EB4602 Theory Practice Intercultural Business Communication

CHALLENGES AND IMPACTS OF INTERCULTURAL INTERACTIONSByInstitution
Challenges and Impacts of Intercultural Interactions
Introduction
There are diverse approaches scholars take while explaining culture and its true definition. Generally, culture is a way of life for a certain group of people, involving their behaviour, values, beliefs and symbols, which they accept without question and inherited across generations by imitation and communication. According to Hofstede (2003), we exist in a dynamic society with different levels of interactions, which shape and define their own forms of culture. Therefore, people daily need to live up to the complex requirements that these cultural environments impose on them.
With the advancement in science and technology, the world has become a global village, where faster means of transport and communication have highly reduced the cultural gap that existed between different groups of people. It therefore becomes difficult for people to define themselves in multicultural societies, with individuals bearing different cultural identities. Additionally, personal values and preferences such as respect, freedom, self-esteem, and equity come to play even in a society that embraces cultural diversity. Therefore, intercultural interactions face many challenges that this study aims to discuss and unravel the impacts it causes on individuals at different levels of the society.
Types of Cultures
People within a society may come from different cultural backgrounds, which places them on different cultural levels. Hofstede (1997) shows that there are six levels of culture, which includes national, regional, gender, generational, social class, and organizational level. Regional level comprises of people from different religions, linguistic and tribe. Social class differentiates people according to their profession, academic backgrounds, and occupation, while organizational level structures employees according to the process of work in the organization (Berlitz 2009).
Ethnicity in the regional cultural level places people into different ethnic groups, where individuals from the same region easily identify with each other, speak same language and have a common origin. People in different ethnic groups have different behaviours, attitudes, and positions (Onea, 2012). People from different ethnic groups also speak different languages, whose words may convey a different meaning in another language. Gender level of culture refers to the cultural practises specific to male and female members. In a society, men and women have different perceptions in terms of how to approach certain issues. For example, men see communication as a way of having control and independence while women take communication as essential in relationships (Onea, 2012).
In social class form of culture, different classes have different attitudes, where superior social classes have positive attitudes towards gender, marriage, abortion, and environmental policies (Karahanna, Evaristo & Srite 2006). Studies show that the more educated people get the more secular, materialistic, and intrinsically motivated they become (Haidt & Joseph 2007). The social segregation of people into upper, middle and lower class clearly differentiates ind...