BBUS1003 Case Study Report: Intercultural Communication Barriers

This report examines the significant challenges of intercultural communication in a business context. It begins by highlighting the relationship between language and culture, emphasizing how language is a critical tool for maintaining cultural relationships and expressing ideas. The report then delves into the impact of culture on business communication, addressing language barriers, the importance of tone, and the significance of understanding the target audience. It further explores political influences and national pride. The core of the report focuses on the barriers of intercultural communication, including language barriers, cultural relativism, and ethnocentrism. Finally, it provides practical strategies to overcome these barriers, such as promoting polite and clear communication, fostering cultural understanding, sharing knowledge, and implementing employee diversity training. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing cultural differences to enhance both employee and employer relations within a business.

Running Head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
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BUSINESS COMMINCATION
System04121
5/17/2019

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Ways to overcome the barriers in a business environment........................................................3
Impact of culture on business communication...........................................................................3
 Language barriers and importance of tone......................................................................3
 Target audience...............................................................................................................4
 Politics and national pride:..............................................................................................4
Barriers of Intercultural Communication...................................................................................4
 Language barrier:............................................................................................................4
 Culture relativism:...........................................................................................................4
 Ethnocentrism:................................................................................................................5
Ways to overcome the barriers in a business environment........................................................5
 To ensure polite and clear communication:....................................................................5
 By learning about different cultures:...............................................................................5
 By sharing knowledge:....................................................................................................5
 By promoting employ diversity training:........................................................................6
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Cultural barrier is when people are from different cultures and when people do not
understand each other’s believes, customs and values. All of these things lead to cultural
differences. In this report cultural and language barriers in a workplace are discussed, this
report discuss the relationship between language and culture, further the report discusses the
impact of culture on business communication, Barriers of Intercultural Communication and
lastly
Ways to overcome the barriers in a business environment.
There is strong relationship between language and culture. Language is used to maintain the
cultural relationships. Different cultures have different languages. Languages help a person to
express ideas to the world. A person cannot master in a language until one is able to
understand the culture fully. Language is a constant flux which is dependent on views,
values, believes and customs of a person. The difference between the 2 cultures is expressed
by the languages (Anderson and Anderson, 2010). Language affects the way person see the
world and that is the reason it affects the way people interact with each other.

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Impact of culture on business communication
 Language barriers and importance of tone
In some of the countries like Australia and united states, it is very common for the
people to speak loudly and be aggressive while sharing thoughts and ideas while in
countries like japan people like to speak softly while expressing thoughts and ideas.
Different cultures have different tones of talking and thus this can sometimes can
affect the business communication as people can misunderstand the tone of
communication (Jenifer and Raman, 2015)
 Target audience
When a business is about to launch in a new market or in a different culture, it is
important to research the market as there are different level of conservatism, gender
views and ideologies can vary greatly between cultures in a workplace. Sometimes
not delivering the camping according to the norms of the target audience can affect
the believes of the target audience and affect the business and can become a hinder in
business communication.
 Politics and national pride:
Politics is something that influence both the present and the past and can also affect
the way a company does a business. Some companies have a very strong believe in n
government pride and nationalism and hence they try to purchase from the companies

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that usually have a government backing. Doing business with different cultures can
impact the way people negotiate
Barriers of Intercultural Communication
 Language barrier: it is one of the most important barriers; this is a source through
which people exchange values, thoughts and ideas. If there are people from different
cultures then language can be a major barrier of communication between the two
people (Kürti et al, 2012)
 Culture relativism: another one of the most notable barrier of intercultural
communication. The negligence of others cultures and values for self-values and
cultures is known as culture relativism. This is a kind of notion that shown the
superiority if a certain group over the other group. It simply means imposing a
person’s values and morals on other person without the person wanting it.
 Ethnocentrism: it is a kind of perception that people has for others culture and
values. When these kinds of people interact with the people from other culture they
refuse of listen the opinion of the person and they like to evaluate a situation from
their own view, Ethnocentrism is related to racism.

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Ways to overcome the barriers in a business environment
 To ensure polite and clear communication:
Polite and clear communication reduces the chance of conflicts and confrontation and
gives chance to the employers and the employees from different cultures to interact
more
- By using simple words
- By avoiding slang words and phrases
 By learning about different cultures:
In a workplace the employers and employees should talk about each other cultures
and express willingness to learn about the cultures of others this will help to maintain
the relationship in the workplace. Being patience and understanding the cultures of
others helps in knowing others better and reduces the chance of discrimination at
workplace (Speroff et at, 2010)
 By sharing knowledge:
Sharing knowledge about different cultures helps the people to understand the value
and believes of others cultures and this way people are able to respect the culture of
others. This thing benefits both the individuals, the employers and the employees and
that is the reason that knowledge sharing should be made an important part of the
office culture (Schein, 2010)

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 By promoting employ diversity training:
one of the best ways to overcome the cultural barrier is to ensure that the workplace
has a lot of people from different cultural backgrounds. Workplace diversity training
can help in good work cultured, encourage team work and leadership. This kind of
training helps in understanding the cultural differences and helps in understanding the
co-workers as well. Hence accommodation of cultural commodities and differences in
really important in order to overcome cultural barriers (Brink and Costigan, 2015)
Conclusion
Through this report it can be concluded that, there are a lot of barriers in intercultural barriers
such as language barriers, Culture relativism and Ethnocentrism. All of these things can
impact the a workplace as well in a lot of ways, although there are a lot of ways in which this
can be overcome in an organization, the ways in which an organization can overcome it are,
By learning about different cultures, To ensure polite and clear communication, By sharing
knowledge and by promoting employ diversity training. A organization should work towards
removing the cultural differences as it will help both the employers as well as the employees.

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REFERENCES
Anderson, R.J. and Anderson, L.E., (2010). PROFESSORIAL PRESENTATIONS: THE
LINK BETWEEN THE LECTURE AND STUDENT SUCCESS IN THE
WORKPLACE. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 14(1).
Brink, K.E. and Costigan, R.D., (2015). Oral communication skills: Are the priorities of the
workplace and AACSB-accredited business programs aligned?. Academy of Management
Learning & Education, 14(2), pp.205-221.
Jenifer, R.D. and Raman, G.P., (2015). Cross-cultural communication barriers in the
workplace. Internafional Journal of Management, 6(1), pp.348-351.
Kürti, L., Veszelka, S., Bocsik, A., Dung, N.T.K., Ózsvári, B., Puskás, L.G., Kittel, Á.,
Szabó-Révész, P. and Deli, M.A., (2012). The effect of sucrose esters on a culture model of
the nasal barrier. Toxicology in Vitro, 26(3), pp.445-454.
Schein, E.H., (2010). Organizational culture and leadership(Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.
Speroff, T., Nwosu, S., Greevy, R., Weinger, M.B., Talbot, T.R., Wall, R.J., Deshpande, J.K.,
France, D.J., Ely, E.W., Burgess, H. and Englebright, J., (2010). Organisational culture:
variation across hospitals and connection to patient safety climate. BMJ Quality &
Safety, 19(6), pp.592-596.

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