Understanding The Culture Of A Country Is Essential To Doing Good Business There

In an age in which we interact with people all over the world, often without ever leaving our own homes, be that in a personal or business capacity, it is important to understand the cultural context of this engagement. In fact it is fundamental. Steemit provides an excellent example of how people are brought together in one digital setting to interact in a personal, social and business environment.

There are various perspectives within the realm of communication theory which attempt to explain the communicative meaning of the interaction between humans. However, what can be said with greater objective certainty is that the communication of messages are a fundamental feature of communication theory. The definition of communication can be understood as communication being the relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response.

Placing communication in an international business context requires different considerations. The importance of anticipating and getting to know cultural differences is fundamental to the way in which business professionals adapt their communication approach within the international business arena.

If a business wishes to be truly successful in the global marketplace then it must be capable of conducting business in diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. So, one approach may prove effective in France but could be disastrous in China. It is very important when communicating in the international business arena to make sure that people do not just simply reach negative conclusions regarding other colleagues’ motives as this can be easily done. There will clearly be times when international colleagues are being deliberately unhelpful or arrogant but it may also be the case that it is simply a matter of differing communication styles. What may seem impolite or ignorant on the surface may simply be the result of an innocent clash of social culture.

One good example of the very different approaches to cross-cultural communication is provided by business educators and authors Penny Carte and Chris Fox who, both of whom work for Canning Research and Development, have highlighted the case of the merger of two European and one American engineering firms. The company invested a lot of time, energies and money into establishing their mission statement. A seminar was held so as to bring middle management together in a bid to understand how they were implementing the new core values to their local employees.

What was revealing was how the Americans had taken the mission statement very seriously communicating and exploring the values with their employees, while the Europeans had treated the dissemination of the mission statement in a much more casual manner. It seemed almost shocking to the Europeans that the Americans could take the statement so seriously, and likewise to the Americans it was surprising that the Europeans had dismissed it so easily. It is almost certain that cultural conditioning was also playing a major part here.