Globalization, Cultural Diversity and the Importance of Intercultural Communication
Intercultural communication is the process of sending and receiving messages between people whose cultural background leads them to interpret verbal and nonverbal signs differently. Communication is strongly affected by culture. Improving your ability to communicate effectively across cultures can be done by recognizing cultural differences and then overcoming your own ethnocentrism (the tendency to judge all other groups according to your own group's standards, behaviors, and customs. When making such comparisons, people too often decide that their group is superior). Our ability to communicate effectively across cultures is important today because of the contributing forces of two rapidly important factors in our working environment:Globalization and Cultural Diversity. - Market Globalization: is the increasing tendency of the world to act as one market. Technological advances in travel and telecommunications are the driving force behind market globalization. For instance, new communication technologies allow teams from all over the world to work on projects and share information without leaving their desks. At the same time, advanced technologies allow manufacturers to produce their goods in foreign locations that offer an abundant supply of low-cost labor.
- Multicultural Workforce: The U.S. workforce is partly composed of immigrants (new arrivals from Europe, Canada, Latin America, India, Africa, and Asia) and people from various ethnic backgrounds (such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans). Also, the European workforce has changed beyond all recognition since the expansion of the EU earlier this century, allowing people from behind the old ‘Iron Curtain' to have free access to the jobs market. Thousands of ‘Westerners' now occupy positions in the Middle and Far East. All these migrant workers bring their own language, culture and ways of doing things to the workplace. As a result, today's workforce is made up of more and more people who differ in race, gender, age, culture, family structure, religion, and educational background.
Such cultural diversity is a huge trend contributing to the importance of intercultural communication in the workplace. It affects how business messages are conceived, planned, sent, received, and interpreted in the workplace. To bring about the best performance in an organization to adapt to globalisation and cultural diveristy, it's important to be able to really look at a company's specific needs when it comes to intercultural communication and implement a very specific plan to developing the right communication skill set. To find out more about implementing a planned ‘Intercultural Communication in the Workplace' program, click here.