Communication Problems
/Fragment from article “Corporate Culture and Corporate Behavior:
Cross-Culture Conflicts”/
The increase in international business and foreign investment has created a need for
executives with an understanding of communication processes in
multilingual environments. It is especially important for companies
where people of different nationalities work. The process of
communication consists in the transmission of ideas, information and
attitudes from one person to another through verbal and/or visual
symbols. The art of transmitting depends on nationality, language and
cultural and social peculiarities of the communicators.
Communication problems are a primary cause of contradiction in cross-cultural interaction. There
are two sources, which hinder effective communication:
- lack of language knowledge;
- different systems for coding messages;
The lack of language
knowledge is the first cause of communication gaps. Many people working
in multilingual environments do not have enough motivation to study foreign languages. And technological
progress, which gives the opportunity to understand foreign languages
without language knowledge, does not solve this problem but intensifies
it. The most modern
machine-translation tools show only word meanings and do not explain
their contextual nuances.
As Henry Ford puts it, "if
there is any secret to success, it lies in the ability to get the other
person’s point of view and see things from his angle." But the people of
one culture could not conceive and interpret the world as
representatives of another. Even if they know customs and traditions,
creeds and philosophy, they perceive reality within the confines of
their own language. World views change from one language to another, and
business behavior changes at the same time. Language knowledge gives the
opportunity to overcome communication barriers.
Consequently it is
necessary to study more languages, to know the subtleties, nuances and
cultural differences, which exist in foreign languages.
The next cause of communication problems is using different systems for
coding messages. Transmitting information goes
from sender to receiver, which must posses identical ways for coding /
decoding information. In literature many patterns are analyzed that
describe cross-cultural differences in communication, for example from
E. Holl or R. Luis. Communicators must understand the ways in which
information is gathered and processed by the partner; know the cultural
peculiarities the exchange of information.
Bobrow W., Zatsepina M. Corporate Culture and corporate
Behavior: Cross-Culture Conflicts. In The Present Humanitarian
Problems. Scientific works’ collection. Edition 1. Moscow –
Penza, 2003. 15 – 24.
