What is cross-cultural communication? This includes speech, body language, text and pictures by a range of media across differences in ‘culture’, described as a set of shared assumptions about what is important and how to behave. These differences are relative and deep-rooted. They apply to groups of people, not necessarily to any one individual. Click here to read a paper by Peter (Moore); this is focused on differences in national culture.
Why has cross-cultural communication grown in importance? This is because new patterns of organisation and closer links between people are emerging all over our world: benefits of lower cost, greater speed and closer cooperation are partly offset by increased potential for misunderstanding between people from different cultures. A tool that can aid cross-cultural communication is Hofstede’s model of national culture. It consists of six dimensions on which many countries have been assessed through research. This model is introduced in the paper.
We all face challenges involved with cross cultural communication in one form or another. We can do our best, whilst learning more, and then improving our approach, challenging our assumptions along the way. For instance, this week Denise (Mulligan), David (Coates) are with Rosie in The Gambia. We’re continuing a three year programme of engagement there with a national level marketing federation led by women; this is in collaboration with United Purpose. We’re also working with a small NGO, TARUD. The work involved requires continual learning to effectively address cultural communication challenges.
During the previous visit to The Gambia, Gareth (Jones) created three films: these are all between 2-3 mins and can be found on our website here, under 'Films'.
Have a great weekend,
Lorna, Rosie and Ian