Communication Strategies

With the advent of globalization, borders have been transcended, so much so that the workforce has become truly global. The market for labor now goes beyond nationalities and in fact tries to encompass as many cultures as possible in order to harness the synergies created by multicultural diversity.

This is turn has created a multitude of management and Human resource issues that seek solutions in organizations communications strategies, to manage and satisfy all employees regardless of  their ethnicity.

Intercultural Communication when handled professionally and profoundly can become a competitive advantage for the company who masters the art of keeping their people happy and contented.
With regards to everyday situations, a company that operates or conducts business in many geographical localities and countries is bound to come face-to-face with intercultural communications. Take the example of PG, which is headquartered in the US but has operations and country offices in more than 180 countries, serving a multitude of customers coming from various backgrounds. In light of this PG needs a workforce that comes from the very same background to understand its target market and design strategies in order to gain the maximum out of them.

Real-Life case Scenario
Consider the scenario where the manager at PG is American, while the subordinates are Arab and Chinese. In such a case intercultural communication would truly need to be maximized in order to even communicate.

In order for a manager to communicate effectively with the people from various cultures, the cultural dimensions of each of the countries that the subordinates belong to will have to be taken into consideration.

Cultural Dimensions
Culture is a subjective value to measure and that is why various dimensions of culture and values have culminated into a ranking measure provided by Geert Hofstede in order to help quantify, to an extent how various cultures compare to each other.

The dimensions that are scaled on the Hofstede measures include, Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) and Long-Term Orientation (LTO).

Summarizing what each of these dimensions entail, PDI measures how the weaker members of a cultural group or institution are treated and how they perceive the power distribution. It could be equal or unequal and this illustrates how a societys weaker individuals accept that power distribution. Some societies might accept it as a part of life and some may view it as a weakness. No matter what the case, inequality exists and it is how the members perceive it and whether or not they want to change it that quantifies this dimension. Moreover, where PDI is high, senior members have more power and exert more influence and are respected and awed by the weaker or less significant members.

IDV is measures again collectivism. This scales how a society holds together and how the individual members of the society view their ambitions and goals versus that of the society or the group. Countries high on IDV have individuals who are looking to further their own goals even if it is at the expense of the group. Moreover in an individualistic society, organizations tend to hire on the basis of merit of the individual and his or her qualifications vis--vis collectivist societies which tend to protect the interests of the employees at large and might retain employees while incurring higher costs rather than take in new and more efficient people.

Another scale is the MAS which is one extreme in the continuum. The other is femininity. The MAS extreme consists of an assertive attitude that is more result oriented in a society versus the softer, feminine skills.  The dimension measures these values to see which is more predominant in a society. For countries with a high MAS, they are more assertive in their goals and are more ambitious in terms of technological advancements where are those high on femininity are more focused on peoples welfare and their issues.

The UAI measures how a society responds to uncertainty and risky situations where much of the information is unknown.  Countries that rate low on UAI are generally more tolerant of half-truths and are comfortable with risky situations, knowing how to tackle them in their stride. Whereas in countries that rate high on this index are more prone to being more structured and systematic and are very focused on finding as much information as they can about a situation to deal with it. A high UAI indicates that the people are geared towards seeking the truth and the facts about everything before they decide on anything. Whereas a low UAI means that people are more willing to work in loosely structured environment with a minimal of rules and are more tolerant toward view points other than their own or the authorities.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) is the last dimension that the Hofstede scale measures. Long-term oriented societies are generally more prone to value time as a tool for getting where they want to be. Such societies persevere despite of the conditions and prepare for the future even if they have to incur short-term losses to achieve this end.

These scales, while subjective and prone to human bias are a very useful tool in comparing societies and eventually helping managers faced with a diverse set of employees understand and communicate better.

Arab Cultural Dimensions
With regards to Hofstede analysis for Saudi Arabia, the country is seen to have a large power distance and high on uncertainty avoidance, which means that the leadership separates itself from the masses and has little interaction with them and what the king says, is the law while opponents are punished severely. This also means that specific and detailed instructions are issued on every matter and there is no space left for ambiguity. These two scales when seen in combination indicate that the authorities have all the power and that they are not held accountable for any of their actions, which may be detrimental to the very spirit of Islam, which they claim to abide by.
     
Another Hofstede characteristic indicates that Saudi Arabia ranks very low on the Individualism (IDV) ranking at 38, compared to a world average ranking of 64.1 This indicates that people are not very individualistic and tend to think of themselves as part of the group. This also implies that people put family and community before themselves and group goals are met before any individual aims are pursued while loyalty to the group and family is prioritized over any other values.

Chinese Cultural Dimensions
The most striking factor about the Chinese is that they are a very collectivist society and that the team or the organizations values are given more priority over any other individual objectives, hence the Chinese rank very low on the individualism index. In fact it is even lower than any other Asian countries rakings.

In addition to this, the Chinese are high on LTO, and low on UCI. They have a high power distance which is generally true of collectivist societies that place high importance on seniority. As per the Masculinity measure, China is more focused on its people having communist roots and therefore is more masculine than feminine in its cultural dimensions.

Personal Communications and Methods of Improving Communication Competencies
Before trying to improve communication competencies one should keep in mind the barriers to effective communication. This follows from theory that problem identification is the first step in problem resolution. The barriers to great communication are physical, cultural, perceptual, emotional, language, gender, and interpersonal. In the situation we are considering, all these apply in varying degrees. With regards to this scenario and backdrop, the main concern here are the language, cultural, perceptual and emotional barriers.

In order to improve the groups communication competencies it is important that each know what background the other is coming from in order to better understand their colleagues. This is important not only in terms of the top-down and bottom-up flow of communication, it is also important for a horizontal flow of communication as colleagues need to understand each other to do better team work.

Therefore, as a solution, a preliminary presentation should be in place where each person in the team, including the manager details their cultures and about their expectations from working in that group. This presentation will be of vital importance where all the learning of effective communication needs to be applied. The presenter should make the right word choice and ensure that his body language and the image that he portrays convey the message that he indeed does care about getting along with his co-workers. In addition to this, the presenters should each in turn ensure that their sincerity is conveyed via their non-verbal communications i.e. their demeanor, body language, aides to presentation, pitch and clothing. All these will factor in conveying the right meta-message that the presenter wants to genuinely work together and be on the same wavelength in order to facilitate team-work.

However an issue that arises out of this ideal scenario is that one member might take advantage of others. This is the case for ethics in communications. This is because it is compulsory for the workers to give out cultural information about themselves and their expectations. This is the reason why those who give out correct and genuine information about themselves are at a risk of being manipulated. For example the American manager might think that he can easily persuade the Chinese employee to forgo his own goals for that of the team and in the meanwhile the American manager would be furthering his own personal motives. This may lead to ill-will and manipulative games at the end of the manager. And once the employee realizes that he is being used, chaos may ensue.

Therefore in order to protect the employees interests an external check by the higher-ups should be done on a regular basis as should informal evaluation where the employees and their manager all have a chance to speak for themselves and describe their experiences so that it can be readily assessed as to who should be given credit for the work done.

Another factor in improving communications competencies should be that rather than deciding on one language, which should be the case initially, each member try and learn the others language in order to fully realize the power of each language as there are nuances and subtleties in each language that the other cannot full capture. This may be time consuming, but it can be done at the expense of added incentives in order to achieve long-term coordination.

This solution will be particularly useful in dealing with conflicts caused by communication barriers as in our case here, difference in language too is a barrier.

Words have the power to create and affect attitudes, behavior, and perception.
Words have indeed the power to create and affect attitudes and influence behavior and perceptions. A difference in word choice can change the imagery created. For example, fire described as an orange, cozy flame warming the soul and a cruel red tongue consuming all within its reach creates different emotions by way of words in the minds of the receiver. These words describe the same element, but create a different imagery, the same way different words hold different meaning in different cultures. For the Arab, words such as family would describe a setting where he is the leader and members have to all but listen to him. Whereas to the Chinese this word would entail a collective group of his immediate and extended family where the head is  his grandfather and he is considered as an important but less powerful and less significant member. Therefore when the manager wishes to appeal to the employees roots he should be very careful in referring to family, because while for the Arab, the Arab might be the sole provider, the Chinese employee would feel that the manager was trying to make him feel insignificant in the decision making processes.

Strategies for managing interpersonal conflicts
Interpersonal conflicts can gain precedence in this example where there is a variety of cultures and hence barriers in place.

There are several factors that need to consider before proceeding to managing conflicts. These factors are your relationship, the situation, the other person whom you are in conflict with and your goals.
Keeping all these in view, if there are problems between the manager and the employee then the manager should try and focus on what the basic issue was. Having a boss, sub-ordinate relationship can mean that the manager can fall into the trap of dictating a solution which the employee will have to follow. However this is not the solution as the employee will still feel that the decision is imposed on him rather than there being a mutually agreeable solution. Therefore in considering the relationship, the manager should avoid the trap of dictation and try and forge a solution that takes into account both their perspectives.  If the situation is such that a joint decision should be taken fast and there are interpersonal conflicts among the culturally diverse team, the American will know that the two belong to collectivist cultures and he can persuade than that the decision is for the betterment of them all and that they all will benefit with the differences set aside. Another factor to consider here is the goal of the manager or the parties involved. When the aggregate goal in kept in mind, many conflicts resolve easily as there tends to be agreement on mutually beneficial issues. Moreover when one considers the background of the relationship with the other person involved and is reminded of the positives, that person is easily brought in for negotiations.

Conclusion
This course on effective communication has been very helpful in realizing and understanding fully the importance of communications and has bought to light simple solutions that have existed always but have not been implemented because their simplicity has been viewed with suspicion.
Thus it is imperative that even in everyday situations, if we consider these aspects of conflict resolution and are more tolerant problems can be resolved easily. Furthermore, when everyone is geared to find a win-win situation there can be better conflict resolution and a much more peaceful society than which exists.