Discuss about the Understanding in Intercultural Communication.
Intercultural communication falls under a discipline, which analyzes communication between different culture and socio-ethnic group and in what way culture affects the communication (Asante 2013). This specific discipline of study is used to portray the great range of communication processes and associated problems that occurs naturally within an organization that could be made up of different socio-religious or socio-ethnic and educational groups (Bovée 2013).
The Yabbies R Us firm in Western Australia has initiated to process the Yabbies and sell it to the Perth Restaurant. The Admas family is handling all the responsibilities of this business. Due to rapid improvement of the communication technology, Admas family sells their product to different countries across the world.
The purpose of this report is to investigate how to conduct business negotiation with country like China as it is a multicultural country and diverse in nature. This report is assigned from Yabbies R Us firm and commissioned by Peter Admas, the director of Yabbies R Us. The general focus of this report will be on intercultural communication and the challenges it faces.
China is very diverse country in nature. Its territory is big as like United States. In ethnicity and language group China is very diverse. The Chinese government has recognized in total fifty-six ethnical group and among these groups many has their own languages (Dikötter 2015). The diversity has its influences on China’s physical geography, which ranges from the deserts to the rain forests and the plateaus to the low plains. Due to diversity in physical geography of China, the people living in this land shares different cultures. The land and its nature or geography defines the culture of the people (Tregear 2017). For an example, the people living near the sea have cultures developed from its geography, differ from other culture, and place like Tibetan Plateau. There is no official religion defined by the government, however, people practices Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism and Judaism in China.
The different ethnical group and their individual lifestyles and cultures include Han ethnicity, Manchus ethnicity, which has their own languages, lifestyle, dressing style, surnames, sports and other minor ethnical groups. The majority of the Islamic population lives in Northwestern China. The two major ethnical groups in this region is Uyghurs and Hui. The highest place in the world, the Tibetan plateau has two major ethnic groups such as Tibetans and Qiang, they practices their own religion called Bon (Eberhard 2013). However, in China proper the major practiced religion is Buddhism. Architectures arts, literature, even music and regular lives of the dwellers on the plateau in China proper are very closely related to Buddhism.
The most diversified place of China is Southwestern China. There are in total around 30 native ethnical groups in Guangxi Yunnan and Guizhou. Their languages, dressings and lifestyles, music and food differ from each other’s. Most of these ethnic groups have many branches with completely different characteristics (Mason 2014).
Apart from the different ethnical groups in china, the authentic Chinese food can be categorized based on how cooking can be done and what is there to eat. There are different styles of Chinese food with many subdivision of it.
However, china is diverse in terms of culture, religion, people, lifestyles, music, cooking style, sports, dressing style and administrative nature. Hong Kong and Macue follow different administrative style differ from mainland China. These two countries have different laws and administrative systems (Hua and Nathan 2016). For example, the Google, Twitter and other social media application are allowed in the regions where other parts do not have access to use it. The diversity in China allows this country to live its citizen as cooperative as possible. The country’s mission is to project the country as unified as well as diverse in nature.
The yabbie is the fresh water cray fish. The wheat farmers in Western Australia have converted their dam into large yabbie tanks. In this process, they develop a new and thrilling industry called yabbie production. The Admas family has taken the initiative to process the yabbies. They process it for the Perth restuarent. The yabbies are also used in domestic consumption. Later on the firm has exported it to Singapore.
Admas family collects the yabbies for the business from around six hundred farmers across the southeastern wheat belt of the country. The yabbies collected from the six large tanks are packed in polystyrene boxes with frozen gel and it could stay alive at least seven days. For the purpose of export, this yabbies are cooled and air freighted and shipped by truck. Due to development in communication technology, specifically internet and fax, it becomes very easier to take orders and sell it to any part of the world within thirty-six hours. The internet has been helping him a lot for making his business into an international level and sell yabbies to the new markets in each day. He has thought that the internet is one of the ways in which he can communicate with clients in anywhere in the world and create greater demand amongst gourmets and the health conscious people.
The Yabbies R Us wants to enlarge its business to many countries including China. The Chinese culture is very diverse in nature. The intercultural communication has helped them to communicate with people from different cultural groups and conducting business and achieve a successful outcome. The capacity to communicate and negotiate, and in the way to work effectively with people in diverse culture and from other cultures is very important to conduct international business.
In today’s world of globalization, effective intercultural or cross-cultural communication is the key point to be succeeded in business or conducting any organization (Neuliep 2012). Business leaders require understanding of the major challenges in communication across culture, for ensuring their businesses remain competitive in the global market and according to that, they need to overcome those challenges for managing business in different parts of the world.
One of the major challenges in intercultural communication is ambiguity in transferring massages. Other cultures have completely different ways of interpreting. Each culture embodies unique value system, context and communication style. Ambiguity happens in the communication when someone is unable to comprehend the context of his culture and of course the culture of the receive (Samovar et al., 2014). This type of ambiguity leads someone to develop a misunderstanding and incorrect perspective about the other culture.
Different culture shares different styles of communication. Business leaders and organizers need to develop an idea about the communication style of the other culture. They need to know the nuances of the other culture to achieve effective cross-cultural communication (Prato 2016).
In case of Yabbies R Us firm, the firm manager wants to grow its business in China, which is highly a diverse culture. It is said that China is the High Context culture on the basic of scale of communication. They have verities in culture. Peter Adams, the manager of the firm based in Australia needs to know the communication styles and context of the used words in an area where he wants to sell his product. He should be encouraging about the information he is getting from other cultural perspective in language styles and its interpreted meaning.
The attitudes towards the other culture must be flexible. When people communicate across culture, sometimes they project closed mindset and introvert behavior. This may leads to a misunderstanding for the new culture. Business leaders must adapt and learn about the cultural values of the others (Samovar et al., 2015). This kind of inflexible attitudes towards other culture, whether performed unconsciously or consciously, hampers the business communication and relationships.
Business leaders need to develop an understanding about the other country’s values of culture based on five dimensions of perspective in values proposed by Geert Hofstede. These include power distance, masculinity vs. femininity, individualism vs. collectivism, long term vs. short-term orientation and uncertainty avoidance (Ting-Toomey 2012). On the parameter of these dimensions of value perspectives, a manager can develop an understanding about the cultural context and he need to identify and give conscious effort to make a bridge.
The manager of the Yabbies R Us firm needs to be very flexible about the cultural context of China. He needs to identify the five dimensions of cultural perspective in the area of China where he wants his business to develop. He should not carry any kind of ethnocentrism about his own culture and think that the Chinese culture in anyway inferior to them. He should not judge any cultural values of Chinese in respect to his own cultural values and standards; rather he should be open and ready to develop an understanding about the Chinese culture according to their perspective and context.
Conclusion
By analyzing the intercultural communication and its challenges and solutions, it can be concluded that for successful business growth and spreading the business across the globe, the manager of the Yabbies R Us should aware of the problems and ready to overcome it. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for him to develop a business chain in China.
In the modern world of technology where internet and fax system is used vividly, the manager could communicate in English; otherwise, he should learn the Chinese language, which could be another hurdle for him. However, whatever language he would use in communication he should be aware of the cultural context and value system of China.
References
Asante, M.K., 2013. The global intercultural communication reader. Routledge.
Bovée, C.L. and Thill, J.V., 2013. Business communication essentials. Pearson Higher Ed.
Dikötter, F., 2015. The discourse of race in modern China. Oxford University Press.
Eberhard, W., 2013. A history of China. Routledge.
Hua, S. and Nathan, A.J., 2016. Chinese Political Culture. Routledge.
Mason, M., 2014. Comparing cultures. In Comparative education research (pp. 221-257). Springer International Publishing.
Neuliep, J.W., 2012. The relationship among intercultural communication apprehension, ethnocentrism, uncertainty reduction, and communication satisfaction during initial intercultural interaction: An extension of anxiety and uncertainty management (AUM) theory. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 41(1), pp.1-16.
Prato, G.B. ed., 2016. Beyond multiculturalism: views from anthropology. Routledge.
Samovar, L.A., Porter, R.E., McDaniel, E.R. and Roy, C.S., 2014. Intercultural communication: A reader. Cengage Learning.
Samovar, L.A., Porter, R.E., McDaniel, E.R. and Roy, C.S., 2015. Communication between cultures. Nelson Education.
Ting-Toomey, S., 2012. Communicating across cultures. Guilford Press.
Tregear, T.R., 2017. A geography of China. Routledge.
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