Interpersonal Communication at Your Workplace

Module 3 Overview

• Evaluate the role cross-cultural communication plays with respect to performance and functionality in international business.
• Analyze organizational communications by using the functional, meaning-centered, and emerging perspectives approaches.
• Identify barriers to establishing and maintaining positive values and ethical practices regarding diversity and suggest approaches to abrogate or overcome these barriers, from domestic and international perspectives.
• Analyze dyadic communication within an organization and evaluate the effects that power, diversity, and conflict have on interpersonal effectiveness (from both domestic and international/global perspectives).

Every organization has a set of values and ethics that forms the basis for its members' behaviors. These values and ethics may relate to equality, humanity, and power, and most organizations use them to define acceptable standards and behaviors for their members. Most organizations also hope to achieve excellence in their field while following their ethical code.

However, what is hoped for and what is achieved are not always the same. At times, leaders and employees may not be communicating well interpersonally. There might be differences in value and ethics resulting from the misinterpretation of the organization’s stated ethics policy with the individual cultural ethics in a diverse workplace. Also, there may be intrapersonal challenges, whereby a leader’s or follower’s personal beliefs, values, and ethics do not align with what the organization expects or perhaps what is expected in another country (think globally) when factoring in the international business component.

How are individual and organizational values reconciled in your organization? What are the possible barriers to communication in a diverse workforce? What are the possible communication barriers in an international/global workforce or business partner situation? Can you identify some strategies for overcoming these barriers and encouraging the acceptance of diversity? This module will explore and answer all of these questions.

In this module, you will briefly review the six value orientations that impact individual beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. You will also analyze ethical communication in organizations at both individual and corporate (domestic and international) levels. Finally, you will delineate the three barriers to diversity, explore the strategies for overcoming them, and discuss how accepting and learning about diversity is related to interpersonal effectiveness, both domestically and internationally.

This module’s lectures and the assigned textbook readings will cover individual and organizational values, ethical behavior, and the relationship between communication and diversity.