Preferred Leadership Communication Styles Across Cultures

This thesis reports the results of a two-part study investigating preferred leadership communication styles across multiple cultural clusters. Utilizing a survey, part one identified the three most preferred leader communication styles (i.e., dominant, dramatic, contentious, attentive, animated, open, friendly, relaxed, impression leaving) in six cultural clusters. Using focus group data, the second part provides insight into subordinates’ perceptions of how these communication styles are enacted by leaders in each cluster. Guidelines on how to better communicate are offered to expatriates in hopes of helping them more successfully complete overseas tasks. Such guidelines are needed due to the high percentage of failed overseas missions which cost corporations millions of dollars each year

A naturalistic explanation of communication across cultures

In order to understand how communication works across cultures, it is no longer possible to “naturalize” meaning presupposing that the human mind behaves like a “black box”, where intelligence is completely determinate by external linguistic-conceptual schemes every language, or more broadly, every culture owns. The very idea of the existence of radically divergent conceptual schemes entails the absence of a relation of equivalence among sentences in different languages. If there is a difference between conceptual schemes, it could concern the cultural access we have to the world, but, at any rate, we need to share this world and some cognitive capacities. The human mind owns its own structures that cannot be ignored in order to explain the fact that language depends on the creativity of a rich and articulated mind. Consequently, communication can be considered an inferential practice that involves the specific human capacity of mind-reading, a natural ability of intuitively attributing mental states to others and to oneself. In intercultural communication, translation is nothing but a kind of metarepresentation based on an interpretive and context-dependent use of language

Communication Across Cultures: From Cultural Awareness to Reconciliation of the Dilemmas

In this globalising world there is a growing need for understanding different types and forms of interaction between people in intercultural environments, i.e. working places, cities, etc. This implies that people refer more and more to various communication models and practices to fully master communication across cultures. These models ultimately lead to applying best practices in intercultural communication. One of the most popular models in the one developed by Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner. In this paper we first review the concept of culture related to this model. Second, we present the 7 dimensions of the model. Finally, we review the reconciliation theory as presented by Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars.Intercultural communication, Reconciliation model, Dilemmas, Intercultural context

Comparative Advertising in the Global Marketplace: The Effects of Cultural Orientation on Communication

This research examined the efficacy of one type of communication strategy, comparative advertising, in communicating product superiority to consumers across different cultures. In individualist cultures such as the United States, comparative advertising that highlights the superiority of the target brand is seen as more effective. However, in collectivist cultures such as Thailand, comparative advertising that highlights the similarity between brands is more likely to be effective. In addition, comparative advertising was more believable for unfamiliar brands in individualist cultures whereas comparison for familiar brands was more believable in collectivist cultures.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39712/3/wp328.pd

Address Form in Tiong Pa Creole:An Intercultural Communication Between Chinese and Minangkabau Language

Tiong Pa is an abbreviation of  Chinese people in Padang (read the book of Tiong Pa Ethnic in Padang: A Sociolinguistics Perspective written by Aditiawarman, 2005). The  language is constructed by elements of the Chinese, Minangkabau, and Indonesian language.The phenomenon of the language formation is caused by communication across cultures engage in continuous communication within long time interaction. One of the communication impact across cultures can be seen among the language community. Communication across cultures influence the language elements such as the address used by Tiong Pa ethnic in Padang

Perceptions and Use of Anonymous Communication across Cultures

We use social networks to communicate, keep in touch and express our opinions in a manner that has become completely ubiquitous. However, this very ubiquity and ease of expression have exposed another, contentious side – one where nobody can remain completely anonymous for long and where every conversation is stored in perpetuity. Some fear that the ephemeral quality of a social interaction has been lost, which threatens our right to be forgotten and freedom of expression. In this paper, we look at why people engage in anonymous communication, and if there is a perceived need for legal protection of anonymous communication. Moreover, this paper attempts to identify cultural stratifications, if any, in the ways in which people of various cultures perceive the importance of anonymous communications. The primary cultural clusters we studied are Anglo (e.g. Australia, Canada, England, USA) and Eastern European (e.g. Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Russia). Our data set consists of 374 responses to our survey from people belonging to these cultures. We found that perceived freedom afforded by anonymous communication and propensity to trust are both positively related to use of anonymous communication, which in turn is positively related to perceived need for legal protection of anonymous communication. Moreover, we found that the relationship between propensity to trust and use of anonymous communication is stronger for respondents in the Eastern Europe cultural cluster than for respondents in non-Eastern Europe cultural clusters

Comparative Advertising in the Global Marketplace: The Effects of Cultural Orientation on Communication

This research examined the efficacy of one type of communication strategy, comparative advertising, in communicating product superiority to consumers across different cultures. In individualist cultures such as the United States, comparative advertising that highlights the superiority of the target brand is seen as more effective. However, in collectivist cultures such as Thailand, comparative advertising that highlights the similarity between brands is more likely to be effective. In addition, comparative advertising was more believable for unfamiliar brands in individualist cultures whereas comparison for familiar brands was more believable in collectivist cultures.

Four not six: revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion

As a highly social species, humans generate complex facial expressions to communicate a diverse range of emotions. Since Darwin’s work, identifying amongst these complex patterns which are common across cultures and which are culture-specific has remained a central question in psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and more recently machine vision and social robotics. Classic approaches to addressing this question typically tested the cross-cultural recognition of theoretically motivated facial expressions representing six emotions, and reported universality. Yet, variable recognition accuracy across cultures suggests a narrower cross-cultural communication, supported by sets of simpler expressive patterns embedded in more complex facial expressions. We explore this hypothesis by modelling the facial expressions of over 60 emotions across two cultures, and segregating out the latent expressive patterns. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, we first map the conceptual organization of a broad spectrum of emotion words by building semantic networks in two cultures. For each emotion word in each culture, we then model and validate its corresponding dynamic facial expression, producing over 60 culturally valid facial expression models. We then apply to the pooled models a multivariate data reduction technique, revealing four latent and culturally common facial expression patterns that each communicates specific combinations of valence, arousal and dominance. We then reveal the face movements that accentuate each latent expressive pattern to create complex facial expressions. Our data questions the widely held view that six facial expression patterns are universal, instead suggesting four latent expressive patterns with direct implications for emotion communication, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social robotics

Intercultural New Media Studies: The Next Frontier in intercultural Communication

New media (ICT\u27s) are transforming communication across cultures. Despite this revolution in cross cultural contact, communication researchers have largely ignored the impact of new media on intercultural communication. This groundbreaking article defines the parameters of a new field of inquiry called Intercultural New Media Studies (INMS), which explores the intersection between ICT\u27s and intercultural communication. Composed of two research areas—(1) new media and intercultural communication theory and (2) culture and new media—INMS investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world. INMS promises to increase our understanding of intercultural communication in a new media age and is the next frontier in intercultural communication

The impact of globalisation on organisational communication: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Background: Many journal articles, books and book chapters have been devoted to cross-cultural communication, highlighting aspects such as individualist vs. collectivist cultures, and high- vs. low-context cultures (Gudykunst & Kim, 2003; Lanier, 2010; Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). However, very few studies have been carried out on the implications of these aspects on global business. It is evident that people are moving between cultures for various reasons such as work or studies (Office for National Statistics, 2014), taking their cultural communication styles with them (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). The aim of this small-scale study was to look at the effects of communication on global operations. Culture varies across geographical regions (Agar, 1994), influencing the conveyed meaning being communicated. Hence, the research question for this study was: What are the communication implications of a global workforce? Methods: A homogenous sample of four participants at senior management level was interviewed using Semi-Structured Interviews (SSI). Eleven carefully selected questions were devised with the aim of reducing demand characteristics. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith & Osborn, 2011) was applied to the collected data. Findings: Findings suggested that explicit and implicit communication is a key element for successful global business, as well as a broad understanding of cultures. Consequently, participants reported that it is necessary to have knowledge of how other cultures behave so integrity of business can be carried out. Discussion: It was concluded that implications are evident for global organisations, particularly towards management, who need to ensure there is a constant and consistent level of communication to help their employees and increase their profits