Intercultural Communication: Challenges and Opportunities for Managers

Intercultural communication 0
Managing across
cultures
Student’s Name
9/16/2019

Intercultural communication 1
The globalization of business has increased the importance of intercultural communication to
meet the challenges of multicultural communication and become a global leader. The
intercultural communication focuses on sharing the information across different cultures and
social groups that comprise of different educational, ethnic, religious and social background
(Neuliep, 2017). The cultural difference creates the barriers in understanding the language
and the beliefs of culturally diverse workforce and also develops complexity in achievement
of the organization's goals. Each culture has different rules for negotiations, languages and
acceptable behaviours that create complexity in operating the business with multi-cultural
workforce. It is analyzed that communication plays a major role in maintaining good
management functions and deriving organizational success (Holliday, Kullman and Hyde,
2016).
The additional paragraphs of the essay will reflect upon the cultural challenges faced by the
managers in the operation of the business. It will highlight the skills and the knowledge
required by the managers for development of the intercultural competence and will highlight
the range of theoretical concepts that will help the managers in successful global operation. It
will also cover the reflection upon the importance of cross-cultural management and its use in
future business operations.
To operate the business over different geographies it becomes imperative for the organization
to understand the culture difference and develop a strong cordial relation with the customers
and colleagues. It will be achieved by having cultural intelligence and adapting to the
situation to derive the best results (Bouncken, Brem and Kraus, 2016). The word culture has
different meanings for different people. In some cultures asking about the family and the
health issues in acceptable while in some cultures it sets the limits. The western managers
prefer to have small talks that are related to business while the managers in southeast regions

Intercultural communication 2
focus on warm conversations that are not related to business and involve in general
discussions. The acceptable managerial behaviour in one culture can be counterproductive for
the other culture (Vance and Paik, 2015).
This creates the complexities for the mangers to operate in the business environment with a
diverse group of people. The challenges that are faced by the managers in global operations
include the duality between the cultural convergence and cultural divergence. It becomes the
need to induce unique different cultures for the successful operation of the business. The
managers face the issue of differences in communication styles across different cultures. It is
analyzed that some states have low-context culture that is more precise, open and emotional.
On the contrary, some states have high-context culture under which the meanings are not
explicitly stated. It becomes difficult for the managers to develop the communication style
that will help in avoiding the cross-cultural misunderstanding and involves higher levels of
emotional intelligence. It becomes difficult for the manager to design a way that allows
effective interaction with culturally diverse teams (Stone and Deadrick, 2015).
Another challenge for the manager is to understand the differences in cultural value. The
Hofstede cultural dimension model states that some cultures focus on individualism while
some focus on collectivisms. Some countries focus on removing ambiguous situations and
concentrate on long term orientation (Binder, 2016).
It also faces the challenge of loss of interpersonal communication between different cultures.
It is analyzed that when the managers communicate with the different culture employees
there is higher degree of loss of interpersonal communication. It becomes difficult for the
manager to pay attention to multicultural communication and derive the actual interpretation
of the messages. It creates higher cross-cultural misunderstanding and reduces the quality of
messages between the two parties. This, in turn, leaves a direct impact upon the functioning

Intercultural communication 3
of the business and creates difficulty in contracting with the multi-cultural parties (Binder,
2016).
Apart from the challenges faced by the managers it also provides the opportunity of
understanding the new customers and using the new resources for advancing business
operations and allows the organization to become the global leader. The manager gets the
opportunity to access cheap resources and labour in different countries. Effective
multicultural communication will provide the opportunity to make better decisions and
negotiate with the other parties. It will allow the organization be proactive and develop strong
relationships across the countries. It will allow the manager to meet the cultural expectation
and enhance the profitability of the business. It will help the manager in developing
productive interactions with the other parties and apply win-win approach to business
(Deresky, 2017).
The external business environment consists of the outside factors that directly influence the
operations of the business. It comprises of the customers, employees, owners, competitors,
and suppliers. The job role of manager has direct link with the external business environment
under which the company operates. It is analyzed that it becomes imperative for the managers
to effectively communicate and develop strong relationships with the above-mentioned
stakeholders (Shokef and Erez, 2015).
In order to develop a strong relationship with the stakeholders, the managers need to develop
strong interpersonal communication by adopting attention-interpretation-action model of
interpersonal communication. It focuses on what is said, the languages used and how the
message is communicated. It is either done through non-verbal channels or involves verbal
communications. The manager must use the non-verbal message to understand the emotional