Awareness of Other Culture, Research Paper Example

The world has always been diverse and will remain the same despite the well-recognized tendency of globalization and overall integration. Managers who deal with foreign partners are specially trained to obtain intercultural knowledge and awareness of all implications that can spoil relations irreversibly or can strengthen the sense of unity and enhance cooperation on all levels. For this reason understanding all indicators of intercultural communication and their effect on the communication itself is essential to build up a strong framework of cooperation and unity that will benefit business affairs.

The first issue to be discussed is the scope of such indicators as directness or indirectness, individualism or collectivism, different power distance realizations that can be evident in the intercultural communication processes. Taking the USA and Japan as examples for comparison, one can note the following cultural traits of both countries:

• As for the social unit recognized in both countries, the USA are characterized by individual and Japan – by group one;
• Basis for authority in the USA is competence and in Japan – seniority;
• Decision-making is individual in the USA and collective (consensus) in Japan;
• Personal relations are essential for the Japanese and beneficial for Americans etc. (Adler and Elmhorst 47).

To understand the outer revelations of intercultural communication, it is appropriate to imagine a case with American-Japanese negotiations. One can easily suppose that Americans will speak more due to their directness, their style of negotiating will be much more forceful than that of the Japanese, and they are likely to entrust the negotiations to one person (individualist approach). The Japanese, in contrast, usually come to the negotiations in groups without any clearly revealed leader (even if there is one, he will never make the decision alone, without a private discussion with the rest of the group). It will be hard for Americans to find the result out because of the Japanese indirectness, so they will take time to make their final decision.

Though cultural egocentrism may rarely apply to American-Japanese relations, it is one more commonly met factor that ruins many business relations and creates much misunderstanding. Mary Bosrock made a list of ten most widely spread mistakes made by participants of intercultural communication because of egocentrism. They include: making assumptions; neglecting to develop relationships; comparing the native place with the place one is visiting; talking about money; misinterpreting body language etc. (Bosrock).

Works Cited

Adler, Ronald, and Elmhorst, Jeanne Marquardt. Communicating at Work: Principles and Practices for Business and the Professions. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2006.

Bosrock, Mary Murray. International Faux Pas. International Education Systems. 11 March 2010. <http://www.marybosrock.com/faux_pas.html>