Transcript Communication, Culture and Language

Week 3
Starter Activity
 In pairs recall a time when you were new to a situation
(eg new job, first day at College etc) – what were some
of the thoughts and feelings you had? How did you
behave? Can you identify any phases you went
through?
Learning outcomes
 Examine culture shock and its phases
 Explain benefits and difficulties teamwork and
multicultural teams
 Review the issues of working in multi cultural teams
via technology
 Consider the implications for multi cultural virtual
working for the assignment
Culture Shock
 Psychological disorientation when living in a new
situation (misunderstandings arise because important
cues are misread)
 Negative feelings about the host (country/culture)
arise and negative stereotypes may be confirmed
 Individuals experiencing culture shock may withdrawn
from contact with the host (culture) and long to return
home
Phases of culture shock
 In your allocated groups draw a curve like the one on the
board on the large piece of paper
 Place the following word on the curve when you think they
would be experienced by someone in culture shock who
has gone to live and work in another country for a year:
negotiation, mastery, reverse culture shock, adjustment,
honeymoon
 Put a definition of each term next to it
Phases of culture shock
 Honeymoon phase – excited about the new experience and can see the
positives when compared to old life. Like all honeymoons it comes to an
end.....
 Negotiation phase – differences between the old and new culture are
noticed and make the person feel anxious
 Adjustment phase – become accustomed to new culture and ways of doing
things and more comfortable there
 Mastery phase – fully confident and competent in host culture
 Reverse culture shock - returning to one's home culture after growing
accustomed to a new one can produce the same effects. It can be even more
distressing than culture shock itself as so unexpected (eg returning from a
gap year)
Phases of adjustment
Differences between teams and
groups
 Groups can be people with a shared identity eg a group
of tourists
 Teams need to also have shared goals eg a football
team
Teamworking
 On your tables discuss:
 Why has teamwork become so important to
organisations?
 What are some of the drawbacks of working in a team?
 What can be done to mitigate against this problems?
Why has team working become so
important in business?
 critical capability that might determine the success of the
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organisation
Improved communication
More effective and feasible ideas of much higher quality
Increased productivity
Common commitment to goals
Increased employee satisfaction and motivation
Competitive advantages captured from diversity
(Tiosovold, 1991; Robbins, 1998 De Vita, 1999)
What type of problems do
teams/groups have
People related problems
Process related problems
Members who dominate
Members who don’t
contribute
Talking not listening
Ideas dismissed or ridiculed
No-one initiating discussion
Members isolated or ignored
No agreed ground rules
No agendas for meetings
Lack of leadership
Uncommitted, unreliable
No meeting records kept
No review of progress
No specific roles or tasks
No set deadlines
No chairperson for meetings
Meetings start and/or run
late
Multi-cultural team work
Multicultural teams perform better than
monocultural ones in identifying problems and
generating alternatives.
(Adler 2002)
Why do you think this is?
But.........
Multi-cultural team work
 They are also amongst the worst performers
 Why is this so?
 If managed well the diversity of ideas can be an asset
to performance
 If managed poorly cultural differences can become an
obstacle to performance due to communication
difficulties
Impact of culture on team
performance
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According to Lee 2007 many of the face to face
problems are found in the virtual environment
in particular cultural preferences for
1.
2.
3.
Communication methods
Level of trusting each other
Problem-solving technique and Decision-making
process
Predictions about your countries
 Individually predict/deduce how the countries you have
chosen for the assignment might prefer to communicate
eg in writing, face to face etc.
 How quickly/easily do you think trust could be built with
people from that culture when doing business with them?
 What about problem solving and decision making?
 How have you come to those conclusions?
1. Communication methods: Language difference
and communication preferences
 Language is a powerful tool to exclude or include
certain group members
 Barriers for sharing information among project
team members
Boeing example of increased development cost
including wasted time
 Contribution of theories (next week)
 English as the lingua franca of business (difference in
language week 5)
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2. Level of trusting each other
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Significantly affects team performance.
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What is trust?
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The development of trust in teams
How might working virtually
Further complicate the development
Of trust?
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Trust: A Key to Team Effectiveness
 Trust: a belief in the integrity, character, or ability of
others.
 The primary responsibility for creating a climate of trust
falls on the manager.
 Trust is the key to establishing productive interpersonal
relationships.
 Trust encourages self-control, reduces the need for
direct supervision, and expands managerial control.
Build trust by meeting expectations
The best way to destroy trust
Social loafing
 The human tendency to put forth less effort in a group
than individually.
 Results in possibly lower group performance and failure to
attain group goals
The concept of ‘face’: Guanxi
Significant when working
with many Eastern
cultures who want to avoid
others losing ‘face’.
By being first to make
suggestions they may be
showing others to be less
clever.
On-line might be
misunderstood as social
loafers because they may
not want to contradict or
challenge others.
3. Problem solving and decision
making
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Although there is no absolute ‘right way’ to problem solving
and decision-making, different approaches may create tension
among team members
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e.g. French team members vs. United States team members
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French members: analyse entire problem and potential
approaches
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United States members: trial and error approaches
McDonough et. al. (2001)
Working in multi-cultural teams
 “Discussing cultural differences is a high-risk activity
since all sorts of preferences and prejudices are
exposed.”
 “Differences have to be identified, discussed and
channeled, rather than accommodated, absorbed or
ignored.”
Schneider & Barsoux (2003, pp 239)
Virtual teams
 ‘groups of geographically, temporally, and/or
organizationally dispersed knowledge workers brought
together across time and space by way of information
and communication technologies’ (Jarvenpaa et al
1998*)
 “In today’s business environment, organizations must
adapt quickly or die...the use of virtual teams has
become a common way of doing this” (Duarte and
Snyder 2006**)
Multicultural teams working
virtually
 What additional problems may working virtually add
to a multi-cultural team?
 What may it help alleviate?
Conclusion
 Increasing use of global virtual teams
 Very similar to traditional teams but…
 Culture
 Trust
 Main difference
 Challenges of overcoming communication and culture barriers
 Effective teams focus on
 agreeing effective ways of communicating and working
 understanding the implications of cultural differences
Assignment focus
 If you are likely to be working with
suppliers/customers from different cultures via
technology for the assignment (eg Japanese tourist
board to promote a chain of hotels)
 What considerations/adjustments might you make to
your communications following today’s session?
Next Week
 The theory!!!!!!!!!!
 Hall
 Hofstede