The term intercultural communication refers to a type of communication that is aiming at sharing information across diverse social groups and cultures. In general, intercultural communication describes wide range of communication processes that are naturally occurring in organizations which are made up of individuals who are from different backgrounds. Today’s world has been characterized by increased communication between different people around the world resulting to establishment of contracts across people from different locations. The term power distance as defined by (De Vito, 2006) is the extent which ordinary people in organizations accept that power in the institution is unequally distributed. Many cultures which have a low power distance do accept power relations which are more democratic in nature. In such organizations, people who hold inferior positions feel free to question their superiors and challenge them when it comes to decision making or policy suggestion. A good example of a country with low power distance is the United States and a country with high power distance is Saudi Arabia (De Vito, 2006). High power distance in a country not only affects the relationship between the government and its citizens but also affects employer-employee relationship (De Vito, 2006). Power distance is mainly concerned with the attitudes of people and the respect they have to their authorities. Having respect to your authorities and bearing in mind the right attitude is
Intercultural Communication is the process that occurs when members of two or more cultures or co-cultures exchange messages in a manner that is influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbol systems, both verbal and
Friendship functions as an overbounded system. This does not remove the negative aspects of politics in organization, it simply demands that those conflicts, power games and coalitions be done behind the scenes and secretively. This ultimately damages the morale of the organization and contributes to its destruction. Many times an organization has numerous systems and standard operation procedures that power is removed from anyone who is not positioned to wield it or not accustomed to navigating to gain power. In the book, Reframing Organizations, it states, “If power is highly regulated, political activity is often forced under wraps” (Boleman, L & Deal, T, 2013, p. 201). In those cases, politics tend to take a seedy and ominous tone. Out front and in the hands of the
Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines intercultural as “between or among people of different cultures” (Webster's New World College Dictionary, 2017). Definition alone, however, is not important to understand the nuances of how the intercultural communication affects our lives in this ever-globalizing meshing that is at the core of our universe now and will be part of our lives for the foreseeable future. The world we live in now not just requires us to understand the intercultural intricacies, it indeed demands that we master the art of communicating across multiple, diverse, and often, contrasting cultures that exist in the World today.
Now what is Intercultural Communication? This idea is defined as the interaction/communication between individuals or groups who come from different backgrounds, speak
In this essay, detailed explanation were used to analyze how power and influence assigned and lost, when they originally come from and how to use power and influence tactics in interpersonal relationship and modern organizations. Theories, studies, figures, researches and examples of modern politicians were provided to support the analysis of power and influence. Overall, power is the ability to influence others values and behavior while influence tactics are the specific method to change them. Power is formed personally and positionally. It can change overtime by vary situations or environment like the degree of scarcity in society. Power and influence tactics are interrelated. Without power, it is impossible to influence others even have great influence tactics. Contrarily, power becomes titular without influence tactics. Using power and influence properly is beneficial to an organization but misusing power and influence is destructive to internal and external organizations.
Within distribution of power, there are differences in the ways cultures view its importance. For example, "in some cultures the implementation of power sharing is likely to face more obstacles in a culture where sub ordinance do not rely heavily on their superiors." (pg.99) This is contrary to the common culture that most of us know in our world. For example, in the United States, people would be more likely to respond to managers that they favor or take liking to.
Power distribution is expectations and acceptance of how power is shared unevenly. In correlation to this, there is high power-distance and low power-distance. High power-distance is natural, it’s the recognition of higher and lower power. In other words, people within the group understand and respect who has high power and who does not. Places where high power-distance is practiced is the Middle East, Malaysia, Guatemala, Venezuela and Singapore. Low power-distance is the opposite, rather everyone within the group expects power to be given and respected evenly. No one stands higher than anyone else. Low
According to Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, power is production, in and through social relations of effects on actors that shape their political fate. Moreover, they argued that the concept of power has two dimensions that form it core principles; first, are the social
Disruptions in intercultural communication regarding the law are subject to no limitations. Whether the issue lies between defendant and plaintiff, or the problem arises between lawyer and jury, lawyer and judge, and even lawyer and client, the disconnects are plenty. Effective communication is essential for the judicial system to work properly, and without proper and mindful correspondence, the system inevitably fails. Intercultural communication refers to the exchanging of information between people from different cultures; according to a study conducted by two anthropologists in the 1950’s, there were greater than 164 definitions of the word ‘culture,’ making the act of Intercultural Communication an ambiguous one. With many participants in the courtroom from different foreign cultural sectors, several challenges arise in the proceedings of daily practice, so by having a strength in intercultural competence, the person in question has an obvious edge. By recalling one’s own cultural heritage and addressing the theoretical foundations of intercultural communication, competence is significantly increased. Without this increased form of competence, it is difficult to maintain an unbiased outlook in between the barristers. Some strategies that are used to ensure that the misunderstandings are minimal include the destruction of language barriers, empathy towards other cultures and customs, and increasing the commonalities between
According to Vera (n.d.) intercultural communication can be defined as a situated communication between individuals or groups of difference linguistic and cultural origins. However, Kimberly (2010) also discussed that when intercultural communication happens, it might directly cause noise in communication which means something that keeps a receiver from completely comprehending a message. Therefore, as I am the one who was facing those intercultural communication problems, I should put some of my effort in finding out and investigating those intercultural communication problems to solve it as soon as
rent individuals or groups, with different cultural descents. Culture, religion, and race, have all been created by us humans, and this has created a system of domination in the past between different races because of the European colonizers. In the book Intercultural Communication by Kathryn Sorrells, She explains, “As Europeans expanded their reach around the globe in the 15th to 19th centuries, intercultural contact on a scale perviously unknown occurred. In theses “encounters,” any “differences” and most especially differences as they were marked or represented through the body were constructed as significant and were infused with meaning through a hierarchical racial system that justified and promoted domination and exploitation” (Page 60-61). This shows us that centuries ago, the idea of race was created and has been passed along through many generations. If this idea of what we call “race” was never created there would not be any parting between individuals and how these individuals communicate with each other based on their cultures. In the article “Place and Kinship,” by Donald Andrew Grinde, he gives us a great example of how history influenced intercultural interactions for his culture and race. In this article Grinde says, “I also understood, from the start, that by sticking to a realistic interpretation of American Indian history from the Native American viewpoint I would not gain friends and influence people in the upper echelons of the historical profession
This is the extent to which the less powerful members of the community or society within a country expect and accept that. In this context, the book looks at how individuals regard their position in terms of power in the society. The power distance reflects in role pairs of authority-citizen, parent-child and boss-subordinate in different countries. In high power distance organisations, organisational hierarchy is obvious. There is a line between bosses and subordinates. Low power organisations have a flat organisational structure.
Power Distance refers to whether individuals accept inequality in power, including within the organisation. Low power distance means individuals expect equality in power and do not accept a leader's authority just because of the leader's position.
Power distance is the degree of “equality or inequality between people in the society and indicates the extent to which less powerful expect and accept that power is distributed unequally”. Power distance also illustrates to which member of staff acknowledge that superiors
Power Distance which is the fact of inequality between all individuals in the society in every aspects of their lives, and it expresses the fact that different people based on their culture have different approach to this. “Power distance is used to measure the equality and inequality among people in a society”. Lee, Y.,& Liu, W. (2012) We all are aware of existing of inequalities in every society in some extent, in some countries there are more inequalities than others. In countries with high power distance, they accept this distance and they don’t have much desire to change this fashion because power distance is fundamental to their culture. They accept the hierocracy in their work place. To lead and direct individuals who are coming from this type of society, a leader should know that member of this culture are depend on their superiors and leaders. The high power distance people prefer to have an “authoritarian” management style. In contrast, in countries and societies with lower power distance the leadership is decentralized, and the subordinates prefer to work and get reward based on their performance. There is neither hierocracy nor authoritative management style in those organizations. So, everyone carries on some part of responsibilities toward the goals of organizations. Lee, Y.,& Liu, W. (2012)