Intercultural Business Communication - Assignment

Running head: INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
According to Bennett and Bennett (2004), training and development may be a diverse
field and the people employed come from different corners of the world which makes them a
diverse group full of different ideas and insights. There have been many types of research
which have shed light on the different perspectives of diversity. Organizational diversity has
always been existent due to the presence of employees from different corners of the world.
They share diverse culture, ideas, insights, views which makes them different from one
another. This leads to diversity in communication and organizational development. Diversity
occurs in different aspects of life and this diversity affects life to a great extent. In this article,
there have been explained different kinds of diverse aspects in the lives of people. Two of the
main and important diverse aspects which were deemed as important by me were
mindset/skill set and cultural stereotypes. These two aspects have been mentioned by me due
to their importance and existence during intercultural interaction among people of different
cultures, especially when they work together in one setting.
Mindset is the way that a person perceives a cultural scenario or diversity. The
amount of knowledge that a person has towards their own culture and the culture of other
people set up the mindset of a person which might be greatly useful in an intercultural
communication since it is important that the sentiments of others are not hurt in any way by
talking bad about the other person’s culture. The skill set is the way that a person behaves by
adhering to the cultural norms and without ignoring the appropriate behavior for other
cultures as well. Cultural stereotypes have also been existent in society for a long time.
Stereotypes are labels that are given to the people of different cultures which many tend to
avoid due to the influence that they have on the mindset of many people. The generalizations
that are done on the basis of different cultures may or may not always tend to stand true and
have been set due to the behavior of a selected few people which have occurred in the past.
People are not treated individually if they belong to a culture and are generalized even if they

2INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
do not possess certain behavior. This article helps in relating to the other two aspects that
have been mentioned in my pre-course assignment text and shows that intercultural
communication has several other cultural aspects.
Furthermore, as stated by Deardoff (2006) in the article “Identification and
assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization”, there
are different factors which were determined to measure the competency of a person in an
intercultural setting and how they have succeeded in connecting with people of a diverse
culture. There have been insights from different authors on the actual meaning of intercultural
competence which have derived that in a basic sense the term means the people are able to
successfully communicate with each other even though they have emerged from different
cultural backgrounds. Intercultural competence is very important since people in current
times are more engaged in intercultural communication due to the nature of work that is
present in current times. Competency in communication ensures that people are able to freely
communicate with each other without hurting the sentiments of the other person. The skills
that are required of people to gain the competency in communication with people of diverse
culture are derived from the different societal and political influences that are present in
everyday life. The article focuses on four approaches of intercultural communication
competence which would be able to completely define the actual concept and meaning of
intercultural communication. These approaches are the trait approach, perceptual approach,
culture-specific approach, and behavioral approach. These four approaches focus on the
different aspects of human life which can be important for a good communication with
people from other cultures. Other approaches have also been discussed in this article. The
article helps me to understand the different ways that I can effectively communicate with
intercultural people through the application of the mentioned approaches which are
extensively described in the article. Getting a deeper knowledge of the approaches would also