International Business Communications

In the past five decades, changes and advancements in economic relationships, political systems and technological options began to break down state boundaries. Business transformed from one country activity to part of an interdependent international network. As Damen writes “One cannot live very long and remain totally monocultural in the modern world” (1990, 56). However, international business communications do not effective every time. A wide range of business firms found that their employees were ill equipped for overseas work in the globalizing market. In this case study, Molly and Daniel found that there was a problem in communication between two multinational companies. This essay will analyse this problem of intercultural communication, propose solutions to ensure next company meeting more successful and explain both short-term and long-term benefits of these solutions.

To be associated with this ineffective multinational communication, in particular that it causes cross-cultural misunderstanding. First of all, in this case, people who attended the business meeting have different nationality and different backgrounds. They definitely do not know others cultures. On the other hand, these businesspersons are only familiar to their own cultures. As Ballard and Clanchy (1991, 10) points out “different cultural traditions do embody different attitude to knowledge”. It means that culture affects in a person’s communication behaviour. As a result in this case, all businesspersons reflected their communication styles which are influenced by their cultures. Furthermore, they have poor awareness of cultural distance. Thus, the work of Reynolds and Valentine (2004, xvii) shows that people do not recognize that it is essential in t...

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...ence in expressing language behaviour properly reduces the self confidence among the people and develops a poor interpersonal relationship.

To sum up, the best solution for Molly and Daniel is that introduce cross-cultural awareness to those businesspersons. In short-term, this solution will make the business meeting more smoothly and more successful. In long-term, as this example shows, the staff of two firms could have benefited greatly from a short course in cultural awareness. “An understanding of the behavioural consequences of cultural differences is vital in planning strategies for the management of cultural diversity in today’s multi-national and multi-cultural firms” (Wong et al. 1998, 101). It is clear therefore that after having cross-cultural training, then the difficulties of the cross cultural awareness in the business media can be sorted out.

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