Cultural Barriers
Cultural barriers refer to the challenges that arise from differences in customs, beliefs, and communication styles between people from different cultures. These barriers can impact business interactions, leading to misunderstandings, conflicts, and ineffective collaboration. Overcoming cultural barriers requires awareness, empathy, and the ability to adapt communication and behavior to bridge cultural gaps and foster mutual understanding.
4 Key excerpts on "Cultural Barriers"
eBook - ePubIntegrating New Technologies in International Business
Opportunities and Challenges
- Gurinder Singh, Alka Maurya, Richa Goel, Gurinder Singh, Alka Maurya, Richa Goel(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Apple Academic Press(Publisher)
...To achieve successful completion of ventures, leadership has to be flexible, patient, culturally inclined, and extremely sensitive to effectively counter-cultural differences and social misunderstandings. Organizations have to introspect deeply by working on organizational behavior and human value systems that include human feeling, thinking, and acting. This helps in forecasting positive corporate health and happiness index, which is vital for organizational survival and sustainability. 3.9 KEY CROSS-Cultural Barriers AND SOLUTIONS The major cross-cultural roadblocks are languages, technology, beliefs, stereotypes, interpretation, trust, perception, parochialism, ethnocentrism, bias, ego, borders, values, customs, patterns, traditions, and social norms. Some appropriate solutions to these barriers are learning the local language, land, culture, eating, and dressing habits. Hosting social and cultural events, interaction sessions, sports events, outings, and family meets are some of the effective and easy ways of bridging the multicultural gaps. Multinational organizations hold culturally oriented seminars, conferences, and theme parties for staff. Trainings in soft skills, technology, forex, international trade, image management, etiquette, and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and cross-cultural communication are imparted to staff holding key positions in sensitive business environments. Managers who are also key negotiators must tread carefully while communicating and closing deals in cross-cultural business environments. They must not rush the deals in order to be efficient or save time, thus hampering the negotiation process and eventually losing the deal...
eBook - ePub- James P. Neelankavil, Anoop Rai(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Specifically, differences in levels of trust impact perceptions of transaction costs and thereby influence a firm’s choice of entry mode into a foreign market. 6 Culture also affects international companies’ strategic actions. For example, the relationship between culture and brand image has been found to be very strong and is often a key consideration in developing brand image in foreign markets. 7 For international companies, culture might be a key variable to consider in their efforts to standardize their international strategies or develop global brands. In a study that examined transferring advertising strategies across countries, researchers found that the consumers in the host markets did not always understand the focus of the advertising campaign and therefore did not buy the product. 8 Finally, culture also plays a role in how an international company is organized in foreign markets. 9 In many collectivistic societies, organizational structures need to consider the effect of a particular design on the group as a whole rather than on the individual. The student of international business must recognize that culture does not fit into a neat, compact, and manageable model. Each society and its culture is a unique and complex system of values, norms, folklore, mores, codes of conduct, standards of behavior, and relationships. Hence, most definitions of culture tend to be descriptive ones that identify a culture’s individual elements. C ULTURE D EFINED A good working definition of culture is the knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, customs, and other capabilities of one group distinguishing it from other groups. In other words, culture is the way of life of a society. From a practical standpoint, culture includes behavior, symbols, skills, heroes, knowledge, superstitions, motives, traditional ideas, artifacts, and achievements that are learned and perpetuated through a society’s institutions to enhance its chances for survival...
eBook - ePubWomen Leadership in Emerging Markets
Featuring 46 Women Leaders
- Shireen Chengadu, Caren Scheepers, Shireen Chengadu, Caren Scheepers(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Cultural differences among individuals can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts (Stahl et al. 2010), so to successfully navigate the intercultural domain it is important to be sensitive to and aware of cultural differences (Mor et al. 2013). As an interviewee admits, it is not easy to recognize the differences between one’s own culture and the cultural norms and values of the environment: The most difficult part is, you are not a local. And that means that […] whether you like it or not, this circumstance pretty much is attached to your Western [background] and to your very rational processes. And here, that is a different perspective. So here, you have a much more, how can I put it, constant social responsibility act. So sometimes it is the changing of mindsets that is more difficult and not necessarily being a woman. (Isabel Neiva) On the other hand, awareness of potential cultural differences and applying this knowledge in intercultural settings bring advantages, such as the ability to build trust with culturally different others (Chua et al. 2012). For instance, leaders who are culturally sensitive in intercultural collaborative settings are perceived as more trustworthy by intercultural collaborators, resulting in higher creative performance (Chua et al. 2012). However, until these Cultural Barriers are overcome, it is difficult to fit in when the dominant culture is different from one’s own, as an interviewee states: I guess, which I still see now is [that] it was a lot, obviously the Cultural Barriers. I mean, […] it is known that the mining environment is a strong Afrikaans environment. So, you know, to fit in has been very difficult. But what has been important is making them understand [the value of the contribution of] what I am bringing. So the Cultural Barriers in terms of fitting in will [be there for anyone who is different...
eBook - ePub- Owen Hargie, Dennis Tourish, Owen Hargie, Dennis Tourish(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This is because it is anticipated that their roles as producers and customers will add value to interrelated global business networks (Porter, 1985). This is, however, no easy task. The diversity literature paints conflicting pictures of the effects of cross-cultural (compared to mono-cultural) interaction (for example Milliken and Martins, 1996; Chatman et al., 1998; Härtel and Fujimoto, 1999). Specifically, studies show that, in comparison to homogeneous workgroups, diverse workgroups suffer from: greater conflict more turnover higher stress more absenteeism greater communication problems (O’Reilly et al., 1989; Zenger and Lawrence, 1989; Alder, 1991; Tsui et al., 1992) less trust lower job satisfaction low cohesion poor social integration (Hambrick 1994). While the greater likelihood of these difficulties occurring in diverse workgroups is well established, research in this area has offered organizations little information upon which management practices for interactions for culturally diverse workforces and customer bases can be formulated (cf. Pelled et al., 1999). One of the goals of this chapter is to examine the issue of communication competence in cross-cultural business interactions. To begin this journey, we must first understand what culture is. Culture Culture has been studied widely within the cross-cultural management arena and refers to the symbolic dimension of human action. As discussed in Chapter 13 in this volume, it refers to the sum of the learned values, beliefs, attitudes, practices and customs of a group, which are passed from one generation to another (Collier, 1989)...
