Formal report assignment About cultureal negotiation

Unit 9

Overview of Issues in Cross-Cultural Communication

Brief Introduction to Assignment #3: A Formal Report

Objectives:

Through this Unit’s discussion and readings, you should be familiar with the following topics:

• The concept of ‘cultural difference’ and its significance for communication • The importance of recognizing cultural variations • Cultural context as part of the rhetorical context of any message • Mapping ‘difference’ in cultural context: six key categories • Defining ‘cultures’ as high- or low-context • The importance of a clear sense of ‘purpose’ in Assignment #4

Read: Locker/Findlay, Chapters 5, 10, and 11; and Assignment 3 Case: “Cross-Cultural Negotiation: Americans Negotiating a Contract in China” (purchase direct from The Case Centre: see link on Assignment Prompts page)

Assignment #3 (Formal Report, research based. Approximately 1250 words excluding front and back matter/40%) due end of term – last day of classes or as directed by your instructor. See Course Outline ‘Schedule’.

Assignment 2 due 11:55 p.m. Sunday Week 9

Overview of Unit 9

In this unit we will first take an overview of some of the major communication issues raised by the phenomenon of ‘globalization,’ which has inevitably resulted in the need for increased communication across cultural and linguistic boundaries, both between and – increasingly – within countries and even organizations. This overview will be followed by a brief introduction to Assignment #3.

Issues in Cross-Cultural Communication

The following discussion is intended simply to highlight some of the major issues, and concepts which have arisen from the study of those issues, which have surfaced consequent upon the ever-increasing need for professionals in various capacities to ‘communicate’ across both cultural and linguistic boundaries. Even a cursory reading of Chapter 5 in our text will convey the basics of the most important ideas. It is indeed rather self-evident that even within, say, Canada messages can be misconstrued if a writer does not take care to try to draft giving due

regard to cultural and other sensitivities. Patterns and trends in immigration, together with the phenomenon of ‘globalization’ bring individuals from different cultural contexts together.

The question for us, of course, is this: what kinds of things do we each of us need to keep in mind when communicating with others? Such things as stereotyping, racist or sexist reference, and so forth are rather self-explanatory. Though we often find it rather difficult to avoid these kinds of things in practice, even if we understand them in theory, we are nevertheless most of us anxious not to give offence, and will do our best to avoid doing so even unintentionally. The rather more abstract, but still very real and – ultimately – practical concern is with ‘miscommunication’ arising from what we might call ‘cultural difference,’ and it’s this topic I’d like to concentrate on in this discussion. As will become clear, we are really here simply continuing and expanding our discussion of ‘audience analysis’: our assumption is that if we don’t understand our audience, the effectiveness of our message will be proportionately impaired.

Here’s a very simple but ‘classic’ example – one often used still today in business schools even though it is now generally said to be apocryphal! – of how a simple oversight could have unintended results. In the 1960s, GM (General Motors) designed and began producing a car intended for international distribution. One of the major target markets was Mexico/Central/South America. GM’s marketing arm named the new vehicle ‘Nova’. In English, the name is intended of course to refer to ‘a star that flares up and becomes visible in the heavens’ – you get the idea! That’s all very well, but GM began marketing the car under this name in that southern, predominately Spanish-speaking market. The problem was that in Spanish the word ‘nova’ can easily be misheard/read as meaning, literally, ‘not go’! Not a very effective, or appealing, name for a vehicle intended to be reliable, affordable, etc. As a result, the car and its name became something of a joke in that market, rather than a wild sales success.

Our text gives some other examples of this kind of thing, but the point is pretty easy to see. A little thought, perhaps a little research, would have allowed GM to avoid this problem altogether, and at least allowed the car to succeed or fail on its own merits without its name getting in the way. This simple example does, however, illustrate effectively one main principle: when you communicate with someone from another culture, you will ordinarily encode your message using the assumptions of your own culture. That is fine, but when members of your audience decode your message they will do so of course using the assumptions of their cultural context, and to the extent that given signs and/or symbols carry different meanings (both denotative and connotative) in their context, your intended meaning may well be misunderstood: the greater the difference, the greater the potential for misunderstanding.

One way of thinking about all this is to adopt a variation on the ‘golden rule’: we might consciously try to treat others in general the way they want to be treated – that’s certainly the expectation that we, most of us, have for ourselves! That of course raises the question: how do we recognize and learn how individuals from a ‘different’ cultural context wish to be treated?

While it’s rather self-evident that we would have to do this on a case-by-case basis, and as well avoid the trap of falling into a kind of ‘reverse-stereotyping’ by over-analyzing, over-classifying ‘difference’, nevertheless differences there are, and attempts have been made to come up with various schemes of classification and characterization which might help us avoid certain assumptions which lead to miscommunication. Our text gives you an overview of some of the more common concepts used in this kind of analysis. One very common ‘map of cultural difference’ breaks difference (somewhat artificially, but nevertheless usefully) into the following six categories:

§ Contextual § Ethical/legal § Social § Nonverbal § Age § Gender

A common theme running throughout this course is that every act of communication (every message we send or attempt to send and every message we receive, decode, and respond to) occurs within a rhetorical context conditioned by many factors. One of those factors is cultural context, by which we mean to refer to the infinitely complex patterns of physical cues, environmental influences, implicit and explicit rules and so forth which condition acts of communication between two or more members of the same culture. The extent of the role that context in this sense plays, however, does appear to vary between cultures; some are high- context, while others are low-context (Locker/Findlay, Figure 5.2 page 116). The explanation of this conceptual distinction (and cautions about it!) in our text is clear enough, though we might want to notice here for a moment what some conceive to be the origins of this ‘difference’.

One way of thinking about this is to try to imagine that all cultures are, in origin, ‘high context’. Especially in Western Europe and areas heavily influenced for various reasons by Western European norms and assumptions (e.g. North America), however, mass literacy (the ability to read/write) and the consequent rise of mass education resulted fairly early in what we might call a privileging of writing (over speech, and over non-verbal forms of communication). This combined with what we might (again, very crudely but usefully) call the ‘scientific paradigm’ has resulted in a cultural context in which information transfer is the primary purpose of communication, and the assumption that the transfer of information is best accomplished in writing, and as directly and with as little reliance on extra-verbal context as possible. Consequently, in low-context cultures both the spoken word and other, non-verbal forms of communication are considered (by most of ‘us’, whether we realize it or not!) incomplete at best, inadequate at worst. Hence the injunction to “put that in writing”, for example! Members of ‘low-context’ cultures often in fact distrust information or commitments conveyed in any other than written form. The converse is often true in ‘high-context’ cultures, where for example the insistence that a promise be reduced to a written form – a document – before it is considered

meaningful (let alone ‘binding’) could and often is taken as an insult to the character (the trustworthiness) of the promisor. This in turn is part of the primacy often given to ‘relationship’ in high-context cultures. Thinking of Assignment #4, this is precisely one of the problems: in high-context cultures, important information is often by preference communicated ‘informally’ and indirectly, and not necessarily in writing at all.

As should be clear from the above, we can then see how cultural context influences ethical and legal behavior. Going back to our ‘promise’ example for a moment, we clearly have an instance where cultural context conditions what is conceived of as ‘ethical’ behavior. Making this example more specific, we might note that in the law of contract ‘difference’ makes itself felt as well. Let’s start with, say, the law of contract as it currently exists in the U.K., Canada, or the U.S. Effectively, most of us do not consider a contract ‘binding’ (i.e. that it even exists) unless and until it is reduced to written form. This goes much further, however. In Canadian contract law, once a contract exists in written form its terms, and the interpretation of those terms, are conditioned (save in very exceptional circumstances) entirely by ‘the words on the page’. In other words, it is very difficult to go to court and say “but I didn’t mean to agree to X” if, on its ‘face’, the document’s natural reading is that you did agree to X! You can’t go before the court and say “but we talked about this, don’t you remember?” and so forth. In a very real sense, the contract is the written document. In Japan, however, the situation is entirely different. In Japanese law, a written contract is merely evidence for the terms of the ‘real’ contract, which is the spoken, mutual agreement between two or more parties, often expressed indirectly and arrived at within and as part of an on-going relationship.

These kinds of differences extend more generally to what is considered ‘ethical’ behavior. One of the most commonly-cited examples is, of course, what those from low-context cultures would refer to as ‘bribery’ or ‘kickbacks.’ In the U.S. or Canada (never mind actual practice!!), ‘we’ tend to condemn the notion that public officials can and should be given some sort of ‘under the table’ payment for their services, or that businesses should receive an unofficial profit for facilitating a sale. Further, ‘we’ are appalled if and when we find it necessary to accept, or participate in, these practices in other cultures. However, in Mexico for example una mordida (‘a small bite’) is expected in return for a permit, a licence, etc. In mainland China businesses frequently expect to pay huilu to local officials.

Extending our ‘map’ a little further to ‘social difference’ in a more general sense can also help (all of) us to keep in mind the need to be aware of cultural difference to facilitate effective communication. Social behavior is rule-driven; the rules governing what is or is not socially acceptable behavior vary across cultural boundaries. In particular, concepts of roles and status, of ‘manners’, and of time can vary – sometimes quite dramatically. For example, in the U.S. and Canada it is not considered rude or impolite to ask someone, when first meeting them, what they do and/or who they work for, and so on. This can extend even to openly asking about income. In England, conversely, this kind of questioning was – and still is by many – considered extremely rude. Or take the business of ‘time’. In low-context cultures time is conceived of as a

commodity, as it were, something to be used and not wasted. This results in the typical North American and Western European emphasis on ‘planning’ and ‘scheduling’ and all the devices that go with that emphasis. The business day is ‘mapped out’ chronologically. Conversely again, in high-context cultures relationships are often given priority over time- and task- management; meeting deadlines matters not so much as ensuring that a relationship is maintained.

We could continue this discussion almost without end, given the actual complexities of other culturally-conditioned matters such as the meaning of non-verbal communication (gestures, etc .), of age, and of gender. Books can be, and many have been and are being written on these subjects. The notes for Chapter 5 of our text (pages EN6 – EN8) provide you with an extensive initial bibliography should you wish to do some further reading on this subject; you will almost certainly want to make use of these references as a starting point in Assignment 3.

Assignment #3: a very short introduction

To end this Unit’s notes, I want to briefly introduce Assignment #3. You will by now have had an opportunity to read over the Assignment itself, and will have perhaps also looked at the case. Here, I’d like to stress a few considerations.

First, keep in mind that this is a ‘formal report’ exercise. You are expected to follow the expectations and conventions for ‘formal reports’ as traditionally conceived. The lecture notes for Unit 10 and relevant sections of Locker/Findlay will in effect be a guide to the writing of the various sections of your report.

Second, it is absolutely crucial that you be clear as to your purpose in writing, and to whom. Your primary audience is not Jones, it is Pyle. Similarly, you are not writing a report addressing the question ‘should MVC proceed with its proposed venture’ in a general sense. You are not concerned, for example, with questions about the economic feasibility of the expansion. Read the Assignment carefully: your subject is ‘issues in cross-cultural communication’. That is what your research should focus on, and the specific issues (the ones you choose to deal with) are what your conclusions and recommendations will be concerned with. You will want to read the case carefully, isolate and define two or three of the major ‘cultural differences’ which have impacted the course of negotiations to the point at which you are writing, research those, and write your report.