crossculturalmgt.com » Cross Cultural Awareness

What is culture?

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:06:25 +0000

In ancient times people had started living in groups at different localities. This was actually for the sake of security to their life and property. Each group had got its own ideas, beliefs, thoughts, interaction, spirituality and way of communication. Each group was confined to their peculiar life style separately. They had no desire to enter into other group’s territory or interfere in their life style. The different types of lifestyle of various groups of people living in separate localities are termed as their culture.
In other words it is the life style adopted by a group of people living in a locality. The boundaries of the locality, its geographical nature and the climatic conditions prevailing there have got considerable influence on the life style of the group of people living there. The specialties seen in the geographical and climatic conditions have a key role in shaping their appearance and nature. This is how the people living in the mountain areas differ from those living in the valleys of the rivers. The group of people living in a locality is later termed as society.
The communication media used by these groups of people are termed as language. Each group has got its own language which differs from the others. Language has the significant quality in shaping up the culture of a group. It is through this language that a society transfer their ideas and beliefs about their culture to the next generation. The members of a society share ideas, principles and beliefs of their culture by their separate languages and transfer the same to their descendents. Thus the language enables the cultural heritage to pass through generations very freely.
The culture has got a very high dignity because it gives the identity to a particular society. Since the people of a society share the ideas, principles, customs and beliefs of their culture together, then there won’t be any difficulties or differences between them to unite for a common cause. This quality of the culture brings the society to impose a social control on their people. Thus there happens to be an infinite linkage between the people of a society.
Judgment on the culture of a society is really a task unless one gets a thorough awareness about the principles, customs, beliefs and language of the people belongs to that particular society. On viewing one person’s nature, behavior and attitudes it is not so easy to judge the features of the society he belongs.
In the later years people of a society started looking into the culture of other societies and prefer to adopt certain principles, customs and beliefs from them which are beneficial and easily digestible to their people. Then this habit happened to be a practice through the coming younger generations. Thus the current generation dared to show the tendency to form a combination of various cultures prevailing around them.
So we can conclude the definition of the culture as the life style of a group of people living in a particular area having similar ideas, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, spirituality and communication with resemblances. The nature of the culture may vary as it passes through the hands of the younger generations. But the definition of the culture will be stationary through out.

The crate for a cultured lifestyle

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:05:13 +0000

Communication abilities, job opportunities, social benefits and job stability can be improved with intercultural skills. Intercultural awareness is an inspiring form to the way of life and frame of mind, not a compulsion or a single timed training.

Job opportunities.
In today’s world, at every workplace it is highly essential to be able to communicate with people of diverse cultures and background. Such a person is guaranteed with a brilliant future and a more inspiring life path.

To have an international establishment in today’s world proper understanding of other cultures is highly essential. Once we realize about other cultures it will be too easy for us to work with and communicate with the people of other backgrounds. The chances for loading a business in international level is too hard without intercultural competence. There is no need to mention anymore about the globalization of a country and within it a diverse cultures have been adapted. The cultural competence is at a higher rate at present in US.

Understanding of computers was an exceedingly profitable talent as computer technologies and business became extremely inter-reliant in the past decade. But in the present century the essential factor for jobs is not how to work on computers, instead it is how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

Job stability
You will be able to land a job without cultural competence for a small period of time in future even though keeping it is an additional episode.

People who are more aware about other cultures are adroit and able to work in large firm in today’s world. Differences can be turned out into opportunities and success in situations where others find failure can be determined only by the people who know intercultural differences. They can solve problems creatively, communicate efficiently and have an open mind. Thus a job can be well finished.

Social benefits.
People who are aware about intercultural lifestyle are much interesting to deal with. They fit into place in compelling discussions in a wider diversity of surroundings, take benefit of opportunities that others reticent away from, and imagine with an audacious and open state of mind that augments their lives and life incidents. They have much interesting thing to be said and expressed.

Ongoing rewards
Intercultural awareness enriches your mindset and lifestyle. It will also add colors to your life, opens doors of opportunity, and leads to extensive, dynamic growth.

Cross cultural understanding

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:04:00 +0000

The global economic variations and the high desire to invade the front line of the business world, the multinational companies have started to diversify their working media to other countries. As a part of this, people of various countries have started to migrate to other areas of the world to meet their business requirements. This has forced them to associate and cooperate with the people of the respective areas, having different cultures and languages. This was not so easy because, the lack of perfect awareness about their culture and language may develop a lot of misunderstandings and defaults during their communication and association. This found to be as an obstacle as far as the business world is concerned. So the experts in the business media started thinking about this difficulty and suggested the need of specialized men in intercultural association and communication. Thus a brief study and research about this special field has started, which brought the knowledge on ‘Cross cultural understanding’.
Cross cultural understanding enables man to recognize, interpret and behave properly with the other people of different religion, culture and language, and there by encourages them in tackling the negative situations and incidents which may arise especially in the business field. The fundamental intention of this cross cultural understanding is to train the people to attain appropriate skills in dealing the same.
If the cross cultural training has done once, then the people become more perfect in dealing the cultural differences safely and understand gradually the acute appreciation of the same. This can be maintained properly by attaining considerable experience from the work place. The different types of appreciation on cross cultural understands are cross cultural knowledge, cross cultural awareness, cross cultural sensitivity and cross cultural competence. The meanings of all these words are more or less similar, but on screening them perfectly with respect to cross cultural understanding the differences hiding between them can be taken out.
The cross cultural knowledge is the very important basic thing of cross cultural understanding. Without this the appreciation on the cross cultural understanding cannot be attained perfectly in any way, because this brings the surface level familiarization with characteristics, values, beliefs, and behaviors of the different cultures and languages.
The cross cultural awareness emerges from the cross cultural knowledge itself. This awareness may bring some considerable changes in the behaviors and attitude of the people while associating with the people of different culture and language.
The cross cultural sensitivity is the natural derivative of cross cultural awareness. This can be considered as the ability to assess a situation, context and behavior involved with different types of cultures and the ability to react to them timely and appropriately for a positive out come. This can be attained by a thorough practice on both cross cultural knowledge and awareness.
The cross cultural competency is the final stage of cross cultural understanding and this designates the ability to deal across various cultures. This is considered as the digestion, integration and transformation of all the techniques used to deal the matter and the information collected through them.
All the above knowledge on cross cultural understanding is proved to be very effective and can be applied to tackle the situation of cultural difference successfully.

Cross cultural awareness

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:02:04 +0000

‘BIG BROTHER’ IN ARABIA
Cross cultural experts concentrate on the application of cross cultural communication in all business related activities. The television show ‘Big Brother’, launched recently shows the neglect of cultural sensitivity. Arab TV channel MBC decided to show their version of the movie in Bahrain. They had to cancel the show after strong protest from the public. The Channel failed to recognize the cross cultural implications. However the failure gave rise to take care of the importance of cross cultural understanding in transferring of concepts across cultures.
Working with diverse cultures is a matter of skill. Cultural education is necessary. What is Culture? Culture describes origins and values of a set of people. Everyone has a culture.
Cultural competency is necessary for managing cross-cultural activities between groups of different cultures. Competency helps in developing effective communications. Cultural competency helps each culture to contribute its values and behaviors to the benefit of society. Cultural literacy throws light on individual culture. You can determine how one culture an affect the other. Diversity entail changing the way things are done to know differences in groups. It must be understood that communication and trust can over ride actions. Achieving cultural literacy and cultural competency will take some time to establish.
Cultural differences: Children are made to understand that Culture is their social heritage. Study of cultural differences helps individuals communicate effectively.
Cultural norms are strongly embedded in the daily life of individuals. Usually, our own culture is invisible until it comes into contact with another culture. Following patterns of cultural norms affect the relations between cultures:
Communication styles: Communicating between cultures must focus on proper use of language. The aim should be to effectively convey matters in simple language. One of the most effective communication tools is ‘pictures’. The statement “a picture is worth a thousand words.” is indeed true.
Attitudes toward conflict: For some, conflict is acceptable and for some others it is something to be avoided. In the United States, conflict is not acceptable. An open discussion is the normal way to solve the problems. In many Eastern countries, conflict is considered embarrassing.
Approaches to completing tasks: From culture to culture, people have different ways of completing tasks based on their different access to resources.
Decision-making styles: The roles, individuals play in decision making vary. In USA the decision is delegated. But in many Western countries, decision-making is left entirely to the individual. .
Attitudes toward personal disclosure: In some cultures people do not like to disclose their personal information. But for some others it is welcome.
Approaches to knowing: Some might want to conduct research to understand a problem and get a solution. Others might prefer to visit places and learn from people who have experienced same problems.
Cultural expertise takes time. Cultural literacy and competency skills will enable to deal with any circumstance of cultural difference. Religion, tribal cultures and nationalism cause cultural differences. Cultural education is a growing concern among major businesses across the globe, though plenty of study materials are available.

Results of poor cross cultural awareness in business

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:55:01 +0000

The instability of the global economy persuaded the multinational organizations to diversify their business allover the world, which developed a lot of job opportunities internationally. This fascinated the people world wide to migrate to other countries for the purposes of job and thereby to survive from the economic instability. At the same time the unstable economy produced tremendous pressure over the multinational firms and they adopted the method of mergers and acquisitions to withstand the adverse condition prevailing all over the world.
The innovation of the global business by the process of internationalization, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures forced them to face new challenges in their internal communication media. Thus the business field faced a lot of difficulties such as cultural differences and misunderstandings which prevailed due to the merging and acquisition of the multinational business organizations. The poor understanding and working relation caused too many consequences among the business organizations. The outcome of this was lack of cooperation and poor productivity. The only alternative to sort out this difficulty was to attain the intercultural competency.
The experts in this field suggested conducting a comprehensive training program about the cross cultural awareness. But most of the multinational companies were reluctant to invest for the sake of the cross cultural training and language tuition for their staff. But this expense will be so negligible while comparing to the loss which may be created due to the lack of the cross cultural awareness in the field of business.
The lack of the intercultural awareness prevents the staff of the organization from communicating properly. Due to the unawareness of the language and culture they withheld their communication and the movement of the information. Sometimes, these peculiar circumstances will persuade the staff of the executive cadre to be selective to some extent. This forces the members of the staff to be isolated and confined. If this state is prevailing for some more time, then the staff will loose their self confidence which eventually lead to loose respect, trust and interest among the staff. Thus the deficiency of communication develops an unhealthy atmosphere in the organization.
The language has a very significant role in the cross cultural communication of an organization. Mere knowledge about the language will not be sufficient to sort out the differences and misunderstandings in a cross cultural communication. The tone, emotion and the style of using the languages are very important in the process of cross cultural communication. Lack of experience in expressing the language style properly reduces the self confidence among the staff and develops a poor interpersonal relationship. To overcome this difficulty the company can choose only one language which is so convenient to use as their medium of communication among the staff.
The multinational companies which suffer due to the cross cultural differences and misunderstandings can rely on cross cultural consultants who can help the multicultural organizations to a greater extent in the international business field.
Nowadays the poor cultural awareness is not a nightmare to the multinational business organizations. If they are ready to invest money to introduce cross cultural consultants and cross cultural training among their staff, then the difficulties of the cross cultural awareness in the business media can be sorted out.