Briefly Outline the Key Cross-Cultural Communication Considerations

Briefly outline the key cross-cultural communication considerations that should be addressed in company policy on International Intra-Company Communications for Beagle Inc.

An international organization has to choose the right communication skill to avoid mistakes or misunderstandings between organizations which are based in different cultures. In this following case for example an Australian junior account manager who works for an international company in Australia noticed that communication via email is not always the fastest and the simplest way to send messages between organizations to different cultures. One key cross-cultural communication consideration that they have to keep in mind is that Australia, where Gans comes from, is a according to Hall a typical low-context culture . Therefore he has to take care about specific considerations in high-context cultures such as China and India. Factors such as harmony, the concept of “face”, status and respect are in such countries very important when it is about how to encode or decode a message.

In this case Gans wanted to get some information from a company in Canada. Therefore he contacted the senior manager who has an Indian background. But the senior manager interpreted the inquiry (message) in his point of view. He interprets this behaviour as really rude because Gans works in lower position than himself. This is on the one hand a problem because of the higher power-distance and on the other hand because of the higher-context than the Australian culture. For the Indian manager’s mind it is unusual that a person who is working in a lower position is asking him for information. Superiors and subordinates are different kinds of people. The organisation in the Indian culture has a hierarchical structure that means that only persons who are working at the same level have to communicate with each other. The logical result of this is that the senior manger has lost his “face” .

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