International Organization Behaviour - Essay Example

?International Organisational Behaviour Introduction Culture is referred to as a complex collection of folklore, knowledge, language, rituals, rules,habits, attitudes, lifestyle, customs, and beliefs that gives and links a common identity to a specific group of people at a particular point in time. Communication, which has been variedly defined by authors, is the dissemination of information, conversation between people or passing and receiving information between various people or groups. Culture and communication are closely related in that culture determines the kind of communication among people. Organizational culture also determines the kind of communication used within the organization by the management and employees. Organizational behaviour relates to the feelings and concerns of employees in the organization. This can be defined by their cultural values, attitudes, beliefs, customs and lifestyle. Management, according to international organization behaviour, should consider the views and perspectives of employees in every decision made (McGregor 2005, p. 50). This will ensure communication is effective and the intended information is always disseminated. Culture mediated understanding and perception. It is also true that communication which is one way hinders learning and knowledge acquisition. Therefore the role of culture and communication is very vital in the organization. This is why culture is an important aspect in an organization. Accommodating cultural diversity will also ensure that the relationship between employees and the management is favourable towards achieving the major goals of the organization. This paper therefore seeks to discuss the role of culture and communication. The paper will also identify the vital issues in cross cultural communication. Eventually, the paper will ascertain the management of cultural differences between people in an organization. All social and organizations develop a culture. This is important in that culture enable such units to have a shared experiences, rituals, language patterns, customs, and habits which give the organizational units a special character. This character distinguishes such units from others. For instance, a developed culture in an organization may explain why a particular organization makes much profit than the other. Effective communication is also developed over time. This enable the people involved in organizations to share their experiences at work and even work as a team. This is also important in that communication facilitates achievement of organizational goals, customer relations, and promotes feedback both from employees to the management and from customers to the organization. Organizations develop culture that is usually apparent in specific layout of work space, pattern of dress, styles of leadership, styles of functions and meetings, talking about direction and nature of organization, and ways of thinking about the organizational roles, goals and mission of existence. These perspectives are achieved with the help of effective communication within the organization (Graham 2005, p. 40). Culture of an organization may be expressed through both verbal and non verbal communication among the parties in the organization. Organizations that develop a common culture for its employees understand the role of cultural diversity of its employees and achieve its objectives. In the concept of organizational behaviour, managers are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the views and perceptions of employees are understood and incorporated in day to day management of the business. Managers can only understand their employees if they first conceptualize their cultural beliefs, norms, customs, and attitudes. Some employees feel motivated if they are involved in decision making and their suggestions considered in the organization. This can be effectively done where the role of communication is emphasized and cultural diversity within the organization is captured. This introduces the concept of cross cultural communication within the organization. Cross cultural communication demands an understanding of all the cultures existing within the organization and even the world in general. This mastery of cultures is vital in that it helps in communication and relations with other people who relates differently to the world. The primary and most prominent element of cross cultural communication is basically knowledge. It is absolutely important that people involved in the organization masters or understands the potential challenges and problems within the cross cultural communication and make huge attempts to sort issues and overcome those challenges and problems. It is in fact very significant to note that in many instances, people’s attempts to overcome these challenges and problems will not always be successful, therefore they should get ready to make adjustment to their behaviour as necessary and accordingly. People have always assumed that there exists a potential possibility of significant communication problems resulting from cultural differences. Actually, effective communication among people with varying cultures is potentially challenging. However, the role of culture and communication remains significant in organizations with different cultures. Culture provides ways of thinking, hearing, seeing and even interpreting the world to people. This is due to the fact that people from varying cultures may interpret a common word differently even if they share a common language. There is a potential increase in misunderstandings where people of different languages speak and need for translation arises (Gumperz 2000, p. 188). This can basically hinder relationships among the people in question. Therefore, culture and communication go in handy and are very important in an organization setting. Culture and communication is vital in all social and organizational settings. The two enhance relationship and understanding among people. They also facilitate conflict resolutions and enhance achievement organizational goals through team work. If people understand one another; they are likely to dedicate their efforts to work towards the success of the organization. The perceptions, views, and suggestions of employees can be important elements in organizations for invention and innovation purposes. This can be put in reality when cultural diversity within the organization is well understood and accepted. It is fairly safe to asset that there are significant misunderstandings in cross cultural communication. This is because even people from a common culture often have misunderstanding with non verbal communications such as gestures and signs. Cross cultural communication will often have both non verbal and verbal communication with different meanings to distinct groups of people. Cross cultural communication demands that people take time to listen and think in order to conceptualize the real meanings of what the other party is expressing. This is reflective listening which is a significant ingredient of cross cultural communication. This helps in confirming that one has completely understood what is being said by the other party. Culture however still interferes with cross cultural communication. The interference of culture to cross cultural communication is exhibited through cognitive constraints, which are the views of the world or the frames of the references providing a backdrop in which all the other new information is inserted into or compared to. Another source of interference is the behaviour constraints (Gumperz 2000, p. 190). These are rules from particular cultures about what makes an appropriate behaviour which in turn impacts of non verbal and verbal communication. These aspects may include: how close people stay to others when speaking, whether people look to the eye or not, whether people talk around the issue or just say overtly what they mean. All such aspects make up rule of kindness and politeness and they differ from one culture to another. Lastly, culture can interfere with cross cultural communication through emotional constraints. This is due to the differing mechanisms of displaying emotions. Some cultures are known for getting very emotional during debates, some cry, yell, and exhibit anger, frustration and fear openly. On the other hand, other cultures are known to hide their emotions and only share the factual or rational aspects of the situation. These aspects show how important the role of culture and communication is to people in an organization. The above mentioned constraints tend to result into problems in communication. The involved parties should therefore be aware of such differences because if they fail to note the mentioned constraints, then people involved are likely to become victims of the communication problems resulting from those differences. However, it is evident that it takes more than just awareness to solve the mentioned constraints and effectively communicate across cultures. Cross cultural communication often demand an intermediary or mediator that is familiar with the cultures involved. This helps in diffusing any possible arising conflicts within the conversation. International organization behaviour is therefore important in noting the importance of employee consideration and adoption and acceptance of cultural diversity. This is important in strengthening communication both internally and externally with employees and customers. Most people in organizations have experienced circumstances where poor communication or lack of communication result into an adverse effect to the business operations. Failure to understand the role of culture and communication in daily organizational operations and business transactions can result into dissatisfied customers, delayed projects, angry stakeholders, and even de-motivated employees. Although the overall role of culture and communication is to ensure clarity among the concerned parties, the function changes with regard to the goals of the organization and the target audience. It is hence necessary to acknowledge the role of culture and communication in any particular organization as it is important for achievement of the goals of the organization, addressing the needs of employees, satisfying the customers, and making the stakeholders happy (Grimshaw 2009, p. 100). It is also important to note that in the process of planning for the function and role of culture and communication, the following tasks are often included: Assess the influence of perceptions resulting from different aspects of organizational culture such as workflow, operational processes, review, rules, relationships, and artefacts. In order to address the function of mediation within the process of adoption, develop the strategies which are part of the plan of the change management. Make sure all the channels of appropriate communication are placed in order to enhance and promote the knowledge of understanding and sharing among and between all the stakeholders. Ensure you work with your chosen vendor in order to develop the shared artefacts like learning outcomes and test plans, and to reduce communication and cultural barriers to a successful adoption. Good and effective business communication refers to a situation where the sent message is received and perceived by the recipient without distortion in its meaning. This at personal relationship level is easy to do in person or via phone since one gets instant feedback to confirm if you are understood or not. This is not often possible in business organizations since majority of communications is in the form of one to many, where one person communicates to more than one person at the same time with the same message. The possibility of distorting the message sent is therefore high. The role of effective and good business communication is to eliminate or reduce greatly any possible dissonance that may occur when an individual is communicating to more than one person with the same message. Culture and communication plays a vital role in this respect. When a person understands culture of a particular group of people, sending information or communicating to the will not be a problem since the sender will be in a position to anticipate how the people are likely to interpret the sent message, hence eliminate instances of dissonance. Culture and communication also plays a pivotal role in an organization especially in instances where a business organization is introducing a new service or product to the market. Culture and communication will help in describing the goodness of the service or product and the mechanism of marketing and selling the service or the product. Developing a new product or service often entail small teams who work together. There is therefore a greater chance of success of the innovation if these teams are able to communicate to one another in an honest and open fashion. This can only be ascertained by the role of culture and communication. The teams will only understand one another when they can first conceptualize the beliefs, attitude, customs and values of one another. It is therefore important to understand people’s culture in order to communicate effectively. This is because the development of a new product or service needs a precise, accurate, and concise communication which must also be kept for references in the future. Hence culture and communication has a greater role in the success of innovation (Graham 2005, p. 48). Culture and communication also plays a pivotal role in shaping the morale of the company. Where an organization is experiencing a downturn in business, the Chief Executive Officer has to bolster the morale of the employees. This is an instance where there will be a practice of one way communication in which the Chief Executive Officer addresses employees in a wide company meeting. In this case, whether the Chief Executive Officer is an introvert or extrovert, one who does not enjoy the role or a natural communicator, the substance is more important than his style. Employees are likely to respond positively if the Chief Executive Officer speaks and appeals to their emotions in an open and honest way concerning the prospects of the firm. This is a situation where culture and communication plays a pivotal role. First, the Chief Executive Officer must understand the attitude and values of the employees as well as their culture, and then he has to embrace an effective communication skill to relay the concerns in order to shape the morale of the company (Clarke, 2009, p. 17). When employees get a feeling of being appreciated and their suggestions welcomed for decision making, they will obviously respond positively to the assertion of the Chief Executive Officer of the organization. It is therefore important that people adopt cultural diversity and develop organizational culture that will bring shared language, shared experience and mechanisms of handling conflicts within the organization such as strikes and protests. This illustrates the important role of culture and communication in an organization. Another important role of culture and communication can be witnessed in the sales and marketing aspects. A salesperson who calls on accounts of individuals typically must understand the art of face to face or one on one communication. Culture and communication mastery will enable him or her (salesperson) to communicate effectively the benefits of the product, the terms of payment, product price, among other sales aspects in order to enhance clarity and avoid ambiguity. In doing so, it is important for such salesperson to understand the culture of the targeted group not to introduce a product that may not be accepted by the customs, beliefs, values or norms of that culture (Chick 2006, p. 200). The salesperson must be ready to communicate effectively in order to convince people to buy, especially those who may be on the fence debating on whether to buy the product or not. The materials of marketing from a company are usually a one to one type of communication. Such materials originate for the company and are distributed to large numbers of audience of all types such as potential, past and current customers. The communications in sales and marketing plays an important role in shaping the image of the company. This is because sales and marketing messages forms the frontline messages that those who accessed them will always use to recall about the company. It is therefore important to ensure the information is effectively disseminated and understood with the intended meaning without any distortion. In order to assure this, the person in charge must understand different aspects of communication used in the culture of the target group. Without a strong mastery of the people’s culture, the salesperson may end up sending marketing messages that may be distorted in translation by the target group (Cavalcanti 2000, p. 180). International organization behaviour demands that Chief Executive Officers of respective organizations carry out a communication audit in order to ascertain if the role of communication in the company requires significant improvement. Communication as stated before ensures that employees are heard and their views considered in the decision making process of the organization (Besnier 2000, p.317). The grievances of employees can only be given enough attention when they are heard. Without doing this, the quality of services and products of the organization is likely to go down because it is determined by the employees who attend to the customers. Therefore mastery of culture and communication is of essence. In respect to this, a communication audit is vital in order to improve where necessary. This can be done through short questionnaire in which every individual within the organization is to honestly respond to the questions (Bal 2006, p. 50). Questions that are likely to be asked include those that address how well the internal communication is perceived by the employees as well as their feelings on the communications of the company with the suppliers, customers, stakeholders and with employees themselves. The responses are then analyzed and reported back to the employees in order to improve the role of culture and communication within the organization. It is in the open that the workplace today is expanding with the expansion of the business environment which includes the span of numerous cultures and geographic locations. There the difficulty in understanding the mechanism of communicating effectively with people who speak a totally different language is increasing. This means that the culture of the mentioned group need to be studied and mastered in order to meet the organizational goals in that area (Bardovi 2008, p. 121). Hence, the importance of culture and communication in business organizations is clear. The role of culture and communication demands a deeper understanding of cultural diversity. Different contexts of culture are associated with various challenges in communication within a workplace. Even employees who speak same language but located in different offices or locations experience varying cultures in their work (Hartford 2007, p. 124). Therefore there are particular cultural differences that need to be put into consideration in attempts to effect optimum communications between different groups of people. In such situations, the strategy of effective communication begins with the mastery that both the recipient and sender of the message come from different backgrounds and culture (Mason 2007, p. 152). This however introduces uncertainty and even make complex communication. Without conceptualizing much of sub cultures and cultures, it is vital for people to note that basic mastery of cultural diversity is the foundation of effective cross cultural communication. It does not necessarily mean we study and understand all individual languages and culture in detail, but we all need to learn the better way to communicate with groups and individuals whose language of choice or first language is different from our own. We therefore need to develop a great awareness of varying cultures. This justifies the importance of learning basics of different cultures and languages. It is therefore of necessity that for business organization to make significant profits, they need to learn the culture and language of the market in which they belong. It is hence evident that culture and communication is very important in organization (Aston 2005, p. 65). Just as described in international organization behaviour concept, communication is the backbone of the success of any successful business organization. Mastery of culture and communication enhances tolerance among employees. International organization behaviour demands tolerance and understanding of one another in the organization. Tolerance of employees is very important and essential. However, an organization must maintain the acceptable behaviour standards. In this respect, mastery of culture and communication will ensure the following: employees contribute to the goals of the organization and not hinder or harm the mission of organization or delivery of services and products to the customers respectively; employees construct and not damage the organizational cohesion or not prevent this cohesion from becoming more efficient and effective; and employees do not harm unnecessarily the interest of other employees or even that of the organization in general (Astbury 2009, p. 178). Conclusion In summary, international organization behaviour concept demands that employees as well as management demonstrate goodwill and courtesy when dealing with people from differing cultures. This will ensure a successful communication. Cross cultural communication should therefore be kept very simple and unambiguous. It is also advisable to avoid humour unless you are sure the recipient will catch it. This is because certain things that may be humorous in one culture may be offensive grossly to the other. International organization behaviour advocates for understanding between management and employees and the customers. In cases where there might be a potential language barrier, it is advisable to seek help of an experienced translator to help prevent unnecessary conflict that may arise from the ineffective communication (Agar 2007, p. 100). Summarily, variations in culture impact on communication in various ways as mentioned in the paper. The paper has also addressed the role of culture and communication and identified the vital issues in cross cultural communication. The paper has finally ascertained that the cultural differences between people in an organization can be managed. Bibliography Agar, M. 2007. Language shock: Understanding the culture of conversation. New York: William Morrow. Astbury, Valerie 2009. Organizational behavior. ARAL series S, 11:173-184. Aston, G. 2005. 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