Graded Homework

C H A P T E R

5

Communicating
across Cultures
Chapter Outline
Global Business

• Local Culture Adaptations
• International Career Experience
Diversity in North America
Ways to Look at Culture

• Time
• Other Nonverbal Symbols
Oral Communication

• Understatement and Exaggeration
• Compliments

Values, Beliefs, and Practices

Writing to International Audiences

Nonverbal Communication

Learning More about International
Business Communication

• Body Language
• Touch
• Space

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Summary of Key Points

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IN

THE NEWS

Cross-Cultural Collaboration Gone Wrong
Before the merger, the economic benefit of the collaboration was the primary issue, but that changed
when the employees from the two companies started
working with each other and the cultural differences
began to arise. For example, the German workers of
Daimler-Benz were used to daily, companysanctioned beer breaks while the American workers worried that alcohol consumption during work
would lead to accidents and legal suits.
In addition, the German professionals were used
to a formal, hierarchical structure in the organization
and formal business attire. A corporate communications director from Germany observed, “We noticed
right away that the American executives were more
casually dressed. . . . You would never see anyone
here [in the German plant] without a tie on, even if
they came in on a Saturday.”
Differences in the corporate lifestyle later led to
questions as to who got the better end of the deal.
US assembly line workers earned more wages per
hour than their German counterparts. However, the
German workers, who received a six-week annual
vacation, fully paid health care and education, and
a triennial soul-soothing spa break, undoubtedly
had a better benefits package. In addition, while the
hen Daimler-Benz and Chrysler pro- Daimler plant produced 850,000 vehicles a year with
posed a $36 billion merger in 1998, both 120,000 employees, Chrysler manufactured 3 million
parties thought it was a good plan, one with approximately the same number of employees.
that could give them a much-needed economic boost. These cultural differences eventually overshadowed
the positives of this merger.
There was no seeming conflict,
However, merger companies
no competition between the
“What went wrong? The cultural
are usually hesitant to correlate
companies—while Chrysler
their losses to breakdown in
manufactured cars for the differences reflected in the practices
intercultural communication.
masses, Daimler-Benz catered of the two companies were a
Studies show that the relation
to the elite population.
significant factor.”
between cultural differences
The merger was supposed
and coordination breakdown
to strengthen each other’s
place in the automotive market. But in 2007, a third is undervalued; when compaines from different culparty Cerberus Capital Management bought Daimler- tures face difficulties in their collaborative process,
they attribute the loss of productivity to the perforChrysler for just $7.4 billion. What went wrong?
The cultural differences reflected in the prac- mance of the other company rather than work on
tices of the two companies were a significant factor. the challenges caused by their cultural differences.

W

Sources: Associated Press, “A Chronology in the Takeover Saga of Global Automaker DaimlerChrysler AG,” Associated Press Archive, May 14, 2007; Roberto
A. Weber and Colin F. Camerer, “Cultural Conflict and Merger Failure: An Experimental Approach,” Management Science 49, no. 4 (2003); and Carol Williams,
“Steering around Culture Clashes,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1999, C1.

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Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you will know:

1 Why global business is important.
2 Why diversity is becoming more important.
3 How our values and beliefs affect our responses to other people.
4 How nonverbal communication impacts cross-cultural communications.
5 How to adapt oral communication for cross-cultural communications.
6 How to adapt written communications for international audiences.

Microsoft in China
To succeed in China,
Microsoft had to drastically alter its business practices.
Probably the most obvious
change was pricing strategy.
Microsoft found many Chinese
using its expensive software—
for free, thanks to pirated versions. Bill Gates argued that if
the Chinese were going to pirate
software, he wanted it to be
Microsoft’s. Accepting the piracy
turned out to be a smart move;
about 90% of China’s 120 million
PCs use Windows. And Microsoft
has dropped the price for legal
copies; packages of Windows
and Office sell for $3 for Chinese
students.
Microsoft also had to learn how
to collaborate with the Chinese
government instead of fighting it.
It offered China the right to substitute some of its own software
in the Windows source code so
that sensitive political and military offices can install their own
cryptography. In return, the government is requiring central and
provincial governments to begin
using legal software.
Adapted from David Kirkpatrick, “How
Microsoft Conquered China,” Fortune,
July 23, 2007, 78–84.

Our values, priorities, and practices are shaped by the culture in which we
grow up. Understanding other cultures is crucial if you want to sell your products to other cultures in our country, sell to other countries, manage an international plant or office, or work in this country for a multinational company
headquartered in another country.
The successful intercultural communicator is
•
•
•
•
•

Aware of the values, beliefs, and practices in other cultures.
Sensitive to differences among individuals within a culture.
Aware that his or her preferred values and behaviors are influenced by
culture and are not necessarily “right.”
Sensitive to verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Flexible and open to change.

The first step in understanding another culture is to realize that it may do
things very differently, and that the difference is not bad or inferior. The second step is understanding that people within a single culture differ.
When pushed too far, the kinds of differences summarized in this chapter
can turn into stereotypes, which can be just as damaging as ignorance. Psychologists have shown that stereotypes have serious consequences and that they
come into play even when we don’t want them to. Asking African American
students to identify their race before answering questions taken from the
Graduate Record Examination, the standardized test used for admission to
graduate schools, cut in half the number of items they got right. Similarly,
asking students to identify their sex at the beginning of Advanced Placement
(AP) calculus tests, used to give high school students college credits, lowered
the scores of women. If the sex question were moved to the end of the test,
about 5% more women would receive AP credit.1
Don’t try to memorize the material in this chapter as a rigid set of rules.
Instead, use the examples to get a sense for the kinds of things that differ from
one culture to another. Test these generalizations against your experience.
When in doubt, ask.

Global Business
As we saw in Chapter 4, exports are essential both to the success of individual businesses and to a country’s economy as a whole. Most major businesses
operate globally, and an increasing share of profits comes from outside the
headquarters country:

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Chapter 5
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•
•
•
•

•

Communicating across Cultures

McDonald’s has restaurants in over 100 countries and earns more than 66%
of its income outside the United States.
3M has 63% of its sales internationally.
Procter & Gamble has $20 billion of sales in developing countries.
Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive have 40% of their business in developing
countries.
Starbucks is expanding into Brazil, Egypt, and Russia, giving it sales in 40
countries. Eventually the company plans to have half its stores outside the
United States.
Wal-Mart’s international stores earn “only” 20% of the company’s total
sales. However, if the international operations were an independent chain,
it would be the world’s fourth-largest retailer.2

Many companies—even service businesses—depend on vendors or operations in other countries. These international operations help companies spend
more time with customers, focus more on innovation, and fund projects
that otherwise would have been unaffordable. IBM has 43,000 employees in
India staffing data centers, call centers, software development, and research.
Over a billion dollars of finance and accounting jobs were performed by
India’s Genpact for Wachovia Corporation. Eli Lilly does 20% of its chemistry work in China and is performing clinical trials in Brazil, Russia, China,
and India.3

127
Communicating
with Subsistence
Consumers
Subsistence consumers
may earn little money,
but they still need to buy necessities. Corporations are learning how
best to communicate with them.
Many of them lack basic reading skills, so visual cues are
important. Cues such as store
layout, package design, and
brand logos need to remain consistent for them. Many buy products that look attractive because
of packaging colors or pictures.
They also tend to buy only brands
they recognize by appearance,
so changes in colors or visual
design have negative impacts.
To better serve these customers, stores need to
•

Price products in whole or
half numbers, and display
these prices graphically—
such as a picture of the
money needed to buy the
product.

•

Display pictures of product
categories, so shoppers can
find the goods they need.

•

Train store personnel to
form relationships with
consumers and offer friendly,
individualized assistance.

Local Culture Adaptations
As they expand globally, US retailers are catering to local tastes and customs. When
expanding to China, Wal-Mart enraged consumers when they sold dead fish and
meat packaged in Styrofoam, which shoppers saw as old merchandise. Wal-Mart
quickly learned to compensate by leaving meat uncovered and installing fish
tanks to sell live fish. They also sell live tortoises and snakes; Johnson’s Baby Oil
is stocked next to moisturizers containing sheep placenta, a native wrinkle “cure.”
Wal-Mart lures customers on foot or bikes with free shuttle buses and home deliveries for large items. Perhaps the biggest change is Wal-Mart’s acceptance of organized labor in China; in July 2006 it accepted its first union ever into its stores.
Tommy Hilfiger made different changes as it opened its high-end stores in
Europe. The company’s signature cotton knit sweaters don’t sell well in Europe, where men prefer wool sweaters, so Hilfiger began offering lamb’s wool
sweaters. Underwear packages received more seductive pictures. Baggy jeans,
popular in the United States, were replaced with slimmer silhouettes to cater
to European tastes.4

Adapted from Jose Antonio Rosa,
Madhubalan Viswanathan, and Julie
A. Ruth, “Emerging Lessons: For Multinational Companies, Understanding
the Needs of Poorer Consumers Can
Be Profitable and Socially Responsible,” Wall Street Journal, October
20, 2008, R12.

International Career Experience
When plants, stores, and offices move overseas, people follow—top executives as well migrant workers. After the 2000 dot-com crash, many companies outsourced departments such as software development, data analysis,
and research. Now top executives are also being relocated. Cisco Systems, a
50,000-person employer, seeks to locate 20% of senior managers at their
Globalization Center in Bangalore, India, by 2010. The executives will represent the best talent from San Jose, California, and Bangalore. IBM currently
has 150 executives working and living overseas including 35 in India and 89
in China. At Procter & Gamble, 17 of the top 30 executives have had international assignments. Such assignments give companies a pool of executives
with intercultural skills and global awareness.5
For their own careers, managers often find they need international experience if they want top-level jobs. A survey of multinational companies by Mercer
Human Resource Consulting found that firms were increasing international

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Marketing Disney to
China
Only six months after
Hong Kong Disneyland opened, Disney officials
were scrambling to understand
why attendance was so low at
the new park. They turned for
answers to Chinese travel agents
who book tours. Some of these
agents believed Disney officials
had not tried to understand
the local market and Chinese
culture.
After the disappointing start at
the Hong Kong park, Disney officials were anxious to learn and
ready to make changes. Using
the travel industry feedback and
other market research, Disney
developed a new advertising
campaign. Original ads had featured an aerial view of the park;
new TV spots focused on people
and showed guests riding attractions. A new print ad featuring
a grandmother, mother, and
daughter showed that Disneyland is a place where families can
have fun together.
Disney also worked to make
visitors more comfortable inside
the park. At an attraction offered
in three different languages,
guests gravitated toward the
shortest line—usually the line for
English-speaking guests. Now,
three separate signs clearly mark
which language will be used to
communicate with guests in that
line. Greater use of Mandarinspeaking guides and materials
helps guests better enjoy shows
and attractions. Also, additional
seating was added in dining
areas because Chinese diners
take longer to eat than do Americans. Disney is hoping such
changes will attract more guests
to the Hong Kong park.
Source: Merissa Marr and Geoffrey A.
Fowler, “Chinese Lessons for Disney,”
Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2006,
B1, B5.

What cultural barriers did Disney need to overcome to help Hong Kong Disneyland succeed? See sidebar on this page.

assignments, and that more of those assignments were going to women. Crosscultural training for the assignments was provided by 60% of the companies,
but once abroad employees generally had to fend for themselves, including
finding their own housing.6
The executives join a host of migrant workers already abroad. Migrant
workers benefit the economies of both host and home countries. The money
sent home by expatriate workers, more than $160 billion a year, is far more than
the total aid spent by the developed world for developing countries (about
$100 billion a year). Thus the money sent home is one of the major drivers of
international development. India and China provide one-quarter of the global
migrant population, and their contributions are significant. Indian managers
and accountants are increasingly running businesses in the Gulf. The Chinese
are a particularly strong presence in Africa.7
Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize author and New York Times columnist,
uses the metaphor of a flat world to describe the increasing globalization. In
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, he says,
What the flattening of the world means is that we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which—if politics
and terrorism do not get in the way—could usher in an amazing era of prosperity,
innovation, and collaboration, by companies, communities, and individuals.8

Diversity in North America
Even if you stay in the United States and Canada, you’ll work with people
whose backgrounds differ from yours. Residents of small towns and rural
areas may have different notions of friendliness than do people from big cities.
Californians may talk and dress differently than people in the Midwest. The
cultural icons that resonate for baby boomers may mean little to members of
Generation Y. For many workers, local diversity has become as important as
international diversity.
The last two decades have seen a growing emphasis on diversity. This diversity comes from many sources:
•
•
•
•

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Gender.
Race and ethnicity.
Regional and national origin.
Social class.

•
•
•
•

Religion.
Age.
Sexual orientation.
Physical ability.

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Chapter 5

Communicating across Cultures

Many young Americans are already multicultural. According to 2005 US census figures, almost 40% of Americans aged 15 to 24 are African American, Latino,
Asian, or Native American.9 Some of them are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States
have come from Mexico, India, China, Philippines, Cuba, Vietnam, Dominican
Republic, and Korea.10 In 2002 Latinos became the largest minority group in the
United States. The US Census Bureau predicts that by 2042, the non-Hispanic white
population will be less than 50% of the country’s total population.11 The change is
occurring rapidly: in 10% of US counties, whites are already in the minority.12
Bilingual Canada has long compared the diversity of its people to a mosaic. But now immigrants from Italy, Greece, and Hong Kong add their voices
to the medley of French, English, and Inuit. Radio station CHIN in Toronto
broadcasts in 32 languages.13
According to 2000 US census figures, about 4.6 million people identified
themselves as belonging to more than one race.14 US Census figures also show
that 19.7% of the population nationally and 42.5% in California speak a language other than English at home.15 In cities such as Los Angeles and San Jose,
over half the population speaks a language other than English at home; in El
Paso, that percentage is 74.3%.16
Faced with these figures, organizations are making special efforts to diversify
their workforces. Nike recruits minority students on college campuses and offers them summer internships; Clorox partners with professional organizations like
the National Black M.B.A. Association. Microsoft has 44 different diversity advisory councils (DACs). The oldest, BAM—Blacks at Microsoft—has 500 members. Four are for employees with disabilities; still others are for employees from
specific international regions. In addition to supporting the group members,
DACs help recruit and integrate new employees and help Microsoft adapt their
communications and products for diverse segments of the global economy.17
These companies are smart; new evidence shows that diversity can improve
business. Research analyzing the relationship between diversity levels and business performance of 250 US businesses found a correlation between diversity
and business success; companies with high levels of racial and ethic minorities
have the highest profits, the highest market shares, and highest number of customers. On the other hand, organizations with low levels of diversity have the
lowest profits, the lowest market shares, and the lowest number of customers.18

Ways to Look at Culture
Each of us grows up in a culture that provides patterns of acceptable behavior
and belief. We may not be aware of the most basic features of our own culture
until we come into contact with people who do things differently. In India,
children might be expected to touch the bare feet of elders to show respect, but
in the United States such touching would be inappropriate.19
As anthropologist Edward Hall first described, we can categorize cultures
as high-context or low-context. In high-context cultures, most of the information is inferred from the social relationships of the people and the context of
a message; little is explicitly conveyed. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Latin
American cultures are high-context. In low-context cultures, context is less
important; most information is explicitly spelled out. German, Scandinavian,
and North American cultures are low-context.
High- and low-context cultures value different kinds of communication and
have different attitudes toward oral and written communication. As Figure 5.1
shows, low-context cultures like those of the United States favor direct approaches and may see indirectness as dishonest or manipulative. The written
word is seen as more important than oral statements, so contracts are binding

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129

Beyond Stereotypes
Learning about different cultures is important for understanding the different
kinds of people we work with.
However, leadership coaches Keith
Caver and Ancella Livers caution
that people are individuals, not just
representatives of a cultural group.
Based on their work with African
American executives and middle
managers, Caver and Livers have
found that coworkers sometimes
treat these individuals first as representatives of black culture, and
only second as talented and experienced managers.
As an example, Caver and
Livers cite the all-too-common
situation of a newly hired black
manager who participates in a
management development activity. The new manager is prepared to answer questions about
her area of business expertise,
but the only questions directed
toward her are about “diversity.”
African American clients of Caver
and Livers have complained that
they are often called upon to
interpret the behavior of famous
black Americans such as Clarence Thomas or Jesse Jackson, and they wonder whether
their white colleagues would feel
their race qualifies them to interpret the deeds of famous white
Americans.
In this example, stereotypes
make well-intentioned efforts
at communication offensive. To
avoid such offense, consider not
only culture, but also people’s
individual qualities and their roles
and experiences. A person who
communicates one way in the
role of son or daughter may communicate very differently as engineer or client.
Adapted from Keith A. Caver and
Ancella B. Livers, “Dear White Boss,”
Harvard Business Review 80, no. 11
(November 2002), 76–81.

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Figure 5.1

The Building Blocks of Effective Messages

Views of Communication in High- and Low-Context Cultures
High-context
(Examples: Japan,
Saudi Arabia)

Low-context
(Examples: Germany,
North America)

Preferred communication strategy

Indirectness, politeness, ambiguity

Directness, confrontation, clarity

Reliance on words to communicate

Low

High

Reliance on nonverbal signs to communicate

High

Low

Importance of relationships

High

Low

Importance of written word

Low

High

Agreements made in writing

Not binding

Binding

Agreements made orally

Binding

Not binding

Attention to detail

Low

High

Source: Robert T. Moran, Philip R. Harris, and Sarah V. Moran, Managing Cultural Differences: Global Leadership Strategies for the 21st Century, 7th ed. (Boston:
Elsevier, 2007), 49–52.

Does the Glass
Ceiling Exist?
“The news: Men and
women have different
views on whether women face a
‘glass ceiling’ in financial professions, according to a survey of
363 financial executives by CFO
magazine.
“The numbers: In the survey,
40% of women said they perceive
limits to how far women can rise;
only 10% of men believe women
face a glass ceiling.
“The differences: Two-thirds
of women, 66%, said women face
one or more obstacles to success
in finance, such as a lack of operational experience or an inability to
negotiate effectively. But only 38%
of men said women face such
difficulties. Five times as many
women as men said female executives have more trouble gaining
the respect and trust of the CEO.
“The
background:
Few
women hold top financial jobs
in major U.S. corporations, even
though women earn more undergraduate business degrees than
men. Just 7% of Fortune 500
companies have female CFOs,
according to recruiters Heidrick &
Struggles International Inc.”

but promises may be broken. Details matter. Business communication practices in the United States reflect these low-context preferences.
The discussion that follows focuses on national and regional cultures. But
business communication is also influenced by the organizational culture and
by personal culture, such as gender, race and ethnicity, social class, and so
forth. As Figure 5.2 suggests, all of these intersect to determine what kind of
communication is needed in a given situation. Sometimes one kind of culture
may be more important than another. For example, in a study of aerospace
engineers in Europe, Asia, and the United States, researchers found that the
similarities of the professional discourse community outweighed differences
in national cultures.20

Values, Beliefs, and Practices
Values and beliefs, often unconscious, affect our response to people and situations. Most North Americans, for example, value “fairness.” “You’re not playing fair” is a sharp criticism calling for changed behavior. In some countries,
however, people expect certain groups…