Communicating across cultures in multinational Ibis West Africa: Reflective Essay

This reflective essay explores the communication issues between expatriates and local workers in multinational Ibis West Africa, highlighting the importance of intercultural communication and the impact of cultural variables on information coding and decoding. It also discusses strategies to enhance communication in a multicultural workforce.

Communicating across cultures in multinational Ibis West Africa: Reflective Essay

Running Head: Essay
Effective Business Skills are necessary in any business as it improves the individuals’
performance and even help them in delivering their jobs in an effective manner. The paper
“Communicating across cultures in multinational Ibis West Africa” talks about the
communication issues between the expatriates and the local workers of Ghana. Ibis is a Danish
NGO which had a main aim of supporting the Liberation Movement in South Africa while the
people there were suffering against the colonial rule. At present, Ibis supports in 13 countries
around the world and have around 50 Danish expatriates. It has been able to employ around 464
people across three major continents and is highly engaged in providing educations, governance
and capacity building. As the national economies are evolving, overlapping and merging, there’s
been a need to do business in a variety of cultures. A number of international corporations are
searching for talented workers who are highly flexible and are able to adjust and apply their
skills with tact and sensitivity. This enhances the business success at the international level. The
need for intercultural communication is needed in every aspect of business ranging from internal
communication to marketing (Pulkkinen, 2013). The importance of the effective communication
and the misinterpretations, misconceptions and the misunderstandings in the verbal and non-
verbal communication form the prime essence of this article. The article also suggests that in
order to enhance the relationship between the expatriate workers and the local staff of Ibis West
Africa, the company is focusing more on enhancing the intercultural relationship and capacity
building among their multicultural staff in order to improve the current communication level in
this multinational organisation. The article here has enlightened the prime effects of cultural
variables on Information Coding and Decoding among the expatriates and the local workers and
the role of intercultural communication in the transformation of the workforce. The intercultural
communication aspects also require the mangers and other leaders of the firm to develop
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understanding, skills and the competencies to communicate effectively in multicultural contexts
(Padhi, 2016).
The paper focuses on finding the answer to the research question “How does culture influence
communication among expatriate workers and local staff in multinational Ibis West Africa?”
This research question was asked because global processes have allowed Ibis to move outside its
area of origin to Latin America and Africa and offer services to the impoverish communities. As
the organisation has started working in different localities across the world so the employees are
exposed to varieties of cultures at a greater extent. At present, Ibis West Africa has people
coming from 8 different nationalities working closely over a number of projects. When people
from different cultural backgrounds work together, then there are a number of chances that their
thoughts, ideas and perceptions may contradict and may even align well (Abdulai, Ibrahim, &
Mohammed, 2017). This question was precisely asked to evaluate the positive as well as the
negative influence of the culture on the communication established between the expatriates and
the local staff of the West Africa. This question has also been asked to improve the consequences
of the negative influence of culture on the communication or to promote the enhancement if
there has been any positive influence. The researchers believe that if expatriates and the local
people have knowledge about the cultural beliefs and thoughts of one another, then it is easy to
establish an effective communication at the workplace (Franko, 2012). Culture has a direct effect
on the verbal and the non-verbal communication. Some cultures have a tendency to prioritize and
give a high significance to the words spoken while the others still give significance to the word
spoken but they also value the context of the communication. Silence has a significant role in all
sorts of cultures and it might be interpreted in different manners during cross-cultural business
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meetings. If the cultural factor is ignored in business communication, then it can lead to a
number of problems and communications disruptions. The cultural and socio-physical context of
communication is important as in their absence the exchange of messages and creation of
meaning in the cross-cultural interactions would not occur. It is also believed that the cultural
norms are reflected in the language people use to converse with one another. Although the
official language of Ghana is English, still a number of local staff members use local languages
to communicate with one another along with English. The local members have acquired the
English Language from a different cultural context or environment (Schiller & Cui, 2017).
There are a number of significant aspects related to the research questions asked in the article.
The answers to the research question have revealed a number of facts about the communication
relationships between the expatriates and the local Ghanaian Staff members. A number of cross-
cultural communication challenges were present between the strangers (the expatriates at the
Ibis) and the local Ghanaian staff members. Both the strangers and locals were not able to create
shared meaning of the messages encoded and decoded during the communicative interactions
they made. The locals were not able to freely transmit idea, thoughts and perceptions and this
they may have derived from the cultural values of their parents, schools, environment and peers
where laxity and inexplicit information transfer is the part of their system of acculturation. On
the contrary, the expatriates were able to share their thoughts and perceptions, both with the
other expatriates and the local staff members, in an explicit manner because they have been
culturally imbibed by their families, friends and the education system to be open in their
expression of thoughts and try to establish strong communication links with the people coming
from different locations and a variety of cultural backgrounds (Gerritsen, 2011).
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Running Head: Essay
There are a number of crucial findings and conclusion related to the article taken into
consideration. When the expatriates and even the local staff members fail to gain knowledge
about the cultural and linguistic differences, then a number of issues like mis-communication,
misinterpretation and misunderstanding develop among managers and employees from different
ethnic backgrounds and even among the ones from homogenous backgrounds and nationalities.
While answering the research question, it was also revealed that in the long run the issues related
to mis-communications and misinterpretations will be resolved as the interactions among the
expatriates and the local staff will deepen with time and with the constant engagements the
avenues will be created where all of them can openly address the fallouts. The Ghanaian staff
members have deep roots of culture and it is difficult to change them according to the emerging
needs of the management. However, in the long run it is possible to develop an understanding
that where the conflicts and cultural clashes between the expatriates and local people can be
minimized (Štok, 2018).
The article also reveals that continuous and free communication is a significant element that the
leaders could use in order to solve the problems in a creative manner. In order to develop and
retain the creative potential of the workforce, it is crucially important to get over the
communication problems caused due to multicultural workforce. As the local workforce is
accustomed to receive orders in the verbal manner so they do not understand effectively when
the expatriate leaders establish connections through emails or any other medium rather than
verbal communication. The heavy reliance of the local staff members on the verbal orders force
them not to work effectively upon the instructions and order they received through electronic
mails. So, it is advised that if the leaders want their work to be done in an effective manner, then
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Running Head: Essay
they directly establish verbal communication with the local staff members and try to learn their
language and translations in an effective manner. In a similar manner the non-verbal
communication is an innate and universal means of communication, but its interpretation is still
bound or highly determined by the cultural values and differences. In this case of Ibis, the
expatriates were not able to understand and interpret the non-verbal communication of the local
staff members until and unless they become an integral part of the system (Tkachenko, 2017).
The body languages, facial expressions, gestures, etc. would be significant for the expatriates and
the local employees only when they are socialized into each other’s culture and they have
developed a tendency to understand and adopt the differences in one another beliefs and cultural
backgrounds. Most of the Ghanaian uses a number of non-verbal communication symbols which
leads to misunderstanding among the expatriates while the expatriates used both verbal and non-
verbal communications. So, in order to avoid further mis-communication, it was recommended
that the strangers should be sufficiently exposed to the Ghanaian Culture to learn and interpret
the symbols, body languages and other non-verbal communication used by the local staff
members during business meetings (Almutairi, Alhaddad, & Alqahtani, 2015).
Ibis West Africa is an NGO and as it has a network in over 13 countries, so the intercultural
communication issues cannot be simply avoided. The future management communication
practices that could be adopted by the Ibis could include a number of strategies that could be
adopted by the expatriates or the local staff members or by the leaders themselves. The adoption
of such strategic practices may have their own significance. The prime strategies may include
creation of a receptive atmosphere by avoiding tension and pressure while communicating with
the people with different cultural backgrounds. Also, the leaders could try to train the employees
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in such a manner that they take the lessons seriously. In this case, the managers could even
include certain appraisals to make the trainees more attentive throughout the training programs.
The managers could also ask the expatriates as well as the managers to give their suggestions and
feedback over the ongoing style of communication and meetings (Kuncoro, 2016). The
feedbacks will even measure the effectiveness of the communication style being used in the
company and will also let the managers know that whether their messages has been well
understood or not. As the expatriates have a problem in understanding the culture and the
language of the local staff members and vice versa so, the managers could provide special
training for both of them where they can simply explore various aspects of each other cultures
and even communicate with one another so that the communication barrier between them is
slightly diminished. While knowing each other on a personal basis might help both the
expatriates and the local staff members to try and adapt to the cultural beliefs of one another and
even respect the differences. The managers can also appoint translators and local cultural guides
at the Ibis West Africa office so that the expatriates can contact them whenever and wherever
they face any issue while understanding the local language or any cultural ideology or belief. The
same could be done to help the local staff members while they try to mingle with the new
expatriates and their different cultural backgrounds (Kuncoro, 2016).
So it could be concluded that intercultural knowledge forms a crucial aspect of communication
and the expatriates and even the local staff at Ibis are facing a number of issues while trying to
communicate their thoughts and ideas in the workplace. Intercultural communication or the
cross-cultural communication is quite important in this era of globalization when the borders
between nations are dissolving and the talented labors and employees are travelling across the
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world to showcase their skills and learn more and more from different portions of the world. So
in order to maintain a good performance, the mangers and other leaders at Ibis have to eliminate
the cultural gap among its workers and establish strong communication bonds among them.
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References
Abdulai, M., Ibrahim, H., & Mohammed, M. (2017). Communicating across cultures in
multinational Ibis West Africa. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 42-53.
Almutairi, A., Alhaddad, M., & Alqahtani, A. (2015). Cultural Diversity and Effective
Organizational Communication. Journal of Business and Economics, 6(3), 1136-1140.
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Franko, K. (2012). Intercultural communication —the effect of cultural differences in everyday
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961-6813-10-5/papers/ML12_144.pdf
Gerritsen, M. (2011). The role of culture in communication: How knowledge of differences in
communication between cultures may be the key to successful intercultural
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Kuncoro, S. (2016). Culture and Team Leadership Communication Effectiveness: A Cross-
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Padhi, P. (2016). The Rising Importance of Cross Cultural Communication in Global Business
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