Americans straightly contribute
their ideas.
Applying theories from CCM course to interpret weakness
Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (2010) classifies culture into six distinguished dimensions which
have become a framework for comparing cultures (Appendix 1). In this case, the power distance
dimension of Hofstede’s model will analyze the weakness of cultural misunderstanding.