Understanding the Importance of Communicating Across Cultures

Like Target, more and more companies are facing the challenges of communicating across cultures. Intercultural communication is the process of sending and receiving messages between people whose cultural background leads them to interpret verbal and nonverbal signs differently. Two trends contributing to the rapidly increasing importance of intercultural communication are market globalization and cultural diversity.

Market globalization is the increasing tendency of the world to act as one market. Domestic markets are opening to worldwide competition to provide growth opportunities for a company's goods and services. Technological advances in travel and telecommunications are the driving force behind market globalization. New communication technologies allow teams from all over the world to work on projects and share information without leaving their desks. At the same time, advanced technologies allow manufacturers to produce their goods in foreign locations that offer an abundant supply of low-cost labor.² Natural boundaries and national borders have disappeared, for the most part, as increasing numbers of people work in multicultural settings. Even firms that once thought they were too tiny to expand into a neighboring city have discovered that they can tap the sales potential of overseas markets with the help of fax machines, overnight delivery services, e-mail, and the Internet. To be successful in the global marketplace, e-commerce companies must consider offering Web sites in the languages that current Internet users speak (see Figure 3–1).

Figure 3–1	What Languages Do Current Internet Users Speak?

Outdoor-equipment retailer REI uses custom-designed international Web sites to recognize and accommodate cultural differences in the global marketplace. Similarly, UPS has expanded its Web-based tracking services so that customers in 13 European countries can check—in their own language—to see whether packages have reached their destinations around the world. But you need not "go global" or launch a Web site to interact with someone who speaks a foreign language or who thinks, acts, or transacts business differently than you do.³ Even if your company transacts business locally, chances are you will be communicating at work with people who come from various national, religious, and ethnic backgrounds.

Today's work force is made up of more and more people who differ in race, gender, age, culture, family structure, religion, and educational background. Such cultural diversity is the second trend contributing to the importance of intercultural communication. It affects how business messages are conceived, planned, sent, received, and interpreted in the workplace.

The U.S. work force is partly composed of immigrants (new arrivals from Europe, Canada, Latin America, and Asia) and people from various ethnic backgrounds (such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans)—all of whom bring their own language and culture to the workplace. For example, foreign-born engineers jam the corridors of Silicon Valley, hoping to reap the benefits of the U.S. information technology boom. By 2010 minorities will account for 50 percent of the U.S. population, and immigrants will account for half of all new U.S. workers.⁴ Which is why Target offers its employees classes that help them understand and accept cultural differences. Such diversity training is also considered a competitive advantage at Allstate Insurance, which invests in excess of 540,000 hours of classroom time.⁵

Like Target's Rafael Rodriguez, you will be exchanging business messages with co-workers, customers, suppliers, investors, and competitors. To be successful, you must be sensitive to cultural differences as you communicate with people around the world and within your organization. Glance at the job ads in newspapers and you will find that employment opportunities are everywhere if you have good intercultural communication skills. In fact, you will be left behind if you do not develop these skills. However, to do so you must first understand some basics about culture.