Local and Global Communication in Multicultural Settings

Learning Outcomes
At the end of the lesson the learner should be able to:
1. demonstrate knowledge of globalization as an economic phenomenon;
2. demonstrate an understanding of the impact of globalization of communication.
3. demonstrate awareness of the reality of cultural diversity

Global Communication

Today, the internet and advances in communication technologies have opened new
opportunities for both large and small businesses that would have been unthinkable 50 years
ago. With a single web page and a cellphone, any business person can reach new customers,
partners and suppliers anywhere in the world. However, communicating with people on a
global scale is not the same as communicating with people locally. Not only are there more
technological hurdles to overcome, but you also need to address language barriers and cultural
nuances.
At its root, global communication can be defined just as any communication can: a
message is sent from one person or group to another anywhere in the world which can be
described as a five-step process:

1. A person or an organization in one country sends a message. 

2. The message is encoded. 
3. The message travels through a channel or medium. 
4. The receiver in another country decodes the message.
5. The recipient receives the message. 

When it comes to communicating globally, it is usually in the encoding and decoding that
problems occur. As with any communication, ensuring that the message is received as it was
intended is the responsibility of the sender.

One of the most common forms of global communication is an email. A person in one
country types a message and clicks the send button. The message is then encoded into packets
which are sent across the internet to the recipient. In another country, the receiver logs in and
decodes the message by opening the email, and retrieves the message.

When someone from another country reads your company's web page, this too is an
example of global communication. The message is written and encoded in HTML, uploaded to
a server, which is then accessed across the internet and decoded by a web browser – and
perhaps a translation plugin – before the recipient reads it.

In both of these examples, noise can distort the message or make it undecipherable. In
electronic communication, noise can include anything from typos that change the context of a
sentence to a failed internet connection, which could make it appear that you are not
communicating anything at all.

With global communication, encoding and decoding the message can be more complicated
than when you are communicating with someone in your own country due to differences in
language and culture. If either the sender or receiver isn't proficient in the language being used
to send the message, translation issues can add noise, distorting the message. Even small
cultural differences can add noise. While most Americans, for example, associate the word
"cheers" with drinking, someone from the UK may informally use the word as a way of saying
thank you, or goodbye. In Quebec, Canada, a car is often called "un char," which most
translation services decode as a "chariot" or a "tank."

Global communication becomes more complicated when there are multiple recipients from
different cultures with different languages all receiving the same message, as well as when
there are more layers added to the channel. For example, if a world leader makes a speech
broadcast across the globe, people from one region may rejoice at the news, while others may
find it offensive. In this case, the channel itself can involve many different layers, as
translators, news, editors and commentators each interpret the message differently before
passing it on to the intended audiences.

Global Communication in Business

Because there are so many different ways communication can fail in a global context,
businesses must be diligent in reducing as many potential errors as possible, especially those
related to differences in language and culture.

Before attempting to do business with people in another country, organizations should

become familiar with cultural differences that can arise in different contexts. It may be
necessary to hire consultants who are experienced with that country.

 a corporate law firm

 a protocol and etiquette specialist
 a media consultant
 a human resources and labor law expert
 a management consulting firm
 a corporate anthropologist
 a market research firm

Each of these specialists is able to give insights into local laws and customs to help
ensure the new venture doesn't result in unnecessary complications or liabilities that could
destroy a company's reputation before they even get started. Small businesses may not have the
budget to bring on a team of specialists. However, they still need to be familiar with local laws,
culture and language.
Language Barriers in Global Business Communication

Whenever you are communicating with someone in their language, it is your responsibility
to ensure that the words you use are correct. This includes advertising and marketing. Over the
past several decades there have been many large and successful companies that have made
mistakes when translating what they wanted to say to a different language, often with
offensive, or even hilarious, results. Here are a few examples of some translation misfires:

1. Germany: Clairol marketed a new curling iron named "Mist Stick."  In German, mist
means manure.
2. China: Coca-Cola's name was mistranslated when it began selling its product to the
Chinese, who were told to "bite the wax tadpole."
3. Ethiopia: When Gerber began selling its baby food here, they used the same label
design as in other countries, featuring a cute infant. In Ethiopia, however, where not
everyone was literate, the custom was that images on a label only depicted the jar's
contents.
4. Mexico: When Parker Pen began marketing its pens to this Spanish country, its motto,
"It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" was translated to, "It won't leak in
your pocket and make you pregnant."
5. Thailand: Ikea entered this market using the same Swedish names for its products that it
used all over the world. However, many of these names in Thai mean "sex," or have
sexual implications, like “getting to third base."

Cultural Barriers in Global Communication

A common way small businesses first become involved in global operations is by hiring a firm
or consultant from another country, like a company in the United States hiring a software
development team in India with more affordable rates than those who are available locally.
Throughout their initial conversations, the American manager may be focused on the project
requirements, timelines and deliverables. The Indian manager, on the other hand, may be more
focused on building a solid relationship with a new client. After the American manager
carefully explains the project requirements and deliverable in terms she believes are easy to
understand, the Indian manager has many questions but does not ask them. Instead, he says,
"Yes," and agrees to take on the project. Weeks later, when the Indian team completes the first
phase of the project, it does not meet the Americans' expectations and the relationship falls
apart.
This was caused by a cultural nuance, in which the word "Yes" did not necessarily mean that
the Indian manager understood everything and was in agreement. It was simply a word that he
used to move the relationship forward. Had the American manager understood this, she could
have invested more time in fostering their new relationship before assuming that they were in
agreement, thus avoiding the problem.

The Effects of Globalization on Communication

Today, the internet and advances in communication technologies have opened new
opportunities for both large and small businesses that would have been unthinkable 50 years
ago. With a single web page and a cellphone, any business person can reach new customers,
partners and suppliers anywhere in the world. However, communicating with people on a
global scale is not the same as communicating with people locally. Not only are there more
technological hurdles to overcome, but you also need to address language barriers and cultural
nuances.

How Globalization Works?

In simple terms, globalization is the process by which people and goods move easily
across borders. Principally, it’s an economic concept – the integration of markets, trade and
investments with few barriers to slow the flow of products and services between nations. There
is also a cultural element, as ideas and traditions are traded and assimilated.

Storm in a Coffee Cup

To help explain the economic side of globalization, let’s take a look at the well-known
coffee chain – Starbucks. The first Starbucks outlet opened its doors in 1971 in the city of
Seattle.Today it has 15,000 stores in 50 countries. These days you can find Starbucks
anywhere, whether Australia, Cambodia, Chile or Dubai. It’s what you might call a truly
globalized company.

And for many suppliers and jobseekers, not to mention coffee-drinkers, this was a good
thing. The company was purchasing 247 million kilograms of unroasted coffee from 29
countries. Through its stores and purchases, it provided jobs and income for hundreds of
thousands of people all over the world. But then disaster struck. In 2012, Starbucks made
headlines after a Reuters investigation showed that the chain hadn’t paid much tax to the UK
government, despite having almost a thousand coffee shops in the country and earning millions
of pounds in profit there.

How did globalization happen?

We might think of globalization as a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s been around
for centuries. One example is the Silk Road, when trade spread rapidly between China and
Europe via an overland route. Merchants carried goods for trade back and forth, trading silk as
well as gems and spices and, of course, coffee. (In fact, the habit of drinking coffee in a social
setting originates from a Turkish custom, an example how globalization can spread culture
across borders.)

What drives it?

Globalization has speeded up enormously over the last half-century, thanks to great leaps in
technology.
The internet has revolutionized connectivity and communication, and helped people share their
ideas much more widely, just as the invention of the printing press did in the 15 th century. The
advent of email made communication faster than ever.
The invention of enormous container ships helped too. In fact, improvements in transport
generally- faster ships, trains and airplanes- have allowed us to move around the globe much
more easily.
What’s good about it?
While some areas have flourished, others have flourished as jobs and commerce move
elsewhere. Steel companies in the UK, for example, once thrived, providing work of hundreds
of thousands of people. But when China began producing cheaper steel, steel plants in the UK
closed down and thousands of jobs were lost.

Every step forward in technology brings with it new dangers. Computers have vastly
improved our lives but cyber criminals steal millions of pounds a year. Global wealth has
skyrocketed, but so has global warming.

Whilemanyhavebeenliftedoutofpoverty,noteverybodyhasbenefited.Manyarguethat
globalizationoperatesmostlyintheinterestoftherichestcountries,withmosttheworld’s
collective profits flowing back to them and into the pockets of those who already own the most
While many have been lifted out of poverty, not everybody has benefited. Many argue
that globalization operates mostly in the interest of the richest countries, with most of the
world’s collective profits flowing back to them and into the pockets of those who already own
the most.

Although globalization is helping to create more wealth in developing countries, it is

not helping to close the gap between the world’s poorest and richest nations. Leading charity
Oxfam says that when corporations such as Starbucks can legally avoid paying tax, the global
inequality crisis worsens.

Basically, done wisely (in the words of the International Monetary Fund) globalization
could lead to “unparalleled peace and prosperity”. Done poorly,“to disaster.”
Global Communication Definition

At its root, global communication can be defined just as any communication can: a
message is sent from one person or group to another anywhere in the world., which can be
described as a five-step process:
1. A person or an organization in one country sends a message. 
2. The message is encoded. 
3. The message travels through a channel or medium. 
4. The receiver in another country decodes the message.
5. The recipient receives the message. 

When it comes to communicating globally, it is usually in the encoding and decoding that
problems occur. As with any communication, ensuring that the message is received as it was
intended is the responsibility of the sender.

Examples of Global Communication

One of the most common forms of global communication is an email. A person in one
country types a message and clicks the send button. The message is then encoded into packets
which are sent across the internet to the recipient. In another country, the receiver logs in and
decodes the message by opening the email, and retrieves the message.
 When someone from another country reads your company's web page, this too is an
example of global communication. The message is written and encoded in HTML, uploaded to
a server, which is then accessed across the internet and decoded by a web browser – and
perhaps a translation plugin – before the recipient reads it.

In both of these examples, noise can distort the message or make it undecipherable. In
electronic communication, noise can include anything from typos that change the context of a
sentence to a failed internet connection, which could make it appear that you are not
communicating anything at all.

With global communication, encoding and decoding the message can be more
complicated than when you are communicating with someone in your own country due to
differences in language and culture. If either the sender or receiver isn't proficient in the
language being used to send the message, translation issues can add noise, distorting the
message. Even small cultural differences can add noise. While most Americans, for example,
associate the word "cheers" with drinking, someone from the UK may informally use the word
as a way of saying thank you, or goodbye. In Quebec, Canada, a car is often called "un char,"
which most translation services decode as a "chariot" or a "tank."

Global communication becomes more complicated when there are multiple recipients
from different cultures with different languages all receiving the same message, as well as
when there are more layers added to the channel. For example, if a world leader makes a
speech broadcast across the globe, people from one region may rejoice at the news, while
others may find it offensive. In this case, the channel itself can involve many different layers,
as translators, news, editors and commentators each interpret the message differently before
passing it on to the intended audiences.

Complications Inherent With Global Communication

Increasing communication from a local to a global scale has many ramifications beyond
cultural pitfalls and language barriers. to read them in a timely manner. Many business
people now receive up to 200 emails each day, which is too many to read carefully and respond
to in a thoughtful manner. The result is that many emails are merely scanned before being
deleted or filtered away by software, never to be even read.

Business people must be diligent in trying to ensure that the most important emails
don't get lost in the volume. A legitimate query from a potential new client could get mistaken
for spam. An important question from a business partner could get lost in a series of replies in
an unrelated thread of messages. Additionally, when sending an email, business people have no
assurances that the message will be received and read by the recipient.

Another complication in global communication for businesses is overcoming the

disadvantage you have when competing with local companies. While face-to-face meetings can
be replaced with video conference calls, subtleties of body language can't always be captured
on video. A frown from an executive during a presentation, for example, is a crucial piece of
visual information that you could easily miss on video, particularly when that executive may
be off-camera at that moment.
There are many other pieces of important information that get lost when you are
interacting with someone across the globe. When doing business locally, it's usually quite easy
to discern between a company located in the business district, whose ads you have noticed on
billboards and local radio for a number of years, compared to a business located in an
apartment building on the outskirts of town. On the other hand, when you are approached by a
company located in a different country, you may not have much to go with beyond what they
state on their website. Finding out more about a foreign firm usually requires much more time
and research.

On top of that, you may also need to spend more time researching the region where a
foreign company is based. You should know, for example:

 How strong is their currency?

 Is the local economy stable?
 Are there trade agreements or tariffs that would affect your business?
 What recourse will you have if they don't pay their bills?
 How will you find out if there are changes in any of these answers?

Benefits of Global Communication

Despite the risks, operating a business on a global level has many benefits that far
outweigh those risks. Not only does doing business on a global level open up new markets for
selling products and services, it can give you access to resources and talent that may not be
available locally. While every business is different, it's worthwhile to note that Coca-Cola
didn't stop selling their products worldwide because of a few translation problems.

As the world has continued to become more tightly connected and communication
technologies have continued to evolve, the benefits as a whole can be illustrated by the market
penetration of these new technologies themselves. The more globally connected the world has
become; the faster people have adopted new global communication technologies.

The telephone, which was the greatest global communication technology of its time,
replacing the telegraph, took 71 years to reach a market penetration of 50 percent of homes.
Electricity took 52 years to reach the same penetration. Radios followed, taking 28 years.
Color televisions took 18 years. Personal computers took only 19 years. Cellphones took 14
years, while internet access took only 10 years to reach 50 percent of all homes in the U.S.

Because a growing number of companies are already competing on a global level, any
business that wants to compete with them must also open its channels to communicate
effectively with the entire world.

Source: https://bizfluent.com/facts-7601794-definition-global-communication.html
Definition of terms:
1. culture –is a learned normative system that consists of patterns of traditions, beliefs, values,
norms, meanings, and symbols that are passed on from one generation to the next and are
shared to varying degrees by interacting members of a community.

2. Global community – refers to the people or nations of the world, considered as being closely
connected by modern telecommunications and as being economically, socially, and politically
interdependent.

3. cultural awareness – is knowing that there are multiple different cultures based on religion,
ethnicity, nationality, and other factors that have different attitudes and outlooks.

4. cultural sensitivity – involves accepting those differences without insisting that your own
culture is better, or that everyone should do it your way.

5. gender sensitivity – refers to the aim of understanding and taking account of the societal and
cultural factors involved in gender –based exclusion and discrimination in the most diverse
spheres of public and private life.

6. gender-sensitive language – is the realization of gender equality in written and spoken

language. It is attained when women and men and those who do not conform to the binary
gender system are made visible and addressed in language as persons of equal value, dignity,
integrity, and respect.

Intercultural Communication Skills

Intercultural communication skills are those required to communicate, or share

information, with people from other cultures or social groups. While language may be an
important part of intercultural communication, they are by no means the only requirement.

Intercultural communication also requires an understanding that different cultures have

different customs, standards, social mores, and even thought patterns. Finally, good intercultural
communication skills require a willingness to accept these differences and adapt to them.

What’s the difference between multicultural, intercultural, and cross-cultural

communication?

While they all might be in one roof, they describe entirely different rooms. The
differences in the meanings have to do with the perspectives we take when interacting with
people from other cultures.

Multicultural refers to a society that contains several cultural or ethnic groups. People
live alongside one another, but each cultural group does not necessarily have engaging
interactions with each other. For example, in a multicultural neighborhood people may frequent
ethnic grocery stores and restaurants without really interacting with their neighbors from other
countries.
Cross – cultural deals with the comparison of different cultures. In cross-cultural
communication, differences are understood and acknowledged, and can bring about individual
change, but not collective transformations. In cross-cultural societies, one culture is often
considered “the norm” and all other cultures are compared or contrasted to the dominant culture.

Intercultural describes communities in which there is a deep understanding and respect

for all cultures. Intercultural communication focuses on the mutual exchange of ideas and
cultural norms and the development of deep relationships. In an intercultural society, no one is
left unchanged because everyone learns from one another and grows together.

Source: https://www.intechopen.com/books/globalization-education-and-management-agendas/the-impact-of-
globalization-on-cross-cultural-communication