1. Intercultural Communication
Øyvind Kalnes
Held at the University of Wollongong
3. December 2007

2. Plan
1. Some words on communication
2. Culture and globalization
3. Challenges and opportunities for the
organization
4. Intercultural competence and the
dangers of “culturalism”

3. 1. Some words on communication

4. Communication
• Any behavior that is
perceived by another
person
• Verbal (spoken, written),
non-verbal or graphic
• Dynamic and interactive
process of encoding and
sending a message, as
well as receiving and
decoding it
• Feedback: The receiver
Feedback
responds by encoding and
sending a message to the
sender. The roles are
reversed

5. Transmission model
How do you encode a message?
Examples of channels and “noise”

6. A company using WWW as a channel

7. A speech … in a film..
Who is the sender? What is his channel?
What is his message? Who are the receivers?

8. Perception
• The sender’s idea is not the
same as what the receiver
understands
• Aspects of a message is
selected (and others
deselected), organized and
interpretated, to find the
meaning
• Culture is regarded as a
crucial in this process

9. 2. Culture and globalization

10. What is culture?
• Learned behaviour
• A deposit of collective knowledge accumulated over
generations
• Collective programming of the mind (Hofstede)
Does it matter?
• Always, although we often take it for granted.
• But it is most visible under variation (fast changes and
multiculturality)
Analytical approach to organisations (KISS!):
• As rational systems under stable and homogenous
conditions
• As natural systems under unstable and/or heterogenous
conditions
• As open systems considering internal characteristics, as well
as environmental characteristics

11. Globalization
• Migration leads to cultural
diversity at home
• Multinational companies
operate in diverse cultures
• Internationalization of trade
makes for cultural diversity of
overseas suppliers and
customers
• Traveling and media

12. Learning culture
• Enculturation: Learning one’s own culture
• Acculturation: Learning and adjusting to a
“host culture”
Culture as a condition for communication
Intercultural communication - Between individuals
belonging to different cultures
Intracultural communication - Between individuals
belonging to different cultures

13. Culture creates
Imagined communites
• A cultural group is an imagined community
• You feel part of a group, even though you have
never met – and never will meet – most of the
other individuals in that group
• You imagine ”others” that are not part of the
group
(Benedikt Anderson)

14. Perspectives on culture
• Ethnocentrism: The belief in the
Ethnocentrism
superiority of one’s own culture. “The
other” should learn and adjust.
• Cultural relativism: Each culture is as
relativism
good as the other culture. I should learn
from and adjust to “the other”.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
Rudyard Kipling
The White Man's Burden 1899

15. 3. Challenges and opportunities for
the organization

16. Diversity in culture
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
Power distance Individualism Uncertainty Masculine
> collectivism avoidance > Femi
Nordic 6 2 6 6
Germanic 5 4 3 1
Anglo 4 1 5 2
Latin Eur. 3 3 1 5
Latin Am. 2 6 2 3
Far East 1 5 4 4
Ronen and Shenkar’s Country Clusters using Hofstede’s
Culture Dimensions. Numbers indicate country cluster’s rank

17. Migration
200 million international (first
generation) migrants.
 Cultural diversity in workforce
 Multicultural competence
Australia:
 25% born overseas
 140 different countries
Tamils in a sea food factory in  85% of workplaces more than
Northern Norway 4 nationalities
Acculturation, as learning and adjusting to host cultures
 Chinese in Australia differs from Chinese in the USA, in
Singapore, as well as China.
What are the challenges and opportunities for the
multicultural organization?

18. Chelsea FC:
7 Brits, 14 nationalities
Owned by Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich

19. Transnational companies
30,000 local restaurants in more than 100 countries.
• Global branding and standards in products and
organisation (“McDonaldization”, “McJob”)
Versus
• Adapting and adjusting to local culture in products
and organisation

20. Glocalization: How can the global be local?
Universalisation
of the particular
Global
Local Particularisation
of the universal
What were once the particular:
• a product of “local” cultures (hamburgers, pizza, football, production
norms, TV-soaps etc.
Becomes universalised at the global level
• But will still be adapted to local cultures or interpreted according to
local culture.

21. 4. Intercultural competence and the
dangers of “culturalism”

22. Dangers of “culturalism”
Stereotyping 
Human beings are individuals with
• A capacity to act on a basis of
independent reasoning
• Multiple and changing identities
Determinism 
• Cultures develop and change
through human interaction
• Or it may be locked in through
human interaction

23. Stereotyping “others”

24. Francis Fukuyama (1989):
The End of History – (and Diversity?)
The triumph of the West …can
be seen also in the ineluctable
The final victory of liberalism spread of consumerist Western
culture …
1. Economy: The free market
The end of history will be a very
2. Politics: Representative sad time …daring, courage,
democracy imagination, and idealism, will be
replaced by economic
calculation, the endless solving
.... and  of technical problems ..the
satisfaction of sophisticated
consumer demands.

25. Samuel Huntington:
The Clash of Civilizations (1993)
"We know only who we are when we know who we are
not and often only when we know whom we are against
….. The velvet curtain of culture has replaced the iron
curtain of ideology”

26. Intercultural competence
Know your own culture, as well as the “other”
culture
• Culture specific: Facts and information
specific
• Culture general: Awareness, flexibility,
“other-orientation”
Sensitivity  Success and cooperation
Insensitivity  Failure and conflict

27. The wrong codebook