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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN THE
BUSINESS WORLD
Lecture 1
INTRODUCTION
Vermandere’s view on ‘intercultural communication is primarily based on his linguistic training. It is an interactive
(not unidirectional) and dynamic (not static) form of communication. Therefore, we will be speaking about
communities of practice instead of national cultures.
Quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
That is a general guiding that reality is more complex than we perceive it to be. We focus on certain things and
therefore ignore other aspects. After all, in daily life, we are dealing with real people with their own luggage,
background, aspirations that they take into this conversation. There are no national cultures, everyone has their
own luggage.
Intercultural interaction is a dynamic moment that is most often defined by the feeling you have “when you do
not know what to do next” while trying to interact with someone else. If you are wondering if you stepped on
somebody’s toes for instance, this can be considered as intercultural. The situation has nog stable or clear
reference points, the situation is murky and unclear. This has nothing to do with nationalities, but with distance
and difference. Why does it have nothing to do with nationalities? Example with orthodox and secular Jew. Both
are from Israel, but they did not have anything in common. It can also happen for instance between a granddad
and grandchild if the distance is too big.
Intercultural interaction is a dynamic move that tries to bridge a distance that is felt by a participant in the
communication or interaction. Bridge is a keyword here: it is having the attitude willing to solve the gap. There
needs to be a willingness to find common ground. There needs to be a willingness to minimize a certain distance.
What is the difference between intercultural and cross-cultural? This is the ‘inter’ prefix of intercultural
interaction. It is between two people having a conversation, it is interactive/dynamic. It presupposes contact
between at least two parties one of which feels a certain distance. Cross-cultural means that you research how
people in Japan, Belgium and Brazil greet each other: you never imply that these people meet each other. You
just study their behaviour, it is static or a comparative study.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is a prime example of cross-cultural research, because it involves a comparison
of different countries, of people who are within such a country and is statistically averaged which create a
‘national culture’. You do not presupposes that they interact. It is a very static approach to communication.
Vermandere does not recommend it, but it is popular among economist, since it has an index and a mathematical
component.
It is a bad example of intercultural interaction: it is not based on meetings between people from different
countries, but it is a study on values. There are issues attached to it: they are quite outdated (‘60s) and Hofstede
speaks about ‘national’ cultures. This is complex, since countries can be complex, for instance Belgium (three
different languages, parts and values). Furthermore there is also an incorrect use of methodology: there is no
reference to the questions and only to the position on the Index back translated to individuals (lumping).
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This course will try to understand how Hofstede’s framework really works. Furthermore, we will look at the
problems and opportunities of the framework. We will be able to use it correctly and avoid its pitfalls. We will
also be aware that speaker interaction works differently and to be aware of different strategies to overcome
these differences.
INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS
Intercultural awareness is being sensitive to intercultural aspects that arise during intercultural interaction or
communication. Being aware is a contributing factor to being able to cope with intercultural interactions and
communications. Knowing or seeing what could go wrong helps solving the bridge, the gap between cultures.
Example: picture of a woman covering her face. The feeling that it has is not necessarily unidimensional. It could
be expressing regret, but it could also mean that she is tired, that there is something on her face. There are
multiple explanations possible. How open are you to this ambiguity? Being aware means that you consider the
multiple explanations and that you allow them.
Cultural differences are the starting point and not the endpoint. You do not stop at a difference, but you bridge
the gap, the difference. Difference are most visible to people; when visiting another country, we see what they
do differently. E.g.: eating noodles with a fork or with chopsticks, using right or left hand. But what is their
meaning? There are differences, they do not have to be minimized, swept under the rug, denied or generalized.
However, focusing on differences has its drawbacks: it runs the risks of only focussing on one specific difference.
It ignores things that are similar, it only focusses on the differences.
Cultural differences are typical for an external or etic perspective. It allows for a cross-cultural comparison
between different peoples, cultures, communities. It is an etic perspective that objectively compares things. On
the other hand there are also a lot of similarities: people just don’t wear something, there is a something extra
to it (colour, patterns, layers, lots vs. few clothes) or people just don’t eat only with their fingers (they want an
extra layer between their fingers and their food), could have to do with hygiene and hotness of the food.
Typical for an emic perspective is trying to see the viewpoint from within: what are people really doing. Why use
a fork instead of chopsticks. Sometimes there is no specific reason, but sometimes there are reasons. It
presupposes seeing or being aware differences. You can be culturally aware if you see the similarities in these
differences: people all over the world are remarkably similar in many of their core values; love toward family,
protection of loved ones, cooperation with their own community, social dynamics done via language (gossip).
When dealing with people who share our background and social context, we are used to see things as we are –
and if we are mostly similar- this work generally quite well. With people from different backgrounds, countries,
social context, there is a greater risks of errors, hence there is a greater risk of negative feedback (people do not
react the way you think they would react) and hence there is a greater risk of conforming ‘negative’ stereotypes
about differences (oh, there is a difference, it does not work well), can lead to less interest in interaction because
they want to avoid ambiguity, negative responses… and therefore, if you do need to interact, there is a greater
risk of errors when interactions happen… There is a negative feedback loop: confirming negative stereotypes -
reducing interaction - increasing the risk of negative interpretations.
Cultural awareness means that you know how to avoid this negative feedback loop of only seeing differences.
Therefore you can avoid to never being able to bridge the gap. Culture, like language, is a tool for enhancing in-
group harmony and identity. Culture distinguishes between in-groups (our reference unit, who we are friends
with) and out-groups (with whom we share very little). These distinctions are moved along with culture. People
look favourably to people from their in-group, i.e. in-group favouritism.
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In-group:
o If they do something well, it is a characteristic of the group
o If they perform badly, we are able to detect external influences that made them perform badly: “it is
the environment that made them do it”.
o For example: uncle gets stopped for drunk-driving. “Oh yeah, he is going through a rough patch”, but
this only works for in-group people.
For the out-group it is the other way around:
o When they perform well: it is the environment that was favourable to them!
e.g.: Erasmus students performed well on an exam: “yeah but the exam was easy”.
o When they perform badly: it is a personal and group characteristic.
That is related to the social identity theory from Henri Tajfel. Stereotypes work differently between in-group
and out-group members and distinctions between in-group and out-group members generally always work out
negatively for out-group members.
Awareness n°1: You have to be aware of positive and negative stereotyping done on in-group and out-group
members. You can have flexible, open, dynamic group memberships. This enhances your cultural awareness. As
a consequence, people who insist on their own specific cultural identity is raising the stakes from intercultural
interaction, meaning that it is counterproductive. It implies that someone else needs to know everything about
what is going on in your culture. E.g.:
o E.g.: Volvo (Sweden) & Renault (France) wanted to make a strategic alliance. Did in on the 6 th of
September 1993, but ended on the 17th February 1994 (mere 6 months). The break in this alliance was
explained as that there was suspicion with the Swedes that the French did everything for power, they
fought because of power-seeking.
Awareness n°2: there is a tendency that focusing on differences can explain everything. That may be hiding
something else. It is easy to attribute to cultural differences if things go wrong, but that does not always explain
everything. There are a number of things that can go wrong, e.g. lumping (acting as if all people are always
behaving alike, as obligatory representatives of a ‘national’ culture; you deny internal differences) and binarism:
o Person X is late, Person X comes from Spain, “ah that is why! People from Spain are always late”. This
stereotype exclude other rational explanations (the bus was late, the tram stopped for 45 min. the train
was cancelled, there was a lot of traffic, personal reasons…).
Do not assume people behave because of your own preconceptions about their supposed behaviour. If you do
not know why they are late, just ask why. Try to know their point of view, that does not mean you have to agree
with it. Being culturally aware means that you are able to read the air: take into account the bigger picture,
different meanings, intentions and context. When we deal with people who share our background and social
background, we are used to see things as we are- this works quite well. With people who have different
backgrounds, there is a greater risk of errors. The likelihood of such errors only increases when we use
stereotypes without correcting them and when we take people for granted on the basis of their out-group
association. Think about Ceci n’est pas une pipe. Things are not always what they seem to be.
Example of potential negative interpretations:
o Surface behaviour is not the same as intended behaviour.
E.g.: colleague in South-Africa. First student comes in and immediately sits down on the chair,
afterwards the same happens with the second one, the third one. She does not have the time to let
them in, allow them in, to take a seat… She expected people to wait until they were invited to sit down.
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When talking to a South-African, it turned out that people immediately sat down, so that they did not
were above her as she was the one higher up in hierarchy. She used a self-reference criterium: she
expected things to go a certain way, because of her own way of thinking.
Surface behaviour is what we observe (by the students)
Intended behaviour is what is intended by the students.
Is the interpretation of the intended behaviour correct or not? It is a evaluation metric based on the
self-reference criterion: it is based on the ‘self’. You interpret events from your own usual reference
points (habits, culture). This can lead to attribution error: you attribute intentions to someone who
doesn’t have them.
Intercultural awareness is being able to adjust the self-reference criterion. Being aware that it is not the only way
of explaining things. You click the pause button to adjust the self-reference criterion.
Example of what could be going wrong: picture of 2011: Ambassador of Sweden in Iran and the president of Iran.
This picture caused an uproar. It was an example of bad intercultural communication. The ambassador of Sweden
showed the sole of his foot, which is impolite for certain countries in the Middle East. Was this action
intentionally?
Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the world. It can be explained through images:
o The iceberg
- Culture is a massive thing that is for the largest part hidden under the waterline, what we see (icons,
etiquette) is only a small part emerging from the water, most however, is invisible.
o The onion
- culture is layered, like an onion; you have to peel away different layers in order to get to the core
and the single layers don’t define the onion - it’s the layering itself
o Glasses
- “we don’t see things as they are - we see them as we are”: culture is framing, looking through
(coloured) lenses towards the world
o Fish tank
- the fish in its bowl takes its environment for granted and doesn’t have to think about what lies
outside (“Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough, what it hides, it hides most
effectively from its own participants” (Edward T. Hall)
If you look at different interpretations, there are two big potential lines of inquiry: you can look at culture in a
different way, therefore there are a lot of definitions. Hofstede looked at it as the software of the mind and said:
“culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another”.
This software of the mind can be seen in the next definition:
o Culture is an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of
any given society. Culture refers to the total way of life of a particular group of people. It includes
everything that a group of people thinks, says, does, and makes — its customs, language, material
artifacts, and shared system of attitudes and feelings. Culture is learned and transmitted from
generation to generation. (Robert Kohls)
- Very holistic approach
o Culture refers to whatever an identifiable group of people shares in order to meet its basic human needs
and maintain its sense of identity (Jean Claude Arteau)
o Culture is information capable of affection individual’s behaviour that they acquire from other members
of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission (Richerson & Boyd)
- Not necessarily human, they are biologists.
