Improving The Understanding Of Intercultural Communication

Question

Task: Case Study: You are a manager and your boss has asked you to give a presentation about communication to members of your team. Your team’s communication skills are generally good, but you and your boss feel that these skills can be improved. You are an expert in the field of business communication, having successfully undertaken a Unit in Effective Business Communications. Each member of the group may pick one of the following areas:

1. Organisational communication
2. Small group/Team Communication
3. Intercultural Communication
Having chosen a general area, you must then narrow the area to focus upon a specific topic or area within the general area. For example, if you have chosen to focus upon organisational communication, you could narrow the area to focus upon the topic of informal internal organisational communication. A broad focus on the general area will not result is a ‘high’ mark for this assessment. It is a good idea to consult with your tutor/lecturer about your topic—either in your Zoom lecture/tutorial/workshop or via email. You will need to identify 5 academic journal articles about your chosen topic. These articles will be discussed in the Individually Written Report and serve as evidentiary support within the presentation. Within your part of the presentation, you will need to include the following information:

Answer

Introduction
This article aims at improving the understanding of intercultural communication. Intercultural communication is quiet important when an organization has employees from different cultures. Wherever a person is in the world communication is necessary to survive. But it becomes difficult to communicate in different cultures. And that’s when intercultural communication takes place. And it’s not just about the language but there are different ways of communicating in different cultures. In some cultures everyone should be punctual and disciplined and on the other hand in some cultures it they consider it rude to be punctual. But there is one thing common in all cultures and that is a person can offend other people if he/she does not know about their communication practices. So what one can do to overcome these problems is one can learn to communicate and that is what discussed in this article. For understanding intercultural communication one should know what it is but it’s more significant to know what it is not. Intercultural communication is a spoken or not spoken communication among persons of various cultures. In intercultural inter is used as a prefix which means between and culture is backgrounds so intercultural communication means communication between different cultures.

Annotated bibliography
1. Oetzel, J. G. (2017). Effective intercultural workgroup communication theory. The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, 1-5.
In this article as the topic says intercultural communication is a branch of study where communication between different cultures is taught. This article’s main aim is to improve the understanding of communication and make the concepts clear and gives clarity theoretically as well, and also gives a good practical understanding. The main focus is on one to one communication and on system communication assisted by digital technology (Oetzel,2017). As these days communication is done digitally through emails and other messaging apps because through this way one can explain through videos also and in that language barrier are not present.

2. Yoshida, T., Indurkhya, B., Larson, J., Dujmovich, J., & Keith, B. (2018). Integrating intercultural communication into the language classroom. Speakeasy, 30.

In this article a more scientifically driven overview is given which explains about the general cultural values and also gives information about cultural values in china. It explains about the topic both theoretically and practically which is useful in handling public relations (Yoshida et al, 2018).. There are two concepts explained namely mianzi which means face and guanxi which means inter relationships. Both of these concepts are necessary for having a great understanding of Chinese values. This article teaches about an ‘Asia centric’ framework of PR. For intercultural communication to happen one should know about each and every culture because there are different values in different cultures so in this article general information is given but also specific information about china is given.

3. Jacobi, L. (2020). Will Opportunities to Collaborate Reduce the Intercultural Communication Apprehension of American and International Students. Journal of International Students, 10(3).
This paper talks about an experiment which was done by a food service provider. So they considers Hispanic services and Anglo American services and see whether intercultural communication is required or not (Jacobi, 2020). They observed around 350 people and checked what type of interaction customers are having with them when both of them do not understand each other’s language. And that is when they realized they can use pictures and sign language for them to understand and as there was more proportion of females than males so it became easy for them to communicate. This paper proves with important evidences that stance taking is a very significant course of action and all companies should follow it.

4. Liu, M. (2019). Predicting Effects of Demographic, Linguistic and Psychological Variables on University International Students' Intercultural Communication Sensitivity. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 6(3), 123-133.

In this article a little advance study is done which includes fretfulness and ambiguity management for checking the capability of intercultural communication by checking cultural aptitude. An upgraded arbitration model is created and it is tested by created a survey and the data in the survey is collected by employees who are in an intercultural framework in Australia (Liu, 2019). According to the results fretfulness negatively affects information sharing and ambiguity affects both positively and negatively to information sharing. From the results of the analysis made it is clear that intercultural communication helpfulness intervene in the relationships mentioned earlier. Then the theoretical as well as practical suggestions are explained.

5. Moon, D. G., &Holling, M. A. (Eds.). (2017). Race (ing) intercultural communication: Racial logics in a colorblind era. Routledge.

In this paper about intercultural communication scholarship is discussed and also its favourable locations (Moon &Holling, 2017). Communication between different cultures is the need of the hour and is very important to survive in a dynamic environment. There are few central state locations which are not so ideal for having scholarships. Some of the intercultural communication aspects face racial discrimination. As some cultures are different and they don’t favour any other culture and therefore racism arises which is not liked by other people. Then different cultural are explained and how things change from culture to culture and how can we overcome those problems by learning through scholarships.

Reflection
Group dynamics has positive as well as negative aspects.
First I will discuss about positive aspects. When working in groups it gives you more productivity than working individually because in groups there are different people and each one specialize in their own field like when a group creates a report so if one of them is good at statistics will handle that work and will be responsible for collecting all the data from different sources and making statistics ,another of them is good at writing the mechanism will handle that part and will be responsible for completion of writing on time, some other might be good at organization skills so that person will be able to allocate right person at right place. All this categorization is done when everyone knows the strengths and weaknesses of each member.

If in a group positive dynamics is present then everyone will be happy and work with their full efficiency.
Secondly I will discuss about the negative aspect a group with negative dynamics generate badly functional groups and for those groups it becomes very difficult to accomplish any goals because in those groups the fight is who is the leader everyone wants to b a leader and if there are more than one leader than achieving goals at given time become difficult. And if in case there is one leader and the leadership style he/she has chosen is not compatible with other co-workers then also things don’t work out. In these groups people don’t know what their peers are great at so leader just assign duties without knowing the strengths and weakness and hence it results in poor performance. Communication is lacked there people doesn’t even know each other’s name they just do their work and nothing else.

Conclusion
Well, as the topic suggest, this article talks about different cultural opinions differing from time to time and place to place. The tribal changes in the communication of various diversity forms social reforms and these socio cultural reforms helps in building a strong bond of feelings through communication. Well, there will definitely be some positive as well as some negative aspects about every culture but what makes them United is there unity. The groups framed by cultural leaders helps in building a strong culture as well as it can deteriorate the culture as well if it is in bad hands. This article will provide you an idea of how inter cultural language has been proposed and how people living into various diversity implement it upon their lives. Culture may not be the sole purpose but keeping good points of that culture into the human society is what someone will keep in mind. This occurs when imitation of people takes place when they got migrated from one place to another. Culture could be different but intercultural communication is something what brings knowledge to one's life.

Recommendations
As discussed above on the topic negatives of group dynamics there are some of the recommendations like whenever a group lacks communication it directly affects on the productivity so at first there should be good communication between management and employees. And they should share everything either about their problems or about their areas of improvement. A leader should know about its team what are they good at and what skills should they improve so that it becomes easy to allocate task and there is timely completion of task. Whoever is good at particular field will be allocated that field directly so this will save time and work will be done effectively and efficiently. Secondly a group should work as a team and support each other there should be one leader and that leader should consider everyone’s feeling and accept the leadership style which is suitable to all. Decision making should not be centralized leader should communicate with other employees and then take any decision so that morale of employees is increased and they work with their full efficiency in that way they will give their 100 % and productivity will be increased. There should be good inter personal relationships between them. Certain awards must be given like best employee or best leader or best group or whichever group completes the task first will receive an award so this will help in increasing the motivation and morale of the employees.

References
Jacobi, L. (2020). Will Opportunities to Collaborate Reduce the Intercultural Communication Apprehension of American and International Students. Journal of International Students, 10(3).
Liu, M. (2019).Predicting Effects of Demographic, Linguistic and Psychological Variables on University International Students' Intercultural Communication Sensitivity. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 6(3), 123-133.
Moon, D. G., &Holling, M. A. (Eds.).(2017). Race (ing) intercultural communication: Racial logics in a colorblind era.Routledge Oetzel, J. G. (2017). Effective intercultural workgroup communication theory. The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, 1-5
Yoshida, T., Indurkhya, B., Larson, J., Dujmovich, J., & Keith, B. (2018).Integrating intercultural communication into the language classroom. Speakeasy, 30.