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Master of Advanced Studies in INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Case Studies in Intercultural Communication

Welcome to the MIC Case Studies page.

Case Studies Intercultural Communication

Here you will find more than fifty different case studies, developed by our former participants from the Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication. The richness of this material is that it contains real-life experiences in intercultural communication problems in various settings, such as war, family, negotiations, inter-religious conflicts, business, workplace, and others.

Cases also include renowned organizations and global institutions, such as the United Nations, Multinationals companies, Non-Governmental Organisations, Worldwide Events, European, African, Asian and North and South America Governments and others.

Intercultural situations are characterized by encounters, mutual respect and the valorization of diversity by individuals or groups of individuals identifying with different cultures. By making the most of the cultural differences, we can improve intercultural communication in civil society, in public institutions and the business world.

How can these Case Studies help you?

These case studies were made during the classes at the Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication. Therefore, they used the most updated skills, tools, theories and best practices available. They were created by participants working in the field of public administration; international organizations; non-governmental organizations; development and cooperation organizations; the business world (production, trade, tourism, etc.); the media; educational institutions; and religious institutions. Through these case studies, you will be able to learn through real-life stories, how practitioners apply intercultural communication skills in multicultural situations.

Why are we opening our "Treasure Chest" for you?

We believe that Intercultural Communication has a growing role in the lives of organizations, companies and governments relationship with the public, between and within organizations. There are many advanced tools available to access, analyze and practice intercultural communication at a professional level. Moreover, professionals are demanded to have an advanced cross-cultural background or experience to deal efficiently with their environment. International organizations are requiring workers who are competent, flexible, and able to adjust and apply their skills with the tact and sensitivity that will enhance business success internationally. Intercultural communication means the sharing of information across diverse cultures and social groups, comprising individuals with distinct religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. It attempts to understand the differences in how people from a diversity of cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them. For this reason, we are sharing our knowledge chest with you, to improve and enlarge intercultural communication practice, awareness, and education.

We promise you that our case studies, which are now also yours, will delight, entertain, teach, and amaze you. It will reinforce or change the way you see intercultural communication practice, and how it can be part of your life today. Take your time to read them; you don't need to read all at once, they are rather small and very easy to read. The cases will always be here waiting for you. Therefore, we wish you an insightful and pleasant reading.

These cases represent the raw material developed by the students as part of their certification project. MIC master students are coming from all over the world and often had to write the case in a non-native language. No material can be reproduced without permission. © Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication , Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland.

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Cross-cultural Communication: Case Study

2017, © www.odayalnabhan.com

Cross-cultural communication is the process by which people from different cultures exchange, negotiate, and mediate their cultural differences through language, space relationships, and non-verbal gestures. In business, cross-cultural communication is a significant determinant of how a person will successfully carry out business with stakeholders and teams beyond their cultural boundary. Benefits such as increased bandwidth, competitive advantage and institutional knowledge are best realized when there is adequate and efficient communication (Bilets, & Serdyuk, 2016).

Related Papers

JRK (Jurnal Riset Komunikasi)

Yohanna Piay

International Journal of Business & Management Studies

Montagna Elena Maria

In a world so diverse and culturally rich as the one we live in today; it would be a pity to waste the possibility to broaden our horizons and understand a little of what is distant from our everyday lives. Communication is the most powerful tool we have to connect with other human beings, not only to fulfil our social needs but also for business purposes. To be effective communicators, one is not only required to speak several languages: there is so much more than words can describe. Managers need to learn about other cultures’ traditions, body language, values, customs, and many more cultural aspects that deeply influence the way business is conducted around the world. This is why cross-cultural communication is such an important topic for business studies and has long been rightfully studied. The analysis of the concepts of culture and communication are the key to understanding such a complex theme.

Studies in Media and Communication

Maurice Odine

The paper addresses the foundation of cross-cultural communication and its relation to global business. Shina Neo (2015) states that, humans take for granted their communication with one another, stating, “In a multicultural organization, how employees communicate can set the tone.” Populations in North Africa and the Middle East believe in “external control” over destiny, meaning events are predetermined. In Japan, the productivity movement is based on respect for humanity, which is focused on cooperation. John-ren Chen and Christian Smekal (2004) argue that liberalizing international markets creates foreign capital and foreign investment. Concurring in support of global business are the European Union and African Union, Organization of American States and Caribbean Basin, plus the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Furthering cross-cultural communication and global business is new information technology. Meanwhile, the latter has dismantled territorial boundaries. Nilufer...

Valeria Sjomina

IAEME Publication

In today’s changing business scenario increasing number of firms extends their business abroad. Effective communication with people of different cultures is especially challenging. Cultural awareness shapes how business firms behave in cross-culturally reflected international markets. It is broadly recognized that cultural factors act as invisible barriers in international business communications. Understanding cultural differences is one of the most significant skills for firms to develop in order to have a competitive advantage in international business. Organizations should focus on eliminating the cross cultural communication barriers. Understanding of cultural diversity is the key to effective cross-cultural communications. Firms which fail to understand the cross cultural communication barriers face several issues in many aspects of international business communication. It impacts free trade policies, localization and standardization strategy decisions, advertising, brand effectiveness, business relationships, international business management, international marketing, international negotiation, and consumer behavior, staffing, industrial relations, interpersonal relationships, negotiation, and teambuilding. Cross-cultural communication presents a fine opportunity to foster global peace and prosperity. It may also present unpleasant consequences if not well managed. Many problems arise in our workplace today as a result of the barriers cultural diversity imposes on cross cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication barriers such as anxiety, uncertainty, stereotyping, and ethnocentrism are caused by inadequate cultural knowledge and the lack of intercultural communicative skills. Adequate training in cross cultural communication and exposure to other cultures is essential in eliminating these barriers. This paper INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT (IJM) ISSN 0976-6502 (Print) ISSN 0976-6510 (Online) Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 348-351 © IAEME: http://www.iaeme.com/IJM.asp Journal Impact Factor (2014): 7.2230 (Calculated by GISI) IJM © I A E M E International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 – 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 348-351 © IAEME 349 R. Delecta Jenifer and G. P. Raman, “Cross Cultural Communication Barriers in Workplace” – (ICAM 2015) concludes with a suggestion for the understanding of the effect of cross cultural communication barriers on international business.

Hương Hạt Tiêu

Uday Uddanti

FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION. TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING ISSUES

Larissa Talalova

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16 Culture and Communication

Suraj Sharma, Postdoctoral Fellow, California State University, Northridge, USA

Leigh Anne Liu, Professor and Director of the Institute of International Business, Georgia State University, USA

Published: 23 January 2024
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Human cultural values and norms are developed and maintained through communication between and within individuals and between and within groups. The relationship between culture and communication is complex and challenging to study. On one hand, communication is the carrier of human interaction and culture, as values and norms are shared among its members through communication. On the other hand, culture may dictate how we communicate, since values and norms may prescribe our thinking and communication styles. In this chapter, we review the extant literature on culture and communication and explore how they influence and coevolve over time. We then propose new directions of research with theoretical and practical implications.

It is extraordinary the way people, music and cultures develop. The paths and experiences that guide them are unpredictable. Shaped by our families, neighborhoods, cultures and countries, each of us ultimately goes through this process of incorporating what we learn with who we are and who we seek to become. As we struggle to find our individual voices, I believe we must look beyond the voice we’ve been assigned and find our place among the tones and timbre of human expression. —Yo-Yo Ma

This quote by Yo-Yo Ma illustrates the ever-complex dynamics between culture and communication within individuals, interpersonally, and across social groups. The relationship between culture and communication is a compelling part of social life that infiltrates every aspect of our being. Although it is challenging to disentangle the interactions between culture and communication, we explore these mechanisms in the literature in order to offer insights to advance the field forward. In this chapter, we first analyze the literature on culture and communication from two perspectives: how culture affects communication and how communication affects culture. We then offer ideas on future research, before summarizing the takeaways of this chapter.

The evolution of culture phenomenology in communication research.

How Culture Affects Communication

Research on how culture influences communication has evolved from simple comparisons of two cultural styles in communication (e.g., Hall, 1959 , 1976 ) to a more sophisticated treatment of dynamic interactions among intra- versus intercultural interactions in various settings (e.g., Adair et al., 2015 ; Liu et al., 2010 ). Figure 16.1 depicts the progression of the role culture plays in communication research, evolving from static, negative barriers to be overcome in communication to dynamic processes to be understood and to potentially positive and multiple levels of influence on communication. Although the purpose of communication is to understand and be understood, earlier studies on culture and communication necessarily focused on deciphering the differences across cultures.

Cultural Differences as Barriers of Communication

The first stage of culture and communication research started with Edward Hall’s ( 1959 , 1976 ) anthropology work on culture, perception of time and space, and high- or low-context communication styles. Hall explains that members of different cultures vary in their orientations toward time. Some focus on the past, whereas others anchor communications on the present or future. Regarding perception of space, proxemics suggests that comfortable personal space differs across cultures. Hall also described that members of high-context cultures communicate with implicit and indirect messages that heavily emphasize the situation for interpretation while those in low-context cultures communicate with direct and explicit messages that are less sensitive to the specific situation.

Another early theoretical foundation of cultural differences was holistic versus analytical thinking styles. Holistic thinking style, on the one hand, refers to a systematic consideration of both internal attributes and external situations, as well as overall patterns, contexts, and relationships. Analytical thinking style, on the other hand, is characterized by focusing on ascribed factors and disentangling internal and external elements in phenomena ( Nisbett, 2003 ; Nisbett et al., 2001 ). A case in point can be found in the different approaches of Eastern and Western medicine. For example, when a person has stomach issues, Eastern medicine addresses the cause holistically and may view it as an imbalance of the person’s energy and will use experience-based treatments, such as acupuncture, which aim to rebalance these energies. The Western approach to the same problem would be a much more focused analysis of the stomach and use of treatments consistent with an empirically backed, scientific lens with stomach-specific medications or surgery. Applied to communication situations, Kim (2002) examined the relationships between talking and thinking among European Americans and East Asians and found that “thinking out loud” or talking helps European Americans resolve reasoning problems but doesn’t necessarily make East Asians better problem solvers. These examples highlight the effects of culture on cognitive reasoning, which then subsequently affect individuals from these culture’s communicative processes. These kinds of fundamental differences between cultures have become sources of miscommunication and misunderstanding, which are reflected in the studies of how culture influences communication at this stage.

Scholars focused on the subjective perceptions of cultural differences, which were then assumed to be negative barriers to effective communication. For example, Adler and Graham (1989) found that American, Canadian, and Japanese individuals differ when they are facing challenges of language, nonverbal behaviors, values, and patterns of thought while communicating with each other. They noted that American negotiators behave similarly regardless of whether the opponents were Japanese or American, while Japanese negotiators seem to be more tuned in to changing contexts, and thus adjust their behaviors accordingly. Similarly, Brett and Okumura (1998) found that intercultural negotiators achieve fewer desirable outcomes than intracultural negotiators, possibly because intercultural dyads encounter more difficulties to cooperation ( Matsumoto & Hwang, 2011 ; Tse et al., 1994 ). Based on an ethnographic study in global teams, Hinds et al. (2014) found that, as an important proxy of culture, language, especially language asymmetry in global teams, amplified power differences and geographic distribution among team members and triggered negative tensions. Therefore, cultural differences were viewed as a barrier due to challenges associated with decoding language, nonverbal cues, and/or intentions of cooperation.

Research on cultural values also offered implications for communication. For example, collectivism might influence how collaborative a communicator is and how likely one is to share information with others ( Cai et al., 2000 ). Cultural norms of implicit rules and guidelines may also predict tactics and strategies for interactions. For example, Adair et al. (2001) found that Japanese negotiators use positional strategies, such as pointing out limitations of alternatives to engage and influence their counterparts, while U.S. negotiators use more direct strategies to share information. Face negotiation theory ( Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003 ; Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018 ; Zhang et al., 2019 ) links individual identity, relationship with others, and conflict management styles to propose different patterns of communication, depending on the need to defend, protect, or accommodate one’s own and the other party’s face, or socially embedded identity. Consequently, individuals need to adjust their communicating behaviors in order to be more effective in intercultural interactions (e.g., Adair et al., 2001 ; Kim, 1988 ; Weiss, 1994 ). In sum, studies in this stage focused on cultural comparisons in communication and have generally found relatively stable and static cultural influences on communication ( Oyserman et al., 2002 ; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008 ).

Culture as a Dynamic Process in Communication

In the second stage of culture and communication research, researchers started to look beyond values or simplified norms to study how internalized norms ( Liu, Friedman, & Chi, 2005 ; Brett et al., 2007 ), experience and cognitive mental networks (Liu et al., 2010 , 2012 ), and motivations ( De Drue & Carnevale, 2003 ; Liu et al., 2012 ) influenced patterns of communication and interpersonal dynamics. These communication patterns and dynamics include temporal sequences ( Adair & Brett, 2005 ), consensus building ( Liu et al., 2012 ), multiparty communication ( Adair & Liu, 2011 ), social distance bridging ( Kern et al., 2012 ), information exchange strategies ( Gunia et al., 2011 ), and nonverbal communication ( Semnani-Azad & Adair, 2011 ). These studies began to treat the phenomenology of culture as a dynamic and contextualized process , considering multiple interaction effects among culture, motivations, and behaviors. A few studies used culture priming, or situational variation and flexibility ( Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991 , Brewer & Gardner, 1996 ; Hong et al., 2000 ; Oyserman et al., 2009 ; Oyserman & Lee, 2008 ), to explore the dynamic and contextualized nature of culture and cultural cognitive frames. One of the most notable examples is Hong et al.’s (2000) dynamic constructivist view of cultural influence in which individual interpretation of the meaning of a message flexibly depends on the variation of the context or situation. The same person may interpret a message in culturally different ways if they are primed by a typical American or Chinese cultural image.

Following the dynamic constructivist view of cultural influence on behavior, this group of studies found that depending on individual attributes (e.g., cognitive or social motivations) or situational factors (e.g., inter- or intracultural partners), how individuals communicate to reach agreements takes different patterns ( Liu et al., 2012 ). In intracultural situations, reaching consensus is a necessary pathway for joint gains in two-party negotiations, while in intercultural negotiations, individual cognitive adaptation has a stronger effect on joint gains ( Liu et al., 2012 ). Similarly, Adair and Liu (2011) suggested that in multiparty communication, the consensus-building process evolves through phases of information accumulation, examination, and accommodation, depending on cultural heterogeneity, group size, and individuals’ integrative and distributive mindsets.

To summarize, while the first stage of studies on culture and communication merely acknowledged the significance of negative contextual influence, this cluster of studies fully considered cultural influence on communication as situational, flexible, and varied, as evident in the multiple interaction patterns found in these papers. The next stage of research on culture’s influence of communication not only builds on the complexity of these relationships but also explores culture’s positive effects on individual communicators.

Culture’s Positive and Multiplicity Influence on Communication

In the most recent stage of culture and communication research, scholars continue to explore the multiplicity of culture and have so far discovered even more sophisticated mechanisms of culture’s influence on communication. For example, Imai and Gelfand (2010) examined cultural intelligence, the capability of knowing and behaving in culturally complex situations, in intra- and intercultural negotiations. The role of culture or cultural phenomenology in communication research has evolved from culture being treated as a barrier to be overcome by communicators to culture now offering opportunities for personal competency development and pluralistic influences (e.g., Liu & Adair, 2017 ; Liu et al., 2018 ). For example, Erez et al. (2013) found that communication in global virtual teams increased cultural intelligence and global identity over a 4-week time period and that these effects were retained 6 months later. Liu et al. (2013) suggested that multicultural experience and a communicator’s global identity versus local identity may also make a difference in the process and outcomes of interpersonal communication, especially while interacting with culturally different others. Specifically, they found that broad (but not deep) multicultural experience is associated with a higher degree of local identity, which can lead such individuals to achieve better outcomes in intracultural negotiations. On the other hand, deep, and both deep and broad multicultural experience is linked to higher global identity, which is beneficial for intercultural negotiations.

Adair et al. (2015) expanded the notions of high- and low-context communication by examining the patterns of communication tendencies with a more sophisticated study design and measures. They showed that understanding nonverbal cues in message, relationship, time, and space is especially beneficial for intercultural communications. In global virtual teams, Glikson and Erez (2020) investigated communication messages of participants and found that self-disclosure of relational messages, rather than task messages, helped create a psychologically safe communication climate for the team, which is positively related to team performance. By coding the content of early asynchronous text messages among members of 60 global virtual teams, Glikson and Erez (2020) linked communication to relationship building in intercultural settings. Their findings suggest that in virtual intercultural communications, where relationship building might be extra challenging, sharing relational messages at the beginning of interactions may be especially conducive for a positive communication climate and, ultimately, more productive team outcomes.

Researchers also examined the impact of communication media, such as email, on communication strategies and processes ( Rosett et al., 2011 ). Rosett and colleagues (2011) examined the emails of intra- and intercultural negotiations by Hong Kong Chinese and Americans. They found that in distributive situations, reduced social awareness by media may lead Hong Kong Chinese email negotiators to be more competitive than Americans and more effective than face-to-face situations. They concluded that culture’s nuanced influence on media use is of utter importance in the digital age.

Other studies explored the dynamics between specific communication properties, such as quality of communication experience in intra- versus intercultural contexts ( Liu et al., 2010 ). These authors found that quality of communication experience , measured by the degree of clarity, responsiveness, and comfort encountered by individuals, interacts with communication context in predicting outcomes. For example, in intercultural negotiations between Americans and Chinese, there was an asymmetrical experience between the two parties where Americans reported more comfort and Chinese reported more clarity. Although higher degrees of clarity, responsiveness, and comfort predicted better outcomes in all situations, the effects were much stronger in intercultural settings.

This group of studies has advanced from previous stages and has begun appreciating culture as a source of individual development, such as the potential for building cultural intelligence or multicultural experience. Cultural intelligence and multicultural experience are, in turn, constructive for communication outcomes, including producing a higher degree of satisfaction and creating both economic and subjective values. To summarize, although the research on culture’s influence on communication has evolved from simply mapping out cultural differences in behavioral patterns to a more sophisticated treatment of cultural influence with significant consideration of contextual factors, they remain fragmented, the studies are largely comparative, and as a result there is considerable potential for future research.

How Communication Affects Culture

While culture has clear impacts on the communication process and outcomes of participants involved, it is also reproduced, contested, and changed through the communicative events of the participants within a culture as well. In this sense, culture affects communication but is also affected and changed by communication, leading culture to be constantly evolving at various levels. For example, at the individual level, Lau, Chiu, and Lee (2001) proposed a reciprocal relationship between communication and shared reality in social knowledge and representation. Social knowledge and interpretation by communication partners evolve from a joint propagation of the communicative process and context. In other words, when individuals communicate, they simultaneously construct a common ground in their messages and responses through a psychologically parallel process.

Kashima (2000) reviewed and “recovered” legendary psychologist Fredric C. Bartlett’s metatheory of culture as a “universal configurationist,” treating culture as a configuration of universal components with culturally specific patterns and dynamic interactions within contexts. In other words, social interactions significantly affect culture. In this view, culture is and can be shaped and transmitted through communication within and between groups. Analyzing an example of a football player’s story in multiple communication chains, Lyons and Kashima (2001) described the process of how individual communication activities enforced stereotype-consistent storylines, which collectively produced meaning. This dynamic process of meaning production, reproduction, and convergence formed the foundation of culture as a meaning system. Kashima, Lyons, and Clark (2013) further demonstrated that interpersonal conversations are important venues that maintain cultural stereotypes. In two experiments, Kashima and colleagues found that although stereotype-inconsistent information may attract attention, stereotype-consistent information is more likely to be emphasized, narrated, and discussed. Together, Kashima and colleagues have expanded Bartlett’s metatheory of culture and offered specific empirical evidence on how communication affects cultural processes.

At a social collective level, Kashima and colleagues (2021) report that communication driven by political ideology entrenches and exacerbates polarization in societies through collective cognition. By examining political discourses through ideological commitment to an opinion, ideologically filtered interpretation, and communication in social networks, they found that polarizing opinions and interpretations are accelerated and amplified by communication and social networks, especially when disagreeable ties were cut off ( Kashima et al., 2021 ).

In international joint ventures, Brannen and Salk (2000) found that organizational work culture evolves through a negotiated process between individuals’ sense-making and the structure of organizational events based on ranges of cultural assumptions and normative orientations. A negotiated work culture emerges over time as the result of compromises in human resource management, meeting in the middle in operations, innovating new ideas for both partner groups, and dividing labor ( Brannen & Salk, 2000 ).

Digging deeper into the social cognitive mechanisms of how communication interacts with culture, there seem to be three key mediums through which communication interacts and shapes culture: (1) language, (2) nonverbal communication and emotions/emotional expression, and (3) music. Here we elaborate on how these mediums of communication both influence and are influenced by culture and how these effects apply to organizational contexts.

Holtgraves and Kashima (2008) define language as a “semiotic tool for meaning making and exchange” (p. 73). Language provides a systematic means of communicating highly abstract ideas and represents one of the principal ways that humans communicate with each other. Humans use language to enable interactions for social coordination and survival ( Ko, 2016 ). As a culturally transmitted system, language evolves together with cultural change ( Tallerman, 2005 ), and at the same time, culture evolves as a result of language use (Chomsky, 1965 , 2010 ). Language and culture are thus dynamically coupled, perpetually shaping each other. While language is a powerful medium for the creation, maintenance and transmission of culture, research shows that language systems of a particular culture may also affect the cognitions of the participants within that culture ( Ji et al., 2004 ; Hamers & Blanc, 2000 ; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984 ; Whorf, 1956 ; Logan, 1986 ). The language(s) one learns within their culture appears to have a profound impact on shaping how they perceive, order, and categorize the many diverse stimuli within any given environment or context ( Vygotsky, 1962 , Hamers & Blanc, 2000 ; Ji et al., 2004 ).

This provocative idea is not without debate within the literature. At the center of this debate is the Sapir–Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis , whose main theme is that culture, through language, has the ability to influence how an individual thinks ( Ji et al., 2004 ). The two views originating from this hypothesis are linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity, with each contending a different degree of power that language exerts on the cognitive processes of its speakers ( Huang & Tse, 2017 ; Hardin & Banaji, 1993 ; Hunt & Agnoli, 1991 ; Kay & Kempton, 1984 ). Linguistic determinism refers to “the view that the structure of language strongly influences or fully determines the way its native speakers perceive the world” ( Huang & Tse, 2017 , p. 4). While this powerfully deterministic view has been largely disconfirmed (e.g., Berlin & Kay, 1969 ; Heider, 1972 ; Heider & Olivier, 1972 ), the linguistic relativity view, which differs in the magnitude of influence language exerts on cognition, remains a fruitful topic for language researchers. Linguistic relativity “postulates that the structural differences between languages are generally paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences in the native speakers of the two languages” ( Huang & Tse, 2017 , p. 4). Overall, the question boils down to whether or not people think in language, and if they do, how it shapes thought.

Early debates on this hypothesis looked at physically perceptive domains such as “color, number, space, time and musical pitch” ( Huang & Tse, 2017 , p. 4). A popular example of debate in this field looks at the differing perceptions of colors in languages that differ in the number of words they use to differentiate different colors. While some languages, such as Dugum Dani, may only have two basic color terms to differentiate between black and white ( Heider, 1972 ), other languages, such as Russian and Turkish, have up to 12 basic color terms ( Ozgen & Davies, 1998 ; Huang & Tse, 2017 ). Universalists are researchers that hold that color-perceptive capabilities are universal and innate (e.g., Berlin & Kay, 1969 ; Franklin & Davies, 2004 ), while linguistic relativity hypothesis supporters contend that language plays a role in an individual’s ability to cognitively differentiate and categorize colors ( Roberson et al., 2000 ; Winawer et al., 2007 ). For example, Winawer et al. (2007) found that Russians, whose language differentiates between lighter blue and darker blue, were faster at differentiating these colors than individuals from English-speaking countries who have just one broad word for these two colors.

Another example of the impact of language on cognition would be Kashima and Kashima’s study (1998) on the differences between individuals who use languages that allow for pronoun dropping compared to languages that do not. Languages differ in the use of person-indexing pronouns, which are called deixis . Examples of deixis within the English language are “I” and “you.” In some languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, linguistic rules allow for the dropping of pronouns, “despite the absence of verb inflections and the grammatical rule of subject–verb agreement” ( Kashima & Kashima, 1998 , p. 464; Hinds, 1982 ; Huang, 1984 ; Li & Thompson, 1976 ). Reasons for why this pronoun dropping occurs is not without extensive debate (e.g., Berman, 1990 , 1992 ; Bloom, 1990 ; Valian, 1990 ).

The cognitive grammar view ( Langacker, 1987 ) contends that “a deictic expression indexes elements in the particular situation where the speech takes place … [and] describes a relationship between the speaker and the speech context, that is, the manner in which the speaker relates to the social context of the speech” ( Kashima & Kashima, 1998 , p. 465; Langacker, 1987 , pp. 128–132). This construal relationship then causes a perceptive shift in the focal point of what is being expressed. For example, expressions with explicit first-person singular pronouns (1PS) such as I, and second-person singular (2PS) pronouns, explicitly cause individuals to become the salient focus of the expression. Languages that then allow for the dropping of these pronouns allow the speakers to emphasize or deemphasize the self or other and the contextual environment in communicative events ( Kashima & Kashima, 1998 ). Kashima and Kashima (1998) found evidence of coinciding cultural differences with these linguistic differences, such as finding lower levels of individualism in cultures whose languages allow for pronoun dropping.

In organizational settings, Liu et al. (2015) found that relational metaphors used by international joint venture partners to describe their relationships, whether it is equal or hierarchical, will interact with equity structures of the joint venture in shaping the quality of the relationship and their achievement of strategic goals over time. In other words, the use of an equal relational metaphor, such as a “modern marriage,” rather than a hierarchical one, such as a “patriarchal family,” would contribute to higher-quality relationships and a more productive work culture in joint ventures. Additionally, in an extensive case study of a Japanese multinational enterprise, Neeley (2017) showed that an intentional mandate of a common language not only changed individual employees’ values and identities, but also transformed the organizational culture into a more global one. Therefore, although rooted in cultures, common languages and strategic use of language can facilitate the construction of or reshaping of new organizational cultures.

Nonverbal Communication and Emotions

While linguistic communication represents an extraordinary human capability for abstract communication, verbal communication is not the only way that humans are able to communicate. In fact, it is estimated that nonverbal behavior accounts for around 60 to 90% of human communication ( Mehrabian, 2017 ). Nonverbal mechanisms of communication involve body language, gesture, and emotional expression, all of which are anchored on the capacity for empathy. The literature on these nonverbal communicative capabilities can provide additional insight into cultural differences and similarities of communication. Emotion, emotional expression, and empathy provide a foundational ability for tuning into reading both nonverbal behaviors and verbal behaviors to maximize the accurate deciphering of what it is another individual is trying to communicate (and even may not be consciously trying to communicate).

Emotions serve as a powerful device for effective nonverbal communication. They are complex feelings that are deeply social in nature. Social systems benefit from the capacity of individuals to experience and express emotions ( Keltner & Haidt, 1999 ), so collective emotional expressions may become normative in a culture. In this sense, display rules for how emotions are conveyed and interpreted in a certain culture are likely passed on to future generations and solidify the cultural norm of emotional expression. There must exist a physiological mechanism, or a form of body language, for expressing emotions in order for them to be read by others. Answers to the questions “What are emotions” and “where do they come from” remain a hot topic of debate within the literature, with deep implications for the culture and communication field. To understand the interaction between culture and communication, specifically related to emotions and emotional expression, it is necessary to understand the current debate within the literature regarding the nature versus nurture origin of emotions.

Different researchers from different emotional theory camps differ in the universality versus cultural specificity of felt emotion and emotional expression. For example, basic emotion theorists believe, for the most part, that felt and expressed emotion is largely universal, whereas social construction theorists believe the other extreme, that felt and expressed emotion is largely culturally specific. The basic emotions perspective views emotions as an innate and universal process that serves as “motivational amplifiers” ( Tomkins, 1962 ). In this view, emotions serve to cause a certain reaction “to tasks that require change in some way” ( Warrenburg, 2020 , p. 4). Basic emotion theorists believe that emotions are innate and present at or shortly after birth and are thus universal. Sadness, for example, is a functional state with a specific and shared coinciding feeling, activated physiologies and expressions that serve to communicate that feeling, or the awareness of that feeling to another individual ( Ekman, 1992 ; Tomkins, 1962 ). Similarly, the emotion of disgust, together with its associated nonverbal body cues, also seems to be produced universally in reaction to something offensive or revolting, perhaps to communicate to another individual that something is potentially dangerous ( Trompenaars & Turner, 1997 ). It would make sense for feelings and expressions of sadness and disgust to be universally felt and recognized given their evolutionary importance to survival.

Social construction theorists view emotions as entirely a social artifact that is the product of the cultural context in which they exist and that aid in the performance of culturally specific tasks ( Mesquita et al., 2016 ). How one emotionally reacts to any given stimulus, to social construction theorists, is largely dependent on the social consequences of this emotional experience and the normativity of what emotion other individuals from that culture typically feel ( Warrenburg, 2020 ; Mesquita et al., 2016 ). For these theorists, each culture has specific emotions that aid in the success of that individual. For example, the independent versus collective cultural differences between Western and Eastern cultures, respectively, have an impact on what emotions will be felt in any given situation ( Mesquita et al., 2016 ). Individuals learn through constant exposure within their environment and are thus “a ‘social reality’ [that] depend[s] on the collective intentionality of a group of people” ( Warrenburg, 2020 , p. 32; Barrett, 2017 ; Mesquita et al., 2016 ) and are ultimately heavily informed and impacted by the norms and values of the cultural context. Therefore, when individuals from one culture enter into another culture, emotional acculturation occurs, where the individual begins to learn and experience new emotional states consistent with this new cultural context ( Barrett, 2017 ).

Research into determining cultural differences regarding the ability to read emotional expressions from cultures that are the same and different from one’s own culture has posed two conflicting models: the cultural equivalence model and the cultural advantage model of emotion recognition . On the one hand, the c ultural equivalence model of emotion recognition aligns more closely with basic emotion theorists, who contend that because emotional communication is largely rooted physiologically in making individuals more evolutionarily equipped for survival, individuals will be able to equally evaluate the emotional expressions of both ingroup and outgroup members regardless of what culture they belong to ( Darwin, 1872 ; Preston & de Waal, 2002 ). On the other hand, the cultural advantage model of emotion recognition believes that individuals are more evolutionarily equipped for survival through the ability of individuals from the same ingroup to be better at reading the emotional expressions of other individuals from the ingroup compared to the outgroup ( Anderson & Keltner, 2002 ; Thibault et al., 2006 ). In organizational life, although emotions are reactions to happenings within a context, collective emotions are also building blocks for organizational actions that eventually form norms and construct culture over time.

An early review of culture and emotions by Mesquita and Frijda (1992) situated cultural variations in emotions within a framework of the cognitive-process model of emotions . In this view, “whether cultural differences or similarities are found depends to an important degree on the level of description of the emotional phenomena” (p. 179). This model breaks the emotional response of an individual into a process of elicitation and manifestation containing various stages that allow for a deeper dive into each and show whether differences or similarities between cultures exist within them. These stages are, first, the antecedent events , which may differ across cultures, thus affecting what individuals within each culture expect and are sensitive to. The second stage, event coding, explains that individuals from within a culture will code and categorize events in a schematic way facilitated by their culture, thus affecting how the event will be emotionally appraised. In the third stage, or the appraisal stage , events are “appraised with respect to their implications for the subject’s well-being and his or her possibilities for coping with the event” ( Mesquita & Frijda, 1992 , p. 180). The fourth stage would be the physiological reaction patterns that explain how an emotional response is both due to and affected by physiological responses to a stimulus. The fifth stage is described as action readiness , where “emotional states involve changes in action readiness” ( Mesquita & Frijda, 1992 , p. 180). For example, the emotional state of fear may elicit a survival instinct composed of cognitions that aid self-protection. The sixth stage is emotional behavior . Once an emotional state is generated, behaviors are generated by the individual, depending on the “availability and expected effectiveness of the various behavior patterns” ( Mesquita & Frijda, 1992 , p. 180). Lastly, the seventh stage is regulation , which “refers to both inhibitory control and voluntary enhancement” ( Mesquita & Frijda, 1992 , p. 180). Thus, by adding more nuance to the particular stages involved in an individual’s emotional state, research into culture and emotions is better able to dissect and understand cultural similarities and differences. While culture provides a framework vital to how an individual learns to organize their reality and what expectations of behavior are deemed acceptable for that given context, there still appears to be a shared, biologically based innate emotional expression system across all humans.

Matsumoto and Hwang (2019) have elaborated on this model and proposed the biocultural model of emotion . This model reconciles the differences and similarities across cultures through the idea that a “biologically-based, core emotion system is calibrated, regulated, and elaborated by culture and culture learning” (p. 501). These researchers conducted a study comparing the spontaneous emotional expression of blind and sighted Judo athletes and found evidence for universal facial expressions of emotions based on a core biological system. Because blind individuals who were unable to learn what facial expressions are associated with what emotions in the context of their cultures exhibited the same facial expressions as those sighted, there is evidence for this basic emotional system. This substantiates the idea that, at least some emotional expressions, served an evolutionary, phylogenetic advantage to communicate with and be understood by others. At the same time, this does not deny cultural specificities; “the interaction between biology and culture in human emotions allows for complex social networks and relationships, and enhances the meaning of normal, daily activities” (p. 512). With emotions and emotional expressions being explicated as a key human tool for nonverbal communication, it is thus vital to explore the importance of an important communication tool that seems able to convey deep, nonverbal messages and to evoke powerful emotional responses in nearly every culture around the world, music ( Wallmark et al., 2018 ; Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017 ).

Music is a powerful, almost magical tool important in conveying highly abstract ideas and emotions, but it is ultimately social in nature. As Wallmark et al. (2018) state, “by disclosing the affective and cognitive states of actual or imagined human actors, musical engagement can function as a mediated form of social encounter, even when listening by ourselves” (p. 1). Although music is an intense manifestation of cultural variations, we believe that musical practice is a particularly insightful domain to investigate the mechanisms of how this communication medium ultimately shapes and advances the cultural setting it exists in.

While the capacity to create, utilize, and enjoy music as a communicative medium for meaning and emotion appears to be universal, the musical practice, both in how and what meaning is communicated, is deeply entrenched within its cultural context. A national anthem both reflects and projects the salient features of the country’s characters. Iconic musicians such as the Beatles and the Grateful Dead both lead and symbolize the spirit of the time, with widespread resonance of the messages carried through their melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and lyrics. Organizations often choose music in advertising, company websites, or lobbies to aid the expression of their products’ properties and shape organizational climate for consumers, employees, and business associates. In this sense, as an integral part of cultural expression, music coevolves with culture. Additionally, there is ample evidence of how music and musical practice have affected and shaped the culture in which it exists, such as the musical event Woodstock ( Lovesey, 2020 ). Woodstock was a music and arts festival that epitomized, affected, and was affected by the cultural context in which it existed. As Lovesey (2020) states, Woodstock “registered a paradigm shift in cultural, intellectual, and musicological history” (p. 121).

Evidence for further communicative implications of music come from Wallmark et al. (2018) in their study of the neurophysiological effects of trait empathy and music. Recent studies have suggested that empathy “is related to emotional identification and feelings of intimacy or social connectedness” ( Leman, 2007 , p. 122; Berthoz & Jorland, 2004 ). Leman (2007) states that “listening to music can be seen as a socializing activity in the sense that it may train the listener’s self in social attuning at empathic relationships” (p. 126). While empathy is a vital mechanism central to all communicative mediums, within this study, empathy was hypothesized to be a key mechanism in how music is perceived and processed. Wallmark et al. (2018) conducted a study that examined the fMRIs of individuals differing on cognitive and affective trait empathy levels and found physiological evidence for a link between empathy and music, explicating music as a potentially fruitful avenue for further investigating and understanding cultural similarities and differences in communication.

Evolutionarily, it would make sense for acculturation and socialization processes to include musical practices for groups and organizations to have a mechanism for enhancing cohesion and coordination. As Sun Tzu (2012) states in The Art of War , “Gongs and drums and banners and flags make the army hear with the same ear and see with the same eye” (p. 45). Embodied listening of a group of people may cause the harmonization of movement among the individuals, in turn causing an “increased liking between interaction partners” ( Leman, 2007 , p. 126), in what Lakin et al. (2003) refer to as the chameleon effect of nonconscious mimicry . A group with strong cohesion and effective communication capabilities could, at least historically, engage in more complex and collective coordinated action, positioning groups that leverage these capabilities as more adept for survival. In this sense, music serves as a form of nonverbal communication that promotes a “sense of groupishness” that enables conflict management, bonding, and collective survival of the group ( Brown, 2000 ; Cross & Morley, 2010 ; Cross, 2007 ).

To summarize, music has been an unsung communication tool in shaping, maintaining, and creating cultural norms and taste, ranging from national anthems to cultural icons. Visionary organizations have already started strategic manipulation of sound in workspace for senses of community and creativity (e.g., Krukowski, 2019 ). Together, language, nonverbal communication, emotion, and music not only dynamically influence and interact with culture, but also offer new and fertile avenues of studying culture and communication.

Future Research for Culture and Communication

Although communication is an essential activity in human and organization life across cultures, research on culture and communication has largely taken a static, fragmented, and de-contextualized view. Szkudlarek et al. (2020) offer a comprehensive critique on communication in international business and point out that the existing literature does not address the dynamic and contextualized nature of communication. For example, they note that the extant works in the field tend to overly rely on etic dimensions that do not capture within-culture dynamics, or the situational complexity of communication, and may cause superficial and even misleading findings. One of the reasons, we speculate, is that the field of communication has been dominated by the Western analytical thinking style that focuses on decontextualized and discrete inquiries ( Nisbett et al., 2001 ). Moving forward, processual, relational, and contextual perspectives of research on culture and communication promise to provide a more holistic inquiry of the field ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 ; Liu et al., 2021 ; Corner et al., 2021 ). Specifically, Liu et al. (2021) suggest that communicators in multicultural relationships might switch, expand, and fuse their culturally typical communal or exchange schemata of relationships. As an important aspect of intercultural competency, Corner et al. (2021) maintain that when communicating with foreign counterparts, especially those based in emerging markets, individuals need to consider the perspectives and uncertainties embedded within the context, as well as initiating and cultivating relationships. Future empirical research is needed to fill these gaps and test the propositions of studying culture and communication in processual, embedded relationships, and contextualized situations that can provide dynamic, holistic findings on the interactions between culture and communication.

Research in culture and communication has gradually shifted from a static, compartmentalized understanding into one that is more dynamic, context dependent, and process oriented whereby individuals iteratively negotiate meaning. For future research, we propose that research on culture and communication could be oriented more holistically, specifically, (1) temporally, (2) spatially, (3) inter- and intrapersonally, and (4) inter- and intraculturally.

By temporally , we refer to an increased emphasis being placed on the chronical conditions that gave rise to the circumstances and environments in which communicative events exist. Culture and communicative capabilities, mediums, and meanings are the result of thousands of years of constant evolution and still continue to evolve dynamically. A shift from a view that treats communication and culture as a static cross section to one that is processual would yield fruitful avenues for future research ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 ; Cramton et al., 2021 ). Past research in culture and communication that views communicative events as static and isolated snapshots miss out on the richness of the “interactive, evolving, and complex” nature of communication processes in reality ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 , p. 6). Both the capabilities for communication and the implied meaning of communicative tools are the result of constant iterative sense-making processes negotiated by the many different participants across many different mediums. Future research should investigate how “past experiences, individual predispositions and situational contingencies affect the communication process” ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 p. 6). Methodologies that utilize longitudinal data may yield prolific insights for the study of culture and communication.

By spatially , we refer to an increased emphasis on the specific contextual and environmental circumstances where communication occurs. Past research has been largely decontextualized, overlooking the specific contexts in which communication events occur and the effects these contexts may have on communication. Varner (2000) argues that “the multiplicity of contexts is crucial for making sense of communicative processes” ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 , p. 3). An example of such a context is the tight versus loose norms in societies, which in a way dictated the communication of responses and actions by countries in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Gelfand et al., 2021 ).

Additionally, many scholars have shown that media types and mediums play a role in communicative interactions and outcomes (e.g., Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013 ; Daft & Lengel, 1986 ) and called for research to include a more diverse range of media platforms ( Ishii, Lyons, & Carr, 2019 ). Future research should investigate how different mediums yield different communicative outcomes, such as across digital platforms, musical formats, or in-person communicative events and what the variables within these mediums contribute, culturally, emotionally, and cognitively to these outcomes. Further, Keller and Tian (2021) advocate for studying the interconnected paradoxes between linguistic tensions embedded in organizational paradoxes. An example is that linguistic tensions such as explicit versus implicit messages can complicate organizational management paradoxes, such as control versus autonomy. Therefore, the multiplicity of contextual influence holds the promise of sophisticated inquiries in future research on culture and communication.

By calling for research to be more interpersonal and intrapersonal , we refer to an increased emphasis being placed on communicative events that occur between individuals and even within individuals. Interpersonal communication involves negotiations of meaning. Much of the past literature on communication has focused on the organizational or group level, such as investigating “knowledge characteristics, organizational culture, and the perceived importance of sender and receiver attitudes, motivation or communication skills” ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 , p. 4; Minbaeva, 2007 ; Morgulis-Yakushev et al., 2018 ). Focusing on the integration of organizational level and individual level and viewing communicative events and processes from a multilevel perspective presents an avenue that may probe at the deep nuance involved in communicative events.

Within the individual level, a focus on intrapersonal communication may also help generate novel and exciting insights into the study of communication and culture. Interfacing an individual’s many identities and changing the salience and availability of self-construal schemas and its impact on culture and communication provide a fruitful avenue for research. Intrapersonal negotiation may occur through introspective avenues such as meditation but may also be facilitated through altered states of consciousness such as through music, mind altering substances and one’s environmental context. Researchers have begun investigating and elaborating on the “multiple selves” theory. Angyal (1965) proposed that “the mind is made up of subsystems which interact, resulting in setting and shifting sets” ( Lester, 2012 , p. 1). Thus, individuals may simultaneously have many “selves” that hold different priorities, which contribute to an inner dialogue in the process of decision making. Different selves have different goals, different priorities, and ultimately different cognitions that are most saliently accessible, especially for individuals with multiple cultural identities and experiences. These selves may be primed by cultural artifacts within the environment, emotional states, or the salient identities of their peers. Thus, it is important to understand different selves and states of consciousness for a more holistic understanding of communication. This view emphasizes the need to understand communicative events within the environments and contexts in which they exist, as well as the cognitive and emotional states of the individual, whether primed by existing stimuli within their environment, and the effects on communicative processes and outcomes.

Lastly, we propose that research in culture and communication be expanded more to investigate intercultural and intracultural communication . Both communication and communication competence are the result of a relational exchange between two individuals. As discussed earlier, no communicative event between individuals happens in a vacuum, and each of these individuals will bring to the table a set of existing predispositions and preexisting assigned meanings, which may heavily impact communication. For example, although intercultural communication has been studied (e.g., Imai & Gelfand, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2010 , 2012 ), a more dialectical approach is needed to recognize the dynamic and interactive nature in complex situations ( Corner et al., 2021 ; Martin, 2015 ; Szkudlarek et al., 2020 ). Thus, further research should infuse more culturally diverse views in understanding, holistically, what individuals bring from their own culture and how that, in turn, affects the communicative events.

Existing literature, however, on cross-cultural perspectives has seemingly missed out on the dynamic nature and complexity of intercultural communication, especially in complex temporal and special situations. While previous studies have been insightful in their own way, with a few exceptions of qualitative studies (e.g., Brannen & Salk, 2000 ), almost all intercultural communication studies (e.g., Brett & Okumura, 1998 ; Imai & Gelfand, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2010 , 2012 ) used lab studies with single or repeated negotiation simulations. Longitudinal, contextualized, and both qualitative and quantitative field experiments might better capture the evolving forces in inter- and intracultural interactions ( Brannen et al., 2017 ; Lee et al., 2020 ; Casrnir, 1999 ; Nardon, 2017 ). In order to better understand the dynamic and fluid nature of intercultural and intracultural communicative events, moving from comparative methodologies such as surveys, to diverse and rich methodologies such as “narrative analysis (e.g., Gertsen & Søderberg’s, 2011 ), ethnographic field studies (e.g., Moore & Mahadevan, 2020 ), in-depth cases (e.g., Piekkari et al., 2020 ), critical analysis (e.g., Romani et al., 2020 ) or even experimental designs ( Fischer & Karl, 2020 )” may be better suited ( Szkudlarek et al., 2020 , p. 2).

We summarize main takeaways on Table 16.1 and below.

Five Key Takeaways

Dynamic Constructivist View—Individuals are composed of various overlapping and interwoven cultures with different associated norms and values that may become more or less cognitively salient depending on the context. Contexts are composed of various cues, which are then associated with existing cultural frames within an individual ( Hong et al., 2000 ). Accordingly, different contexts will prime different cultural identities by causing a cultural frame and its associated cognitions to become more salient and enacted, affecting subsequent communicative events. Future research should remain highly sensitive to cues within a context and its effects on an individual’s cognitive frame.

Holistic Thinking—Previous research on culture and communication, dominated by Western theories and research norms, focus more on the analytical traditions and perspectives. Krukowski (2019) showed that an integration of space and sound communicates to both the conscious and the unconscious mind and created a new kind of work culture at WeWork and the Yard in New York. Future research should consider a more holistic perspective that better integrates elements of communication such as language, emotion, music, and contexts into organization studies.

Social Cognitive Theory—Culture and communication research should further deploy the use of a social cognitive theory ( Fiske & Taylor, 1991 ) that examines mental models before and after communicative events and the valence and arousal of emotions associated with certain cognitions for a more nuanced understanding of communicative processes and outcomes. Felt emotions will determine how individuals engage in sensemaking ( Maitlis et al., 2013 ), that is, how cues are extracted into existing frames, largely effecting how information will be communicated and understood by both parties in a communicative event.

Cultural Evolution Perspective—Cultural identities, within both individuals and societies are not a static monolith but are instead composed of a constellation of subparts that are constantly changing and evolving (e.g., Wilson, 2002 ). Cultures are composed of many subcultures that are constantly interacting, causing them to gradually evolve. Individuals within these cultures are constantly negotiating and co-constructing realities with each other, within and between their cultures and communities. Individuals are then also composed of various interconnected identities that are dynamically interacting as an individual constructs their identity. Future research should examine how cultures change and evolve due to the interactions of the subcultures that compose them, as well as how individuals constantly change and evolve as they gradually negotiate a sense of self through the many cultures and subcultures they belong to. Doing so would require examining cross and intracultural communication at both the group and individual level for a more detailed understanding of culture and communication.

Communication Mediums—Different mediums of communication may offer different insights into cultural differences and similarities. By grounding each medium into its given context and exploring each, a more thorough analysis of culture and communication can be conducted. Language, nonverbal body language, emotions and emotional expression, music, and other cultural artifacts provide fruitful and incredibly interesting avenues for future investigation. These different mediums consist of different psychological and physiological mechanisms that are interwoven and that should be holistically taken into consideration to further understand communicative similarities and differences of the capabilities of individuals from both different and the same cultures.

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Published: 23 March 2022

Communication competencies, culture and SDGs: effective processes to cross-cultural communication

Stella Aririguzoh 1

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 9 , Article number: 96 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Globalization has made it necessary for people from different cultures and nations to interact and work together. Effective cross-cultural communication seeks to change how messages are packaged and sent to people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Cross-cultural communication competencies make it crucial to appreciate and respect noticeable cultural differences between senders and receivers of information, especially in line with the United Nations’ (UN) recognition of culture as an agent of sustainable development. Miscommunication and misunderstanding can result from poorly encrypted messages that the receiver may not correctly interpret. A culture-literate communicator can reduce miscommunication arising from a low appreciation of cultural differences so that a clement communication environment is created and sustained. This paper looks at the United Nations’ recognition of culture and how cultural differences shape interpersonal communication. It then proposes strategies to enhance cross-cultural communication at every communication step. It advocates that for the senders and receivers of messages to improve communication efficiency, they must be culture and media literates.

Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions

Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation

Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability

Public interest.

The United Nations has recognized culture as a causal agent of sustainability and integrated it into the SDG goals. Culture reinforces the economic, social, and communal fabrics that regulate social cohesion. Communication helps to maintain social order. The message’s sender and the receiver’s culture significantly influence how they communicate and relate with other people outside their tribal communities. Globalization has compelled people from widely divergent cultural backgrounds to work together.

People unconsciously carry their cultural peculiarities and biases into their communication processes. Naturally, there have been miscommunications and misunderstandings because people judge others based on their cultural values. Our cultures influence our behaviour and expectations from other people.

Irrespective of our ethnicities, people want to communicate, understand, appreciate, and be respected by others. Culture literate communicators can help clear some of these challenges, create more tolerant communicators, and contribute to achieving global sustainable goals.

Introduction

The United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to transform the world by 2030 through simultaneously promoting prosperity and protecting the earth. The global body recognizes that culture directly influences development. Thus, SDG Goal 4.7 promotes “… a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.” Culture really matters (Seymour, 2007 ). Significantly, cultural cognition influences how people process information from different sources and suggests policies they may support or oppose (Rachlinski, 2021 ). Culture can drive sustainable development (United Nations, 2015 ; De Beukelaer and Freita, 2015 ; Kangas et al., 2017 ; Heckler, 2014 ; Dessein et al., 2015 ; and Hosagrahar, 2017 ).

UNESCO ( 2013 , p.iii ; 2017 , p.16; 2013a , p. 30) unequivocally states that “culture is a driver of development,” an “enabler of sustainable development and essential for achieving the 2030 Agenda” and as “an essential pillar for sustainable development.” These bold declarations have led to the growth of the cultural sector. The culture industry encourages economic growth through cultural tourism, handicraft production, creative industries, agriculture, food, medicine, and fisheries. Culture is learned social values, beliefs, and customs that some people accept and share collectively. It includes all the broad knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs, and other experiences and habits acquired by man as a member of a particular society. This seems to support Guiso, Paola and Luigi ( 2006 , p. 23) view of culture as “those customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious, and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation.” They assert that there is a causality between culture and economic outcomes. Bokova ( 2010 ) claims that “the links between culture and development are so strong that development cannot dispense with culture” and “that these links cannot be separated.” Culture includes customs and social behaviour. Causadias ( 2020 ) claims that culture is a structure that connects people, places, and practices. Ruane and Todd ( 2004 ) write that these connections are everyday matters like language, rituals, kingship, economic way of life, general lifestyle, and labour division. Field ( 2008 ) notes that even though all cultural identities are historically constructed, they still undergo changes, transformation, and mutation with time. Although Barth ( 1969 ) affirms that ethnicity is not culture, he points out that it helps define a group and its cultural stuff . The shared cultural stuff provides the basis for ethnic enclosure or exclusion.

The cultural identities of all men will never be the same because they come from distinctive social groups. Cultural identification sorts interactions into two compartments: individual or self-identification and identification with other people. Thus, Jenkins ( 2014 ) sees social identity as the interface between similarities and differences, the classification of others, and self-identification. He argues that people would not relate to each other in meaningful ways without it. People relate both as individuals and as members of society. Ethnicity is the “world of personal identity collectively ratified and publicly expressed” and “socially ratified personal identity‟ (Geertz, 1973 , p. 268, 309). However, the future of ethnicity has been questioned because culture is now seen as a commodity. Many tribal communities are packaging some aspects of their cultural inheritances to sell to other people who are not from their communities (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009 ).

There is a relationship between culture and communication. People show others their identities through communication. Communication uses symbols, for example, words, to send messages to recipients. According to Kurylo ( 2013 ), symbols allow culture to be represented or constructed through verbal and nonverbal communication. Message receivers may come from different cultural backgrounds. They try to create meaning by interpreting the symbols used in communication. Miscommunication and misunderstanding may arise because symbols may not have the same meaning for both the sender and receiver of messages. If these are not efficiently handled, they may lead to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. Monaghan ( 2020 ), Zhu ( 2016 ), Holmes ( 2017 ), Merkin ( 2017 ), and Samovar et al. ( 2012 ) observe that inter-cultural communication occurs between people from different cultural groups. It shows how people from different cultural backgrounds can effectively communicate by comparing, contrasting, and examining the consequences of the differences in their communication patterns. However, communicating with others from different cultural backgrounds can be full of challenges, surprises, and re-learning because languages, values, and protocols differ. Barriers, like language and noise, impede communication by distorting, blocking, or altering the meaning.

Communication patterns change from one nation to the next. It is not uncommon, for example, for an American, a Nigerian, a Japanese national, or citizens of other countries to work together on a single project in today’s multi-cultural workplace. These men and women represent different cultural heritages. Martinovski ( 2018 ) remarks that both humans and virtual agents interact in cross-cultural environments and need to correctly behave as demanded by their environment. Possibly too, they may learn how to avoid conflicts and live together. Indeed, García-Carbonell and Rising ( 2006 , p. 2) remark that “as the world becomes more integrated, bridging the gap in cultural conflicts through real communication is increasingly important to people in all realms of society.” Communication is used to co-ordinate the activities in an organization for it to achieve its goals. It is also used to signal and order those involved in the work process.

This paper argues that barriers to cross-cultural communication can be overcome or significantly reduced if the actors in the communication processes become culture literates and competent communicators.

Statement of the problem

The importance of creating and maintaining good communication in human society cannot be overemphasized. Effective communication binds and sustains the community. Cross-cultural communication problems usually arise from confusion caused by misconstruction, misperception, misunderstanding, and misvaluation of messages from different standpoints arising from differences in the cultures of the senders and receivers of messages. Divergences in cultural backgrounds result in miscommunication that negatively limits effective encrypting, transmission, reception, and information decoding. It also hinders effective feedback.

With the rapid spread of communication technologies, no community is completely isolated from the rest of the world. Present-day realities, such as new job opportunities and globalization, compel some people to move far away from their local communities and even their countries of origin to other places where the cultures are different. Globalization minimizes the importance of national borders. The world is no longer seen as a globe of many countries but as a borderless entity (Ohmae, 1999 ) and many markets (Levitt, 1983 ) in different countries with different cultures. As a matter of necessity, people from other countries must communicate.

The United Nations ( 2015 ) recognizes culture’s contribution to sustainable development and promotes local cultures in development programmes to increase local population involvement. Despite the United Nations’ lofty ideals of integrating culture into development, culture has hindered development at different levels. Interventions meant to enhance development are sometimes met with opposition from some people who feel that such programmes are against their own culture.

Gumperz ( 2001 , p. 216) argues that “all communication is intentional and grounded in inferences that depend upon the assumption of mutual good faith. Culturally specific presuppositions play a key role in inferring what is intended.” Cross-border communications reflect the kaleidoscope of the diverse colours of many cultures, meeting, clashing, and fusing. Like Adler ( 1991 , p. 64) observes, “foreigners see, interpret, and evaluate things differently, and consequently act upon them differently.” Diversities in culture shape interpersonal communication. Yet the basic communication process is the same everywhere. It is in these processes that challenges arise. Therefore, this study seeks to examine how each of these steps can be adapted to enhance cross-cultural communication, especially in today’s digitized era of collapsing cultural boundaries. Barriers to cross-cultural communication can be significantly reduced if the actors in the communication processes become culture literates and competent communicators.

Study objectives

The objectives of this study are

To examine United Nations efforts to integrate culture into sustainable development.

To suggest modifications to each communication process step to improve effective cross-cultural communication.

Literature review

Some authors have tried to link culture, communication, and sustainable goals.

The need to know about people’s culture

There are compelling reasons to learn about other people’s cultures.

Cultural literacies: Difficulties in cross-cultural communication can be reduced when senders of messages understand that the world is broader than their ethnocentric circles. It demands that senders of messages know that what they believe may not always be correct when communicating with receivers of these messages who are from different cultures. Logical reasoning will expect increased exposure to different cultures to increase understanding. When people of different groups communicate frequently, it is anticipated that they should understand each other better. This is what Hirsch ( 1987 ) labels as cultural literacy . In the ordinary course of things, common knowledge destroys mutual suspicion and misinterpretation that often generate conflicts.

To protect the earth: It is essential to point out that at “the most global level, the fate of all people, indeed the fate of the earth, depends upon negotiations among representatives of governments with different cultural assumptions and ways of communicating” (Tannen, 1985 , p. 203). If the world is to be protected, it is necessary to understand other peoples’ cultures who live and interact with us at different fronts and in this same world. The world is still our haven. Nevertheless, Vassiliou et al. ( 1972 ) find that increased exposure can increase people’s mutual negative stereotyping. Tannen ( 1985 , p. 211) remarks that stereotypes of ethnic groups partly develop from the poor impressions that people from other cultures have about the natives because they hold different meanings for both parties. Stereotyping is detrimental to cross-cultural communication, and its dismissal is necessary for any successful cross-cultural exchange.

Spin-offs from globalization: Bokova ( 2013 ) observes that globalization transforms all societies and brings culture to the front. She remarks that communities are increasingly growing diverse and yet interconnected. The spin-offs from globalization open great doors for exchanges, mutual enrichment of persons from different cultures, and pictures of new worlds.

The dynamics of cross-cultural communication

Different cultures emphasize different values. The emphasis on one value by one culture may lead to difficulties in cross-cultural communication with another person who does not see that particular value in the same light, for example, timeliness. It is crucial to note Sapir’s ( 1956 , p. 104) insistence that “every cultural pattern and every single act of social behaviour involves communication in either an explicit or implicit sense.” Even though Hofstede ( 2005 , p. 1) comments that “cultural differences are nuisance at best and often a disaster,” UNESCO ( 1998 , 1999 ) recognizes cultural diversity as an “essential factor of development” and an issue that matters. This makes cultural diversity a blessing rather than a disaster. The various shades of cultural values influence how we behave and communicate with others outside our cultural environment. Our ideals and biases also influence communication.

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner ( 1997 ) developed a culture model with seven dimensions. They are universalism versus particularism (rules versus relationships); individualism versus communitarianism (the individual versus the group); specific versus diffuse (how far people get involved); neutral versus emotional (how people express emotions) ; achievement versus ascription (how people view status); sequential time versus synchronous time (how people manage time); and internal direction versus outer direction (how people relate to their environment). These cultural models signify how people from these areas communicate. People from different backgrounds may have difficulties communicating as their values may be significantly different. A good communicator must take note of this distinctiveness in values because they impact the communication processes. For example, a person who is particular about upholding written rules may not be interested in knowing who the culprit is before administering sanctions. But the other person interested in maintaining a good relationship with others may re-consider this approach.

Hofstede ( 1980 ) identifies five significant values that may influence cross-cultural communication:

Power distance: This is the gap between the most and the least influential members of society. People from different cultures perceive equality in various ways. The social hierarchy or status determines where individuals are placed. Status is conferred by inheritance or by personal achievement. Some cling to societal classification and its hierarchy of power. Others value and cherish the equality of all people. Yet, other cultures see other people as dependents and somehow inferior beings. A king in an African community is seen as far more powerful and important than his servants, who are expected to pay obeisance to him. Most countries in Europe are egalitarian. Arabic and Asian countries are high on the power index.

Individualism versus collectivism: This explains the extent to which members of a particular culture value being seen first, as individuals or as members of a community. As individuals, they are entirely held accountable for their errors. They are also rewarded as individuals for their exploits. However, in some cultures, the wider community is involved. Suppose a person makes an inglorious error. The whole community where that individual comes from shares in it. The same goes if he wins laurels and awards. The individual does not exist primarily for himself. African, Japanese, Indian, and most Asiatic nations follow the collective approach. A Chinese man has his Guanxi or Guanshi. This is his network of influential and significant contacts that smoothen his business and other activities (Yeung and Tung, 1996 ). He succeeds or fails based on his personal relationships. In other words, the basis of business is friendship. This is clear evidence of collectivism. Most people from America and Europe are individualistic. It must be pointed out that personal values mediate both community and individualistic spirit. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s communitarianism vs. individualism appears very similar to this Hofstede’s individualism/collectivism orientation. The information receiver who values his individuality will be offended if he is seen as just a group member or if his negative performance on the job is discussed openly. The message sender who appreciates his subordinates would send personalized messages and expect their feedback.

Uncertainty avoidance: This shows the degree to which a particular culture is uncomfortable with uncertainties and ambiguities. Some cultures avoid or create worries about how much they disclose to other people. A culture with high uncertainty avoidance scores wants to avoid doubts by telling and knowing the absolute truth in everything. For them, everything should be plainly stated. When situations are not like this, they are offended, worried, and intolerant of other people or groups they feel are hiding facts by not being plain enough. Hofstede and Bond ( 1988 ) write that this trait is very peculiar to western Europeans. This means that people from countries like Greece, Turkey, and Spain are very high on uncertainty avoidance. Communication between people with high or low uncertainties may be hindered. Some people may appear rude and uncouth because of their straightforward ways of talking. Some Africans may see some Americans and people from Europe as too wide-mouthed because they feel they do not use discretion in talking. They say things they may prefer to keep silent about and hide from the public’s ears. On the other hand, some Americans may see some Africans as unnecessarily secretive. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s ( 1997 ) universalism/particularism explains why some cultures insist on applying the rule of law no matter who the offender is.

Masculinity/feminity roles : Hofstede ( 2001 ) defines masculinity as society’s preference for success, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Conversely, femininity is seen as the preference for co-operation, diffidence, caring for the weak and quality of life. The male-female contradiction affects communication. Females are expected to be meek homemakers that tend and nurture their family members. Like Sweden and Norway, cultures that favour females do not discriminate between the sexes. Japan and Nigeria have cultures that are predominantly masculine in orientation. Competitive and aggressive females are frowned at and seen as social deviants. In the other cultures where females are more favoured, a man may land in court and face public condemnation for domestic violence. Hofstede ( 1998 ) believes that how different cultures see the male/female roles influence how they treat gender, sexuality, and religion.

Long-time orientations: A particular society accepts some degree of long or short associations. Japanese culture scores high in long-term orientation values, commitments, and loyalty. They respect tradition, and therefore, changes in their society take a longer time to happen. Cultures with low long-term orientation do not value tradition much, nor do they go out of their way to nurture long-standing relationships. Literally, changes occur in rapid succession. There appears to be more attachment to the pursuit of immediate self-satisfaction and simple-minded well-being. Baumeister and Wilson ( 1996 , pp. 322–325) say that meaning comes from a sense of purpose, efficacy, value, and a sense of positive self-worth. Thus, if you communicate with somebody with a short-term orientation, you may think that he is too hasty and intemperate, while he may feel that you are too sluggish and not ready to take immediate action.

Hall ( 1983 ) introduces two other factors:

Time usage: Some cultures are monochronic, while others are polychronic. Monochronic cultures are known for doing one thing at a time. Western Europe is monochronic in time orientation, as illustrated by the familiar adage that says, “There is a time and place for everything!” Persons from this cultural background are very punctual and strictly adhere to plans. They are task-oriented. Polychronic cultures schedule multiple tasks simultaneously, even though there may be distractions and interruptions while completing them. Plans may often change at short notice. Such different time management and usage may constrict effective communication. A London business entrepreneur will find it difficult to understand why his business partner from Nigeria may be thirty minutes late for a scheduled meeting. The answer is in their perception of time. Some Nigerians observe what is referred to as African time , where punctuality is tacitly ignored.

Low and high context: This refers to how much a culture depends on direct or indirect verbal communication. According to Hall ( 1976 ), low context cultures explicitly refer to the topic of discussion. The speaker and his audience know that the words mean exactly what they say. In high context cultures, the meanings of words are drawn from the context of the communication process. The words may never mean what they say. For example, the sentence: I have heard . In the low context culture, it merely means that the listener has used his ears to listen to what the speaker is saying. In the high context culture, the listener knows more than what the speaker is saying and may be planning something unpleasant. Europeans and North Americans have low contexts. African and Asian nations have high contexts.

Vaknin ( 2005 ) brings in another value:

Exogenic and endogenic: This shows how people relate to their environment. Deeply exogenic cultures look outside themselves to make sense of life. Hence, they believe in God and His power to intervene in the affairs of men. Endogenic cultures draw on themselves when searching for the meaning of life. They think they can generate solutions to tackle the problems facing them. While the endogenic person may exert himself to find a solution to a challenge, his exogenic partner may believe that supernatural help will come from somewhere and refuses to do what is needed. Of course, this provides a problematic platform for effective communication.

The United Nations’ sustainable development goals and culture

The United Nations recognizes that culture is implicitly crucial to the achievement of the SDGs. No meaningful development can occur outside any cultural context because every person is born into a culture. To a large extent, our cultural foundations determine what we do and how we see things. Therefore, culture must be integrated into sustainable development strategies. Some specific goals’ targets acknowledge that culture drives development. Sustainable development revolves around economic, social, and environmental objectives for people. These goals are implicitly or explicitly dependent on culture because culture impacts people.

There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals. However, there are four specific ones that refer to culture are:

SDG 4 focuses on quality education

By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

In other words, quality education is most effective if it responds to a place and the community’s cultural context and exactitudes. This target hinges on education promoting peace, non-violence, and cultural diversity as precursors to sustainable development. Encouraging respect for cultural diversity within acceptable standards facilitates cultural understanding and peace.

SDG 8 focuses on decent work and economic growth

By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products

Strengthening trade in cultural goods and services will provide growth impetus for local, national, and international markets. These will create employment opportunities for people whose work revolves around cultural goods. Cultural tourism generates revenues that improve the economy. In this sense, culture facilitates the community’s well-being and sustainability.

SDG 11 focuses on sustainable cities and communities

Target 11.4

Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage

When our cultural heritage is carefully managed, it attracts sustainable investments in tourism. The local people living where this heritage is domiciled ensure that it is not destroyed and that they themselves will not damage the heritage areas.

SDG 12 focuses on responsible consumption and production

Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products

Several indigenous livelihoods and crafts are built on local knowledge and management of the ecosystem, natural resources, and local materials. If natural resources are depleted, production will be endangered. Local livelihoods that utilize low technology and energy generate less waste and keep their environment free from pollution. In other words, proper management of the ecosystem prevents biodiversity loss, reduces land degradation, and moderates adverse climate change effects. Where there are natural disasters, traditional knowledge already embedded in the people’s culture helps them become resilient.

Theoretical framework

The social construction of reality is hinged on the belief that people make sense of their social world by assembling their knowledge. Scheler ( 1960 ) labels this assemblage the Sociology of Knowledge . Berger and Luckmann ( 1966 , p.15) contend that this “knowledge is concerned with the analysis of the social construction of reality.” Social construction theory builds on peoples’ comprehension of their own life experiences. From there, people make assumptions about what they think life is or should be. Young and Collin ( 2004 ) present that social constructionism pays more attention to society than individuals. Communities determine what they feel is acceptable. What is widely accepted by a particular community may be unacceptable to other people who are not members of this group. Therefore, people see an issue as good or bad based on their group’s description. Thus, what is a reality in Society A may be seen as illegal in Society B . Berger and Luckmann ( 1966 ) claim that people create their own social and cultural worlds and vice versa. According to them, common sense or basic knowledge is sustained through social interactions. These, in turn, reinforce already existing perceptions of reality, leading to routinization and habitualization. Berger and Luckmann ( 1991 ) say that dialogue is the most important means of maintaining, modifying, and reconstructing subjective reality.

Burr ( 2006 ) writes that the four fundamental tenets of social constructionism are: a critical instance towards taken-for-granted knowledge, historical and cultural specificity; knowledge sustained by social processes; and that knowledge and social action go together. This taken-for-granted knowledge is a basic common-sense approach to daily interactions. Historical and cultural specificities look at the peculiar but past monuments that have shaped the particular society. Knowledge is created and sustained by socialization. Good knowledge improves the common good. However, whoever applies the knowledge he has acquired wrongly incurs sanctions. This is why convicted criminals are placed behind bars.

Social constructions exist because people tacitly agree to act as if they do (Pinker, 2002 ). Whatever people see as realities are actually what they have learnt, over long periods, through their interactions with their society’s socialization agents such as the family, schools and churches. Cultural realities are conveyed through a language: the vehicle for communication. Language communicates culture by telling about what is seen, spoken of, or written about. However, groups construct realities based on their cultures. The media construct realities through the production, reproduction, and distribution of messages from which their consumers give meaning to their worlds and model their behaviours.

The method of study

The discourse analysis method of study is adopted for this work. Foucault ( 1971 ) developed the ‘discursive field’ to understand the relationships between language, social institutions, subjectivity, and power. Foucault writes that discourses relate to verbalization at the most basic level. The discursive method explores the construction of meanings in human communication by offering a meaningful interpretation of messages to enhance purposeful communication. Discourse analysis examines how written, or spoken language is used in real-life situations or in the society. Language use affects the creation of meaning; and, therefore, defines the context of communication. Kamalu and Isisanwo ( 2015 ) posit that discourse analysis considers how language is used in social and cultural contexts by examining the relationship between written and spoken words. Discourse analysis aims to understand how and why people use language to achieve the desired effect. The discursive method explores the construction of meanings in human communication by offering a meaningful interpretation of messages to enhance purposeful communication. Gale ( 2010 ) says that meaning is constructed moment by moment. Garfinkel ( 1967 ) explains this construction as the common-sense actions of ordinary people based on their practical considerations and judgments of what they feel are intelligible and accountable to others. According to Keller ( 2011 ), a peoples’ sense of reality combines their routinized interactions and the meanings they attach to objects, actions, and events. It is in this understanding of the natural use of language that some barriers to effective cross-cultural communication can be reduced.

Messages may assume different meanings in different situations for other people. These meanings affect social interactions. They either encourage or discourage further human communication. As Katz ( 1959 ) has written, interpersonal relationships influence communication. To make meaning out of messages and improve human relationships, it is necessary to understand that content and context may not represent the same thing to people in different situations. Waever ( 2004 , p. 198) states that “things do not have meaning in and of themselves, they only become meaningful in discourse.” Since people’s perspectives are different, it becomes extremely difficult to form a rigid basis on specific ideas. Ideas are discussed on their merits. Discursive analysis inspects the ways individuals construct events by evaluating language usage in writing, speech, conversation, or symbolic communication (Edwards, 1997 ; Harre and Gillet, 1994 ). Language is the carrier of culture. According to Van Dijk ( 1995 , p. 12), this approach is used to study descriptive, explanatory, and practical issues in “the attempt to uncover, reveal or disclose what is implicit, hidden or otherwise not immediately obvious in relations of discursively enacted dominance or their underlying ideologies.” The media play fundamental roles in the processes of constructing or reconstructing reality. They can do these because of Aririguzoh’s ( 2004 ) observation that the press impacts the political and socio-cultural sub-systems.

Culture at the international galleries

The affairs of culture came into international prominence at the UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies held in Mexico in 1982. This conference gave a broad definition of culture to include “the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (UNESCO, 1982 , p. 1).

The United Nations World Commission on Culture and Development, led by J. Perez de Cuellar, published our Creative Diversity’s Landmark Report (UNESCO, 1995 ). This report points out the great importance of incorporating culture into development. Although the Commission recognizes cultural diversities, it sees them as the actual vehicles driving creativity and innovation. During the World Decade on Culture and Development (1988–1998), UNESCO stepped up again to campaign for greater recognition of culture’s contribution to national and international development policies. In 1998, Stockholm hosted an Inter-governmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development. Its Action Plan on Cultural Policies for Development reaffirmed the correlation between culture and development (UNESCO, 1998 ). In 1999, UNESCO and the World Bank held the Inter-governmental Conference, Culture Counts , in Florence. Here, ‘cultural capital’ was emphasized as the tool for sustainable development and economic growth (UNESCO, 1999 ).

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document . Here, cultural diversity was explicitly admitted as a contributor to the enrichment of humankind. The United Nations General Assembly Resolutions on Culture and Development adopted in 2010 and 2011 (65/166 and 66/208) recognize culture as an “essential component of human development” and “an important factor in the fight against poverty, providing for economic growth and ownership of the development processes.” These resolutions called for the mainstreaming of culture into development policies at all levels. The UN System Task Team on the Post 2015 Development Agenda issued a report, Realizing the Future We Want for All ( 2012 , p. ii), with a direct charge that culture has a clear role to play in the “transformative change needed for a rights-based, equitable and sustainable process of global development.” Paragraph 71 of the report declares:

It is critical to promote equitable change that ensures people’s ability to choose their value systems in peace, thereby allowing for full participation and empowerment. Communities and individuals must be able to create and practice their own culture and enjoy that of others free from fear. This will require, inter alia, respect for cultural diversity, safeguarding cultural and natural heritage, fostering cultural institutions, strengthening cultural and creative industries, and promoting cultural tourism (p. 33).

In 2005, the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions member states agreed that cultural diversity “increases the range of choices and nurtures human capacities and values. Therefore, it is a mainspring for sustainable development for communities, peoples and nations” (UNESCO, 2005 , p. 1). The Convention reiterated the importance of the link between culture and development. UNESCO also steers an International Fund for Cultural Diversity to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction among the developing and least developed countries that are parties to the Convention.

UN Resolution 2347 of 2017 focuses exclusively on protecting cultural heritage and its necessity for peace and security. This Resolution brings a thorough awareness of culture’s role as a source of stability, inclusion, driver of reconciliation, and resilience. This Resolution reinforces Resolution 2199, adopted in February 2015, partly to fight against international terrorism financing and prohibit the illicit trafficking of cultural goods from Iraq and Syria.

Communication processes for overcoming difficulties in cross-cultural communication

The primary risk in cross-cultural communication is distortion, which creates misunderstanding or even misrepresentation of the conveyed information. Baumgratz ( 1990 , pp. 161–168) shares the opinion that relevant cultural dimensions of what he calls a social communication situation should be mapped out for individuals or groups who are from different nations or cultural origins but who have realized the need to contribute to the achievement of social, institutional, organizational, group, and personal aims. The tactics to overcome difficulties in cross-cultural communication lie in the communication processes. Any of the steps can become a barrier since culture influences the behaviour of both senders and receivers of messages. Barriers impede communication by distorting, blocking, or creating misunderstandings. Hence, it is necessary to create an enabling environment that will make communicating easier. Each of the communication steps can be strategized to enhance communication.

He is the source or initiator of the message. He can be a person or an organization. If the sender is a person, Malec ( 2018 ) refers to him as the carrier of intangible culture and the creator of the tangible ones. Messages are conveyed through spoken or written words. Nevertheless, messages can also be non-verbal. The encoding includes selecting words, symbols, or gestures in composing a message. The sender should encrypt, transfer meaning, or package his messages in ways that the receivers can access them. He should use symbols that the receiver would comprehend. The first thing he should do is use a language that his receiver understands. For example, it is useless to send a message written in English to another person who only understands French. Not only is the effort wasted, but it might also generate hostility. In Nigeria, Mexican soaps are freely watched. However, their producers avoided the obvious language challenge by dubbing in English voice-overs.

Words mean different things in different languages. For example, a British boss would answer yes to a question. However, his American subordinate would answer, yeah . The boss would think that he is disrespectful and impolite. Meanwhile, the American employee would be bewildered by the boss’s apparent coldness. British people use words that have different meanings from their American counterparts. For example, the word, pant , means underwear to a Briton but a pair of trousers to an American. The Englishman may still run into trouble with other nationals because his words have different meanings to these listeners. For example, the English phrase fart means a different thing among the Danish. For them, the word means speed ! The English word gift means poison in German. If an Englishman calls somebody a brat , his Russian friend will conclude that he is calling him his brother , which is what the word means in his language. Igbo children of south-eastern Nigeria call the hawk leke . But for the Yorubas in the southwest, this is the name given to a male child.

The sender, too, must know that even body language may mean different things. He should not assume that non-verbal messages mean the same in every part of the world. In Japan, nodding the head up and down means disagreement. In Nigeria, it means the opposite. Even though his own culture invariably influences the message’s sender, he should understand that his message is intended for a cross-cultural audience. He must also realize that the contents are no longer meant for ethnic communities defined by geographical locations but for an audience connected by frequent interactions that are not necessarily in the same physical place. A message sender that values esprit de corps will incorporate this into his messages by telling them that the laurel does not go to any person in particular but to the winning team. He thus encourages everybody to join in to win, not as individuals but as members of a group. If he is high on doubt avoidance, he makes his messages very direct and unambiguous and leaves no room for misinterpretation. However, a male sender who wants to assert his masculinity may wish to sound harsh. The sender who regularly attends church services may unconsciously put some words of Scripture in his messages because of his exogenic roots. The sender with monochronic orientation will send one message and expect the task to be completed as scheduled. His linear cultural background will be offended if the result is the contrary. Similarly, the sender who places a high value on rules and regulations would send messages of punishment to those who break them but reward those who keep them without minding his relationships with them. An effective sender of messages to a cross-cultural society should state his ideas clearly, offer explanations when needed, or even repeat the whole communication process if he does not get the appropriate feedback.

This is the information content the sender wants to share with his receivers. These include stories, pictures, or advertisements. He should carefully avoid lurid and offensive content. A French man may see nothing wrong in his wife wearing a very skimpy bikini and other men ogling at her at a public beach. His counterpart from Saudi Arabia will be upset if other men leer at his wife. In addition, the wife would be sanctioned for dressing improperly and appearing in public. If a person has a message to share with others from a different cultural background, he should be careful. His listeners may not isolate his statement as being distinct from his personality.

Societies with high context culture usually consider the messages they send or receive before interpreting them. Messages are hardly delivered straightforwardly. The message is in the associated meanings attached to the pictures and symbols. Thus, those outside that community find it very difficult to understand the meaning of the messages. In low-context communication, the message is the information in words. The words mean what they say. However, a corporate sender of messages, for example, the head of the Human Resources Department of a multi-cultural company interested in building team spirit, may organize informal chit-chats and get-togethers to break the proverbial ice as well as create a convivial atmosphere where people can relate. The message he is passing across is simple: let colleagues relax, relate, and work together as team members irrespective of where they come from. All of these are communicative actions.

The channel’s work is to provide a passage for the sender to guide his message to the receiver. While face-to-face communication is ideal for intimate and close group conversations, it is impossible to talk to everybody simultaneously. Different channels of passing across the same message may be used. For example, the same message may be passed through radio, adapted for television, put online, or printed in newsletters, newspapers, and magazines. The hope is that people who missed the message on one channel may see it on another somewhere else. A pronounced media culture will hasten cross-cultural communication. Many people consume media content. However, these consumers are expected to be media literates. Aririguzoh ( 2007 , p. 144) writes that:

media literacy is the systematic study of the media and their operations in our socio-political systems as well as their contributions to the development and maintenance of culture. It is the information and communication skill that is needed to make citizens more competent. It is the ability to read what the print media offer, see what the visual media present, and hear what the aural media announce. It is a response to the changing nature of information in our modern society.

Official messages should be passed through defined routes and are best written. This would close avenues of possible denials by others if the same message were passed across verbally. It could be difficult to misinterpret the contents of a written document. Written documents have archival values. As much as possible, rumours should be stamped out. A good manager should single out regular gossips in a multi-cultural organization for special attention. Equally, an effective manager heading widely dispersed employees can co-ordinate their activities using communication technologies with teleconferencing features. Aririguzoh ( 2007 , p. 45) notes, “information and communication technologies have transformed the range and speed of dispersing information and of communicating. Today, the whole world lies a click away!”

The media of communication are shaped by the culture of the people who produce them. What they carry as contents and the form they assume are defined by the culture of the sender. In low-context societies, it is common for messages to be written. In high context societies, it is common for statements to be verbal. Importantly, Aririguzoh ( 2013 , pp. 119–120) points out that “… the mass media can effectively be deployed to provide pieces of information that enhance communication, build understanding and strengthen relationships in our rapidly changing environment dictated by the current pace of globalization. The mass media assiduously homogenize tastes, styles, and points of view among many consumers of its products across the globe. They have effectively helped in fading away national distinctions and growing mass uniformity as they create, distribute and transmit the same entertainment, news, and information to millions of people in different nations.”

The receiver is the person the sender directs his message to. In a workplace, the receiver needs the message or information to do his job. The receiver decodes or tries to understand the meaning of the sender’s message by breaking it down into symbols to give the proper feedback. If the message is verbal, the receiver has to listen actively. The message receiver must understand a message based on his existing orientations shaped by his own culture. Even the messages that he picks are selected to conform to his existing preconceptions.

Oyserman et al. ( 2002 ) make an interesting discovery: that receivers from different cultures interpret the message senders’ mannerisms. For an American, a speaker talking very quickly is seen as telling the uncensored truth. In other words, the speaker who talks too slowly implicates himself as a liar! However, for the Koreans, slow speech denotes careful consideration of others. In some cultures, particularly in Asia, the receiver is responsible for effective communication. Kobayashi and Noguchi ( 2001 ) claim that he must become an expert at “understanding without words.” Miyahara ( 2004 , p. 286) emphasizes that even children literarily learn to read other people’s minds by evaluating the subtle cues in their messages and then improvising to display the expected and appropriate social behaviour and communication. Gestures involve the movements of the hands and head of the sender. The receiver clearly understands these body movements. As painted by Sapir ( 1927 , p. 556), “we respond to gestures with an extreme alertness and, one might almost say, in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.”

Receivers who value individualism appreciate personal freedom, believe that they can make their own decisions, and respect their performance. Those who prefer communitarianism would prefer group applause and loyalty. A monochromatic receiver would start and finish a task before starting another one. He would be offended when colleagues do not meet deadlines, are late to appointments, and do not keep rigid schedules. His co-worker, who synchronizes his time, develops a flexible working schedule to work at two or more tasks.

This is the final process. Ordinarily, the sender wants a response to determine if the message he sent out has been received and understood. Acknowledging a message does not indicate a clear understanding of its contents. Feedback can be positive or negative. Positive feedback arises when the receiver interprets the message correctly and does what the sender wants. Negative feedback comes when messages are incorrectly interpreted, and the receiver does not do what the sender of the information has intended him to do. Cross-cultural communication recognizes that people come from different backgrounds. Therefore, feedback on diverse messages would be different. A sensitive communicator would be careful how he designs his messages for a heterogeneous audience so that he can elicit the desired feedback.

It must be emphasized that no culture is superior to another as each culture meets the needs of those who subscribe to it. To a large extent, our culture influences our behaviours and expectations from other people. Although there are noticeable similarities and differences, what separates one culture from another is its emphasis on specific values. As the United Nations has affirmed, there is diversity in cultures. These diversities add colour and meaning to human existence. This suggests that particular policies should be carved out to attend to specific locations and supports Satterthwaite’s ( 2014 ) proposition that local actors should be empowered to help achieve the SDGs. What the local populace in one community may appreciate may be frowned upon and even be fought against by residents in another place. As Hossain and Ali ( 2014 ) point out, individuals constitute the societies where they live and work. While Bevir ( 1996 ) describes this relationship as that of mutual dependence, he recognizes that people are influenced by their particular social structures and therefore do not go against them. Bevir believes that social systems exist for individuals.

Societies are built on shared values, norms and beliefs. These, in turn, have profound effects on individuals. Society’s culture affects individuals while the individuals create and shape the society, including initiating sustainable development. Development rests on the shoulders of men. Thus, culture influences the ways individuals behave and communicate. The effective communicator must actively recognize these elements and work them into communication practices. As Renn et al. ( 1997 , p. 218) point out, “sustainable practices can be initiated or encouraged by governmental regulation and economic incentives. A major element to promote sustainability will be, however, the exploration and organization of discursive processes between and among different actors.”

To achieve the United Nations sustainable goals, the competent communicator has to recognize that the culture of the actors in a communication process is the basic foundation for effective communication. For example, while one individual may discuss issues face-to-face and is not afraid to express his feelings candidly, another person may not be so direct. He may even involve third parties to mediate in solving a problem. Either way, their approaches are defined by their cultural backgrounds. It may be counterproductive to assume that either of these approaches is the best. This assertion is supported by the study of Stanton ( 2020 ), who explored intercultural communication between African American managers and Hispanic workers who speak English as a second language. He finds managers that follow culturally sensitive communication strategies getting more work done. Cartwright ( 2020 ) also observes that intercultural competence and recognition of cultural differences in East and Central Europe are foundation pillars for business success. This lends credence to Ruben and Gigliotti ( 2016 ) observation that communication with people from different cultures reduces the barriers associated with intercultural communication and enhances the communication process.

Irrespective of our ethnicities, people want to communicate, understand, appreciate, and be respected by others. Effective communication is the foundation of good human relationships among team members, whether their cultural backgrounds differ or not. Good feedback is achieved when both the sender and receiver of messages create common meanings. This is what discourse is all about. Messages must be meaningful, meaningfully constructed and meaningfully interpreted. Georgiou ( 2011 ) labels this the communicative competence : acknowledgement of the intercultural dimension of foreign language education and successful intercultural interactions that assume non-prejudiced attitudes, tolerance and understanding of other cultures, and cultural self-awareness of the person communicating. An efficient communicator must understand that culture shapes people, and the people then shape society. In other words, communication shapes the world. Therefore, appropriately chosen communication strategies help blend the different cultures.

According to Bokova ( 2013 ), there is “renewed aspirations for equality and respect, for tolerance and mutual understanding, especially between peoples of different cultures.” This means that if all parties respect other team members’ cultures, a clement work environment is inevitable. Cultural literacy creates more tolerant and peaceful work environments. Achieving this starts with a re-examination of the whole communication process. The crux of cross-cultural communication is developing effective ways to appreciate the culture of others involved in the acts of communication. Understanding these differences provides the context for an enhanced understanding of the values and behaviours of others. Reconciling these differences confers competitive advantages to those who communicate effectively. The media must provide the links between senders and receivers of messages in the context of their socio-cultural environments.

The United Nations appreciates the distinctiveness in cultures and has incorporated it as a significant factor in achieving sustainable development goals. This global body has produced different documents championing this. Every development takes place in an environment of culture. The heart of sustainable development is the man. The SDGs will be more meaningful and easily achievable by recognizing that actions should be both locally and culturally relevant. Cultural differences can be effectively managed if senders and receivers of messages understand that culture shapes how people communicate and, by extension, the relationship with other people who may not necessarily be from their tribal communities. Breaking down the barriers to cross-cultural communication lies in understanding these distinct differences and consciously incorporating them into the communication processes to enhance communication competencies.

Data availability

All data analysed are contained in the paper.

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Effective cultural communication is a key to establishing trust, obtaining accurate health assessments, and implementing culturally congruent care with patients and their families. Cross-cultural communication includes verbal and nonverbal communication. Verbal communication involves preferred language and dialects, contextual use of the language, preferred greetings, voice volume and tone, health literacy, and the need for interpretation and translation. Nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal communication and encompasses temporality, acceptance of touch, degree of eye contact, facial expressions, and spatial distancing. Sign languages, of which there are numerous ones, are a combination of verbal and nonverbal communication. Recommendations for clinical practice, administration, education and training, and research are included.

Guideline: Nurses shall use culturally competent verbal and nonverbal communication skills to identify clients’ values, beliefs, practices, perceptions, and unique healthcare needs. Douglas et al. ( 2014 : 112)

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Larry Purnell Ph.D., R.N., FAAN

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School of Nursing, University of California San Francisco, Palo Alto, California, USA

Marilyn "Marty" Douglas

School of Nursing, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, USA

Dula Pacquiao

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Larry Purnell

Appendix 1: Communication Exercise

Effective communication is essential in the delivery of culturally congruent health and nursing care. For cultural communication to be effective, the healthcare providers need to understand their own communication practices. The following exercise will assist providers to understand their own communication practices.

Instructions

Identify your own cultural identity and personal communication practices and how they differ with family, friends, and strangers, including patients.

Investigate the scholarly literature on your culture after you have completed the exercises.

Identify how your communication patterns differ from what was in the scholarly literature.

Posit why these personal practices differ.

Note: Variant characteristics within a culture can be used as a guide to addressing the statements below. These variant cultural characteristics include:

Once this exercise is completed, it should be shared with others for a discussion. This exercise can be used in academic classes, continuing education classes, and in-services.

Identify your cultural ancestry. If you have more than one cultural ancestry, choose one for the sake of this exercise.

Explore the willingness of individuals in your culture to share thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Can you identify any area of discussion that would be considered taboo?

Explore the practice and meaning of touch in your culture. Include information regarding touch between family members, friends, members of the opposite sex, and healthcare providers.

Identify personal spatial and distancing strategies used when communicating with others in your culture. Discuss differences between friends and families versus strangers.

Discuss your culture’s use of eye contact. Include information regarding practices between family members, friends, strangers, and persons of different age groups.

Explore the meaning of gestures and facial expressions in your culture. Do specific gestures or facial expressions have special meanings? How are emotions displayed?

Are there acceptable ways of standing and greeting people in your culture?

Discuss the prevailing temporal relation of your culture. Is the culture’s worldview past, present, or future oriented?

Discuss the impact of your culture on your nursing and/or healthcare. Be specific, that is, not something that is very general.

Appendix 2: Reflective Exercises

The following reflective exercises can be used in formal courses at any level and discipline or interdisciplinary. They can also be used in staff development.

What changes in ethnic and cultural diversity have you seen in your community over the last 5 years? Over the last 10 years? Have you had the opportunity to interact with newer groups?

What health disparities have you observed in your community? To what do you attribute these disparities? What can you do as a professional to help decrease these disparities?

Who in your family had the most influence in teaching you cultural values and practices? Mother, father, or grandparent?

How do you want to be addressed? First name or last name with a title?

How do you address older people in your culture? First name or last name with a title?

What activities have you done to increase your cultural competence?

Given that everyone is ethnocentric to some degree, what do you do to become less ethnocentric?

How do you distinguish a stereotype from a generalization?

How have your variant characteristics of culture changed over time?

What ethnic and racial groups do you encounter on a regular basis? Do you see any racism or discrimination among these groups?

What does your organization do to increase diversity and cultural competence?

What barriers do you see to culturally competent care in your organization? School, work, etc.

How many languages are spoken in your community?

Do different languages pose barriers to healthcare, including health literacy? What affordability concerns for healthcare do you see in your community?

What complementary/alternative healthcare practices do you use?

What complementary/alternative healthcare practices are available in your community?

Is public transportation readily available to healthcare services in your community? What might be done to improve them?

What do you do when you cannot understand the language of your patient?

In what languages are healthcare instructions provided in your organization?

Does your organization offer both interpreter and translation services?

Given the heritage and diversity of the population in your community, what cultural, social, and material issues do you consider important?

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Purnell, L. (2018). Cross Cultural Communication: Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication, Interpretation and Translation. In: Douglas, M., Pacquiao, D., Purnell, L. (eds) Global Applications of Culturally Competent Health Care: Guidelines for Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69332-3_14

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Top 10 International Business Negotiation Case Studies

International business negotiation case studies offer insights to business negotiators who face challenges in the realm of cross-cultural business negotiation..

By PON Staff — on March 26th, 2024 / International Negotiation

If you engage in international negotiation , you can improve your odds of success by learning from these 10 well-known international business negotiation case studies:

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Apple’s Apology in China

When Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook apologized to Apple customers in China for problems arising from Apple’s warranty policy, he promised to rectify the issue. In a negotiation research study, Professor William W. Maddux of INSEAD and his colleagues compared reactions to apologies in the United States and in Japan. They discovered that in “collectivist cultures” such as China and Japan, apologies can be particularly effective in repairing broken trust, regardless of whether the person apologizing is to blame. This may be especially true in a cross-cultural business negotiation such as this one.

Bangladesh Factory-Safety Agreements

In this negotiation case study, an eight-story factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing an estimated 1,129 people, most of whom were low-wage garment workers manufacturing goods for foreign retailers. Following the tragedy, companies that outsourced their garment production faced public pressure to improve conditions for foreign workers. Labor unions focused their efforts on persuading Swedish “cheap chic” giant H&M to take the lead on safety improvements. This negotiation case study highlights the pros and cons of all-inclusive, diffuse agreements versus targeted, specific agreements.

The Microsoft-Nokia Deal

Microsoft made the surprising announcement that it was purchasing Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia for $7.2 billion, a merger aimed at building Microsoft’s mobile and smartphone offerings. The merger faced even more complexity after the ink dried on the contract—namely, the challenges of integrating employees from different cultures. International business negotiation case studies such as this one underscore the difficulties that companies face when attempting to negotiate two different identities.

The Cyprus Crisis

With the economy of the tiny Mediterranean island nation Cyprus near collapse, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB), and the European Commission teamed up to offer a 10-billion-euro bailout package contingent on Cyprus provisioning a substantial amount of the money through a one-time tax on ordinary Cypriot bank depositors. The move proved extremely unpopular in Cyprus and protests resulted. The nation’s president was left scrambling for a backup plan. The lesson from international business negotiation case studies such as this? Sometimes the best deal you can get may be better than no deal at all.

Dissent in the European Union

The European Union (EU) held a summit to address the coordination of economic activities and policies among EU member states. German resistance to such a global deal was strong, and pessimism about a unified EU banking system ran high as a result of the EU financial crisis. The conflict reflects the difficulty of forging multiparty agreements during times of stress and crisis.

North and South Korea Talks Collapse

Negotiations between North Korea and South Korea were supposed to begin in Seoul aimed at lessening tensions between the divided nations. It would have been the highest government dialogue between the two nations in years. Just before negotiations were due to start, however, North Korea complained that it was insulted that the lead negotiator from the South wasn’t higher in status. The conflict escalated, and North Korea ultimately withdrew from the talks. The case highlights the importance of pride and power perceptions in international negotiations.

Canceled Talks for the U.S. and Russia

Then-U.S. president Barack Obama canceled a scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing a lack of progress on a variety of negotiations. The announcement came on the heels of Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who made confidential data on American surveillance programs public. From international business negotiation case studies such as this, we can learn strategic reasons for breaking off ties , if only temporarily, with a counterpart.

The East China Sea Dispute

In recent years, several nations, including China and Japan, have laid claim to a chain of islands in the East China Sea. China’s creation of an “air defense” zone over the islands led to an international dispute with Japan. International negotiators seeking to resolve complex disputes may gain valuable advice from this negotiation case study, which involves issues of international law as well as perceptions of relative strength or weakness in negotiations.

An International Deal with Syria

When then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, announced a deal to prevent the United States from entering the Syrian War, it was contingent on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s promise to dismantle his nation’s chemical weapons. Like other real-life negotiation case studies, this one highlights the value of expanding our focus in negotiation.

A Nuclear Deal with Iran

When the United States and five other world powers announced an interim agreement to temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program, the six-month accord, which eventually led to a full-scale agreement in 2015, was designed to give international negotiators time to negotiate a more comprehensive pact that would remove the threat of Iran producing nuclear weapons. As Iranian President Hassan Rouhani insisted that Iran had a sovereign right to enrich uranium, the United States rejected Iran’s claim to having a “right to enrich” but agreed to allow Iran to continue to enrich at a low level, a concession that allowed a deal to emerge.

What international business negotiation case studies in the news have you learned from in recent years?

What is the Multi-Door Courthouse Concept
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A Top International Negotiation Case Study in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal
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Cultural Appropriation: High School Celebrates Graduating Seniors with “Senores/Senoritas” Dress-Up Day

In the United States, we have a cultural tradition of dressing up for Halloween. This tradition dates back to ancient Celtic beliefs. Basically, in order to protect themselves from evil spirits on New Year’s Even when the boundary between the living and the dead was most accessible, people hid behind animal skin costumes. Over the many hundreds of years, dressing up in costume has become less about hiding from spirits and more about the nonverbal expression of individuality. This case study looks at an extreme case of dress-up that went horribly wrong and showed cultural appropriation at its worst and most offensive. The importance of this case study shows that cultivating and improving cultural intelligence is a necessary communication skill in today’s global environment.

Back in 2012, an Orange County high school made headlines with a dress-up day titled “Senores and Senoritas Day,” which was supposed to be a play on the word seniors . Canyon High School is located in Anaheim, California, and this event was intended to be a spirit day celebrating graduating seniors and California’s Mexican heritage. This event dates to at least 2009. According to the US Census Bureau American Community Survey, Hispanics/Latinos made up 52.8% of this city’s population between 2008 and 2012. It made sense to celebrate Hispanic heritage by highlighting some of the nonverbal elements of culture such as clothing, food, communication, and body language. However, the school’s administration did not properly specify guidelines for this event and broadly announced for students to wear Hispanic-themed attire.

As a result, students showed up to school dressed as US Border Patrol agents, immigration agents, gardeners, a pregnant woman pushing a baby stroller, and gang members with bandanas and teardrop tattoos. While these may seem like extreme examples, could students have dressed up in anything that did not perpetuate stereotypes? Even with clear guidelines, how does one avoid reducing the Hispanic culture to stereotypes and caricatures? How did the administration not see that this event was the epitome of cultural appropriation?

Students wearing Border Patrol T-shirts and stereotypical gang-member costumes

A former student raised concerns during his senior year but was told by an unidentified administrator to “get a sense of humor” (Do & Rojas, 2012). Upon taking a Chicano Studies class in college, he was motivated to take his concerns to the district level and insist they investigate. After an internal investigation, which included interviews with students and staff, a review of emails, and social media postings, it was found that, “There was a lack of oversight/supervision and that the school administration should not have allowed this activity.” The report also stated: “Even if strict guidelines were provided the result would still lead to hurtful and demeaning messages about Mexican culture and to the students of Mexican, Hispanic, and Latino descent” (Orange Communication System, 2012a).

Arya (2021) points out that recognizing that there “is an asymmetry of power between two cultures that involves the majority/dominant culture taking from the marginalized culture” vital to understanding cultural appropriation. She notes, “Cultural appropriation is important because it concerns the phenomenon of exploitation that has existed historically and continues to do so between cultures of unequal power” (Ayra, 2021). While Anaheim’s Hispanic population was near 53%, Canyon High School was in the more affluent area of Anaheim Hills. At that time, the Los Angeles Times California Schools Guide reported about 55% of the students at Canyon HS were White compared to 16% Latino. Additionally, only 8% of the faculty was Latino, while white faculty dominated at 87% (“Enough Is Enough, Student Said of Seniores, Senoritas Day,” 2012).

At the conclusion of the district’s investigative report, Leal and Langhorne (2012) reported in the Orange County Register that the district required:

The high school’s administrators to complete sensitivity training
The principal to address the inappropriateness of the dress up event in parent communication
The school to sponsor an “International Week” to acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversity
The school to enact a thorough review process for all proposed activities to consider what might go wrong and who it may offend

You may watch a YouTube video on the event here: High School Cancels Demeaning Costume Event .

While this problem may seem to have been resolved, upon further digging, it was discovered that Greg Bowden, the principal of this high school, had been involved in previous district controversies. Back in 1988, Bowden was the band director at another high school in the district when the Associated Student Body and members of the pep squad donned afros and blackface to perform as the Jackson Five (San Roman, 2012). In 2008, Bowden and Canyon High School were at the center of a shocking physical and verbal bullying incident where a student was being called “faggot” and received no support from the administration. The real question is, “How did this individual continue to move up in the district without any repercussions and continue to overlook blatant cultural insensitivities?” (Orange Communication System, 2012a)

Effectively teaching cultural competence in a pre-professional healthcare curriculum

Karen R. Bottenfield 1 ,
Maura A. Kelley 2 ,
Shelby Ferebee 3 ,
Andrew N. Best 1 ,
David Flynn 2 &
Theresa A. Davies 1 , 2

BMC Medical Education volume 24 , Article number: 553 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

188 Accesses

Metrics details

There has been research documenting the rising numbers of racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. With this rise, there is increasing concern over the health disparities that often affect these populations. Attention has turned to how clinicians can improve health outcomes and how the need exists to educate healthcare professionals on the practice of cultural competence. Here we present one successful approach for teaching cultural competence in the healthcare curriculum with the development of an educational session on cultural competence consisting of case-based, role-play exercises, class group discussions, online discussion boards, and a lecture PowerPoint presentation.

Cultural competence sessions were delivered in a pre-dental master’s program to 178 students between 2017 and 2020. From 2017 to 2019, the sessions were implemented as in-person, case-based, role-play exercises. In 2020, due to in-person limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, students were asked to read the role-play cases and provide a reflection response using the online Blackboard Learn discussion board platform. Evaluation of each session was performed using post-session survey data.

Self-reported results from 2017 to 2020 revealed that the role-play exercises improved participant’s understanding of components of cultural competence such as communication in patient encounters (95%), building rapport with patients (94%), improving patient interview skills (95%), and recognition of students own cultural biases when working with patients (93%).

Conclusions

Students were able to expand their cultural awareness and humility after completion of both iterations of the course session from 2017 to 2019 and 2020. This session can be an effective method for training healthcare professionals on cultural competence.

Peer Review reports

It is projected that by the year 2050, racial and ethnic minority groups will make up over 50% of the United States population [ 1 ]. With a more multicultural society, growing concern has emerged over how to address the health disparities that effect these populations and the ways in which healthcare professionals can increase positive health outcomes. Continuing evidence suggests that many patients from racial and ethnic minority groups are not satisfied with the current state of healthcare which has been attributed to implicit bias on the part of physicians and current challenges faced by practitioners who feel underprepared to address these issues due to differences in language, financial status, and healthcare practice [ 2 , 3 , 4 ].

To contend with health disparities and the challenges faced by practitioners working with a more diverse population, healthcare educators have begun to emphasize the importance of educating healthcare workforce on the practice of cultural competence and developing a skilled-based set of behaviors, attitudes and policies that effectively provides care in the wake of cross-cultural situations and differences [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. There are several curricular mandates from both medical and dental accreditation bodies to address this issue [ 7 , 8 , 9 ], and large amounts of resources, ideas, and frameworks that exist for implementing and training future and current healthcare providers on the inadequacies of the healthcare system and cultural competence [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. These current institutional guidelines for accreditation and the numerous amounts of resources for training cultural competence, continue to evolve with work documenting the need for blended curriculum that is continuous throughout student education, starting early as we have done here with pre-dental students, including in-person didactic or online sessions, a service learning component, community engagement and a reflective component [ 4 , 5 , 13 , 14 ].

This study investigates teaching cultural competence in a healthcare curriculum. We hypothesized that early educational exposure to cultural competence through role playing case studies, can serve as an effective mechanism for training early pre-doctoral students the practice of cultural competence. Utilizing student self-reported survey data conducted in a predental master’s curriculum, in which two iterations of role-playing case studies were used to teach components of cultural competence, this study aims to evaluate and support research that suggests role-playing case studies as effective means for educating future clinical professionals on the practice of cultural competence.

This study was determined to be exempt by the Institutional Review Board of Boston University Medical Campus, Protocol # H-37,232. Informed consent was received from all subjects.

Data collection

The role-playing, case-based simulated patient encounter exercises were developed and administered at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine to predental students in the Master of Science in Oral Health Sciences Program (see Table 1 ). From 2017 to 2020, we administered patient encounter cases [see Additional File 1 ] to students ( n = 178) in the program as a portion of a case-based, role-playing exercise to teach the importance of cultural competence and cultural awareness during patient encounters. During years 2017–2019, real actors portrayed the patient and physician. In 2020, the session was conducted online via a discussion board through a Blackboard Course Site. The original case was published as part of a master’s students thesis work in 2021 [ 15 ].

Description of patient encounter cases 1 and 2

Patient Encounter Case 1 [see Additional file 1 ] is composed of two subsections, scenario 1 A and scenario 1B, and is centered around a patient/physician interaction in which a patient who is pregnant presents with pain upon urination. The physician in 1 A is short and terse with the patient, immediately looking at a urine sample, prescribing medication for a urinary tract infection, and telling the patient to return for a follow-up in 2 weeks. In scenario 1B, a similar situation ensues; however, in this scenario the physician takes more time with the patient providing similar care as the physician in 1 A, but asking for more information about the patients personal and medical history. At the conclusion of the scenario, the patient is offered resources for an obstetrician and a dentist based on the information that is provided about the patient’s background. The patient is then sent on their way and asked to follow-up in 2 weeks. The patient does not return.

Patient Encounter Case 2 [see Additional file 1 ] follows a similar format to the Patient Encounter Case 1. In scenario 2 A, the same patient from Case 1 returns with tooth pain after giving birth. The physician in 2 A, like 1 A, is short with the patient and quickly refers the patient to a dentist. In 2B, the physician again takes more time with the patient to receive background information on the patient, make a connection, and provides an antibiotic and dental referral.

Each Patient Encounter Case explored topics such as the importance of building a trusting physician/patient relationship, the importance of asking a patient for patient history, making a connection, and the importance of a physician taking all facets of a patient’s circumstances into consideration [ 15 ].

Session outline

The sessions conducted between 2017 and 2019 were composed of three parts: (1) enactment of an abridged patient encounter facilitated by session administrators, (2) group discussion and reflection during which time students were asked to critically reflect and discuss the theme and key take-aways from the role play exercise, and (3) a PowerPoint presentation emphasizing take-away points from the role-play exercise. At the conclusion of the cultural competence training sessions, students participated in a post-session Qualtrics generated survey administered electronically to assess each student’s feelings about the session [see Additional file 3 ].

Role-play enactment

Facilitators dressed-up in clothing to mimic both the physician and patient for all case scenarios in Patient Encounter Case 1 and Case 2. At the conclusion of the role play portion of each of the cases, the facilitators paused to lead students in a real-time class group discussion. After Case 1, students were asked questions such as: What did you think ? Were the patient’s needs met? Did you expect the patient to return? Following Case 2, similar questions were asked by the facilitators, including: What did you think ? Were the patient’s needs met? Did you expect the patient to accept help?

At the conclusion of this portion of the session, the facilitators led a larger general discussion about both cases and how they related to one another. Finally, the course session concluded with a PowerPoint presentation that reinforced the take-home points from the session [see Additional file 2 ] [ 15 ].

Change in session modality due to COVID-19 pandemic

In Fall 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course modality moved to an online platform and consisted of three parts on a Blackboard Discussion Board (Blackboard, Inc.). Students were required to: (1) read each of the Patient Encounter Cases and add a brief reflection comparing the scenarios, (2) then comment on at least two peer’s posts in the discussion forum and (3) attend class to hear a PowerPoint presentation by a course session facilitator on the key take-aways from each scenario [ 15 ].

Student surveys

At the conclusion of the cultural competence training sessions, students participated in a post-session Qualtrics ( https://www.qualtrics.com ) generated survey administered electronically to assess each student’s feelings about the sessions [see Additional file 3 ]. The format of the survey included 5 questions with the following Likert scale response options: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. These post-session surveys were not required but rather optional [ 15 ].

A total of 178 students completed the cultural competence sessions between 2017 and 2020. Of these participants, 112 voluntarily completed a post-session survey on the effectiveness of the course in teaching cultural competence and cultural awareness during patient encounters. Between 2017 and 2019, 99 students completed post-session surveys following sessions with role play exercises. In 2020, 13 students completed post-session surveys following discussion board sessions.

Role-play exercises enhanced cultural competence

In responding to post-session survey questions following cultural competence sessions that included role-play exercises (2017–2019), 71% of students surveyed strongly agreed and 24% agreed that the role-play exercises helped them to identify the importance of communication in patient encounters. In asking participants if the role-play exercises made them more aware of different strategies to improve their patient interview skills, 72% strongly agreed and 23% agreed. Also, 68% of the students strongly agreed and 26% agreed that the exercises helped them to better identify the importance of building rapport and trust during patient encounters. When asked if the exercises helped the students to better understand their own bias and/or cultural awareness when working with patients, the results of the survey showed that 62% of students strongly agreed and 31% agreed with this statement. In addition, most students found the role-play exercises to be enjoyable (72% strongly agreed and 22% agreed). See results shown in Fig. 1 .

Cultural Competence Session Survey Data from the Year 2017–2019. Survey data from students at Boston University’s Oral Health Sciences Program for the years 2017–2019. Data is presented as percent of respondents ( n = 99)

Discussion boards and reflections enhanced cultural competence

Cultural competence sessions held during 2020 did not include role-play exercises due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, students participated in discussion boards and reflections on Blackboard. In response to the post-session survey question asking if the discussion board exercises were helpful in identifying the importance of communication during patient encounters, 67% of students strongly agreed and 25% agreed with this statement. Also, 75% of students strongly agreed and 17% agreed that the discussion board exercises helped them identify the importance of building rapport and trust during patient contact. When asked if the exercises helped the students to better understand their own bias and/or cultural awareness when working with patients, the results of the survey showed that 67% of students strongly agreed and 25% agreed with this statement. In addition, most students found the discussion board exercises to be enjoyable (67% strongly agreed and 22% agreed). See results shown in Fig. 2 .

Cultural competence session survey data from the Year 2020. Survey data from students at Boston University’s Oral Health Sciences Program for the year 2020. Data is presented as percent of respondents ( n = 13)

Student responses to the reflection portion of the online cultural competency sessions were recorded and categorized. Five themes were selected and 441 reflection responses were coded using NVivo (Version 12). The results showed that 29% of reflections demonstrated student’s ability to understand a holistic approach to clinical care, 24.3% understood the importance of collecting a patient history, 6.8% recognized the socioeconomic factors during a patient encounter, 27.9% reflected on the importance of the patient clinical relationship, and 12% on the effects on improving health outcomes (Table 1 ). Representative student responses to these themes are shown in Table 1 .

There exists a need to develop novel and effective means for teaching and training the next generation of healthcare professionals the practice of cultural competence. Thus, two iterations of a course session using case-based patient centered encounters were developed to teach these skills to pre-professional dentals students. Overall, the results of this study demonstrated that participation in the course, subsequent group discussion sessions, and take-away PowerPoint sessions significantly improved the participant’s understanding of the importance of communication skills and understanding of socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural disparities that can affect a patient’s health outcome.

According to results from the course session implemented in-person from 2017 to 2019, the role-playing exercise significantly improved participants understanding of important components that can be used to improve health outcomes that may be affected due to health disparities. Students were strongly able to identify the importance of communication in patient encounters, to understand strategies such as communication and compassionate care in patient encounters, identify the importance of building a patient-physician relationship with patients, and were able to recognize their own cultural biases. Similarly, in 2020, even with a change in course modality to on-line learning due to COVID-19, students were able to understand the same key take-aways from the course session as demonstrated by reflections using the discussion board regarding the need for a holistic approach to care, importance of the patient clinician relationship, and importance of taking a patient history. Despite promising implications of both iterations of the session, students completing the session online did not find the same success in “understanding my own bias/and or cultural awareness when working with patients.” This decrease may be attributed to change in course modality and the strengths of the role-play enactment of the patient encounter. It is important to recognize that additional learning components, including video recordings of the role-play enactment, may be necessary if the discussion board is used as the primary learning method in the future.

In contrast to previous studies that attempted to determine the effectiveness of cultural competence training methods, this session had many unique characteristics. The simulated role-playing exercise enabled student participants to see first-hand an interactive patient scenario that could be used as an example for when students begin working with patients or communicating with patients who are culturally diverse. Additionally, the nature of the cases created for the course session which were divided into a part A in which the patient physician was more straightforward when diagnosing and treating the patient and a part B with a more comprehensive and nurturing approach to care, allowed the students to compare the scenarios and make their own assumptions and comments on the effectiveness of each portion of the case. Another strength of this training, was the faculty with cultural competence training were uniquely involved in case creation and facilitation of the course session. According to previous studies with similar aims, it was noted that direct observation and feedback from a faculty member who had cultural competence training and direct contact with patients can provide students with a more memorable and useful experience when educating students [ 12 ]. The facilitators of this session were able to emphasize from their own personal experiences how to work with culturally diverse populations.

An important aspect of the 2020 iteration of the course session in which a discussion board format was used, was that it allowed students who may feel uncomfortable with sharing their thoughts on a case and their own biases, the opportunity to share in a space that may feel safer than in person [ 4 ]. Previous studies have mentioned challenges with online discussion boards [ 4 ] but here we had robust participation, albeit required. Students often contributed more than the required number of comments and they were often lengthy and engaging when responding to peers. Finally, in contrast to previous studies, this course session took place in a pre-professional master’s program, the M.S. in Oral Health Sciences Program at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. This program, in which students are given the opportunity to enhance their credentials for professional school, provided students with early exposure to cultural competence training. Students that completed this session in their early pre-professional curriculum should be better prepared than peers who did not receive any cultural competence training until they entered their designated professional school. This session is part of an Evidence Based Dentistry course, which incorporates a larger component of personal reflection that serves to engage students in critical thinking as they begin to develop the skills to be future clinicians. Students that understand different cultures, society and themselves through self-assessments will grow and be best suited in time to treat future patients [ 4 , 16 , 17 ].

One limitation of the present study was the number of survey participants that competed the post-session surveys, as survey completion was not required. Thus, the number of student participants declined over the years, reaching its lowest number of participants in 2020 when the discussion board course session was implemented, and students may have been over surveyed due to the pandemic. Another limitation to this study, was the lack of both a pre and post survey that could be used to determine how student’s understanding of cultural competence had evolved from their entry into the course to the conclusion of the course as well as individual bias and self-reporting measures.

In the future, the course should implement both a role-playing format and subsequent discussion board reflections within the same course session. Studies have shown that alternatives ways of drawing students to reflect whether role play, personal narratives, etc. can be extremely advantageous in developing personal reflection and awareness building competency [ 4 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. It is noted that role-playing exercises that allow students to provide feedback with student colleagues can provide students with more insight into their own behaviors. It has also been shown in previous studies that student writing and reflection activities can also facilitate student’s reflections on their own beliefs and biases [ 4 , 11 ]. Reflective writing skills are an important and effective means for students to continue to gauge their cultural competence throughout the remainder of their academic training and as future clinicians [ 4 , 17 , 19 ]. Further, students may experience emotional responses through the process of reflective writing as they recognize personal bias or stereotypes, creating a profound and impactful response resulting in enhanced understanding of cultural differences and beliefs [ 4 ]. By combining both learning techniques, students would be able to understand their own bias and their classmates and create a dialogue that could be more beneficial than just one learning method alone. Furthermore, by implementing the discussion board into the role-playing session, as stated previously, students that are more cautious about sharing their point of view or about their own implicit bias in a traditional classroom setting would be able to express their opinions and facilitate a more comprehensive discussion more thoroughly.

Here we show an effective means to utilize role-play of a multi-scenario case-based patient encounter to teach pre-professional healthcare student’s components of cultural competence, emphasizing the importance of provider-patient interactions, holistic patient care, and patient history and socioeconomic factors in provider care. This study contributes to the larger body of work that seeks to address this important aspect of education as it relates to enhancing patient health care outcomes.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Science students and study participants.

No funding was used for the completion of this study.

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TAD designed the original study concept, taught the classes (roleplay), conducted the surveys, and collected data; MAK designed the original case and PowerPoint, and performed roleplay; DBF and SF evaluated data and drafted original figures; ANB assisted in drafting the manuscript; KRB finalized figures and the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Theresa A. Davies .

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Ready. Set. Scale. Shaping leaders for hypergrowth

Imagine two talented entrepreneurs developing a groundbreaking, solar-powered flying car to revolutionize sustainable mobility. Propelled mainly by entrepreneurial spirit, charisma, and business savvy, their start-up builds a following as quickly as their electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype grabs headlines and dazzles consumers. Orders pour in from across the globe.

Now comes a critical inflection point. Can our hypothetical company scale from building a handful of bespoke eVTOL prototypes to establishing a global assembly line without losing the innovative edge at the heart of its appeal? The founders cannot afford to wait, but start-ups (companies whose funding stage is pre-Series B) face obvious challenges, including securing capital, maintaining differentiation in an emerging market, and contending with competition from more prominent players. A less obvious challenge—but no less essential to success—is bringing new leaders into the ranks (potentially including professional managers from larger companies) and undertaking rapid, effective leadership development to avoid the pitfalls that keep 80 percent of start-ups from succeeding. 1 Based on a sample of 3,164 companies with Series A funding in 2011 to 2013, assuming six to eight years to scale or exit, PitchBook data, April 2021.

Intentionally investing in leadership development can help hypergrowth companies 2 Based on McKinsey analysis, hypergrowth refers to a period of rapid expansion with a CAGR of 20 to 40 percent and three phases: build and launch (annualized return on revenue [ARR] of $0 to $10 million); grow (ARR between $10 million and $100 million); and scale (ARR greater than $100 million). counter the forces that may otherwise stand in their way, such as limited management skill sets, less experienced talent, and relative inexperience leading larger teams. Once start-ups manage to emerge from the early stages in which many fail, they need sustainable leadership capabilities to give the organization the flex and muscle required to adapt as growth continues.

To be sure, this leadership transition will present challenges, especially because leadership development should be what we call “at pace, on purpose”—that is, enabling rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture. That’s a tricky balance, whether the CEO founded the company or stepped in during the growth phase. But it’s worth the effort. By recognizing the importance of leadership in the hypergrowth process and investing intentionally in its development, startups can not only make the transition to “scale-ups” (companies whose funding stage is from Series B to IPO) but widen their competitive advantage.

Leadership development is not optional

There are some things in business which, if done suboptimally, will not necessarily impose significant liabilities. Leadership is not one of these things. Well-developed, high-quality leadership has a profound positive impact on an organization and its operating model. 3 Claudy Jules, Alok Kshirsagar, and Kate Lloyd George, “ Scaling up: How founder CEOs and teams can go beyond aspiration to ascent ,” McKinsey, November 9, 2022. McKinsey research shows that the EBITDA of organizations performing in the top quartile of leadership is almost double that of others, while organizations are 1.9 times more likely to have above-median financial performance when the leadership team has a shared, meaningful, and engaging vision.

Case study: Investing early in leadership development

When consumers expressed distrust in providers of housing finance in an Asian market, one multinational conglomerate decided to act. Leveraging its brand reputation, it set out to show the market how housing finance should be done: with honesty, integrity, and care.

The company had successfully built many businesses before, but this was its first financial institution. Its executive committee didn’t want to acquire an existing company that was part of the problem, so it chose to create a start-up and attract the best external real estate and financial talent. Looking at the market potential, the start-up CEO and his new team felt confident and planned for hypergrowth.

But the CEO was also concerned. He noticed that his new team had significant differences in leadership styles and cultural backgrounds that were already leading to friction. And looking at the steep curve in talent attraction plans, he feared inconsistent ways of working and a fuzzy culture would, over time, slow the company’s growth. He wanted to get it right before launch.

The CEO chose to take his 30-person leadership team beyond the technical plans for growth. In multiple workshops with external facilitators, he and the team jointly defined the identity of the company by including its higher purpose, desired culture, and aspirational leadership style. The process provided not only a point of reference for the existing team but also a clear set of criteria for hiring future talent. With significantly increased cohesion, clarity, and confidence, the company entered the market.

In the eyes of investors, leadership quality can affect a company’s market value by up to 30 percent. 4 Derek Matthews, “Why founders should focus more on people development to increase startup value,” Forbes, January 31, 2019. In addition, savvy general partners in private equity know that founders and their top teams have an outsize effect on the culture and operations of a start-up—and they have a keen interest in evaluating leadership potential as they make investment decisions. This is because effective founder-led companies have the potential to outperform peers. For instance, S&P 500 companies in which the founder is still the CEO generate 31 percent more patents than the rest. 5 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016.

Yet investors also know that leadership is not a static characteristic and that leaders must evolve for a company to grow. This is especially true for start-ups, in which the skill sets and approaches crucial to early success are often quite different from those required as an organization rapidly grows. Why? Because start-ups typically have less infrastructure and fewer processes, rapidly changing environments, a strong sense of culture, founder CEOs who are often also direct managers, and senior leaders who take on multiple roles. Start-ups can’t wait until the dust settles to acquire and develop the leadership capabilities they need. For hypergrowth companies and typical market disruptors, the dust does not settle, and founders may not want it to: the excitement of the start-up mentality is arguably part of the ride that appeals to visionary founders (see sidebar “Case study: Investing early in leadership development”).

Priorities in tension: Moving at pace while retaining purpose

Two vital elements are essential for building leadership capabilities in a growing, founder-led organization: pace and purpose. Understanding each in the context of leadership development and capability building is crucial, as is understanding their interplay.

Pace is important because rapid growth often leads to instability, along with sizable gaps in leaders’ experience, skills, and capabilities. When it comes to purpose, the challenge lies in transforming leadership mindsets and skills targeted to the scaling ambitions of the organization, together with its vision. This is difficult, because the target is inherently a moving one: leaders need the stability to function with the size and scope of their existing teams but must also embrace the dynamism and ongoing growth that will match the organization’s evolution. 6 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016. Moreover, CEOs must manage any tension created between leaders who have been there from the beginning and those who arrive during the growth stage—coming from different company cultures and with potentially different ideas for how to scale.

The trick is determining how to keep the ongoing transformation occurring at a tempo that maximizes performance and aligns disparate units of the fast-growing organization while staying true to the company’s purpose. This means leadership development has to be “at pace, on purpose” to enable rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture.

Four essential questions to guide leadership development

As the founders of our imaginary eVTOL start-up grapple with the challenges of growing their successful enterprise, they often ponder big questions that get to the heart of the company’s present and future:

Who leads? Expand focus beyond the early few leaders to the top 40 to 50 critical roles and build capabilities early.
How do we empower leaders? Give leaders authority as a way to expand their strengths and confidence.
How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive? Create a “founder mentality” throughout the organization and infuse the energy of the early days throughout all layers.
What’s needed from us? Founders and top leaders need to shift priorities from building to managing relationships with shareholders and investors and preparing for a potential IPO or challenging times ahead.

1. Who leads?

As an organization expands beyond the start-up phase, it’s vital to understand what its leadership entails and demands. This requires a fundamental shift in how leadership is conceptualized: for example, from focusing on founders and a handful of senior leaders to a broader scope, shaping a few dozen critical top roles into one connected leadership team.

As leadership grows in structure and scope, the vital task becomes clarifying and articulating the company’s culture—the values and behaviors essential to the next generation of leaders. This is a delicate task involving some tension: founding teams must simultaneously embrace adaptation while doubling down on core values (see sidebar “Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform”).

Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform

A European e-commerce company experienced high growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a hard correction. To boost competitiveness and move faster, they sharpened their strategy, updated their operating model, and evolved their culture. The executive team realized that the key to improvement was changing the leadership behavior of the executive team and the surrounding top 50 roles. These leaders needed to work in different ways with each other and with the company. A project team was convened to create a nine-month leadership development journey comprising diagnostics, multiday workshops, and one-on-one coaching. The executive team aligned on priorities in the new strategy, drove decision making according to new roles, and mutually supported each other’s growth and development. The top-50 team shifted from a strict functional focus to a shared understanding of full company context, developed new behaviors around decision making and empowerment to speed up processes, and integrated new communication mechanisms to stay more connected.

Specific roles may change even as the founders and top team are charged with stewardship of the company and its culture. While leaders may wear multiple hats in the early stages, organizational growth will likely call for more structure and clearer roles. Moreover, the small circle of early leaders must acknowledge that the expanding enterprise will demand leadership and people skills that may be outside of their current knowledge and experience. As the company expands, it becomes crucial to enhance the matching of roles and profiles within the organization. This requires a thoughtful evaluation to “match the A players to the A jobs.” It may require hiring new people with different skills or investing in upskilling current employees to ensure the right individuals are in the right roles.

2. How do we empower leaders?

As start-ups grow exponentially, new hires are rapidly brought on, mostly for expertise. This often results in a wide range of leadership experience and leaders facing an ever-changing and expanding scope.

Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture

Leadership development should support both the business and cultural growth. A Philippines-based telecom company created a leadership development program that began with these objectives in mind, tying business skills and capabilities to the company’s vision and values. After carefully examining where things stood, it envisioned and built solutions, implemented them, and then—crucially—sought to ensure the changes and benefits could be maintained. Ultimately, leaders were able to draw clearer links between business objectives and their individual and collective roles. They were also equipped to cascade core skills and capabilities to the rest of the enterprise.

Maximizing leadership growth across a growing company hinges on creating highly customized programs that focus on the development of specific leadership skills and enabling leaders to understand their roles within the company’s big picture. Leaders at every level need to see how they contribute to the strategic evolution of the organization and have a shared understanding of the full company context in order to act as enterprise leaders beyond their functional scope. To do so, they need the opportunity and support to rise above daily firefighting. This is particularly relevant for younger talent with less experience leading others. A fast-growing consumer tech and media company implemented this by sharing internal data, such as subscription evolutions, with all employees to ensure organizational focus went in the right direction.

In addition, it’s common for leaders to feel overwhelmed or even burned out due to the execution pace. Companies can get ahead of this by building resilience through nuanced exposure to high-stress situations with the opportunity for reflection and debriefs (see sidebar “Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture”).

3. How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive?

To ensure the continuity of a start-up’s original energy and spirit throughout its growth, it is vital to infuse the core “founder mentality” across all layers of the organization. This can be especially crucial at the stage when the company has grown such that core leaders feel more removed from employees. That’s when it can be particularly powerful to ensure all individuals—regardless of level or function—feel empowered to take ownership of the company’s culture, while also embracing the dynamism and agility that fuel growth (see sidebar “Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture”).

Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture

A rapidly growing Singapore-based tech company needed to ensure that its core business culture evolved from tacit to intentional as it entered its next phase of growth and prepared for an upcoming IPO.

The company invited about 100 functional and business leaders to participate in an 18-month program to build leadership skills that reinforced its values and future direction. This approach enabled participating leaders to test and pass along what they learned, generating an amplifying effect that allowed more than 2,000 colleagues to benefit from the program.

As companies expand, senior leaders can recognize their essential roles as coaches, mentors, and champions of the company empowering the next cohort of leaders. From a leadership development standpoint, it is valuable to work with individuals who excel at handling challenges and help shape them into purposeful leaders who grasp the bigger picture. In our experience, founders who adhere to proper delegation also tend to see empowered employees in response.

As organizations become more complex, there is merit to functions implementing their own objectives and key results (OKRs) to imbue structure and accountability in a more scaled environment. However, there is a risk of functions becoming overly focused on those OKRs, which is where leaders can benefit from fostering a “one organization” mindset and identifying early on what sets the company apart. 7 Blair Epstein, Caitlin Hewes, and Scott Keller, “ Capturing the value of ‘one firm,’ ” McKinsey Quarterly , May 9, 2023.

Embracing creative disruption is critical in maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit. But the founding company culture itself must change so that the company may scale. Gone are the days when growth was the only metric that mattered; investors want returns, which can incite companies to take actions that go against the founding culture, such as eliminating perks and cutting the workforce. A healthy culture can keep company spirit alive while also adapting to new realities.

4. What is needed from us?

All CEOs overseeing a growing organization—regardless of whether they founded it—are not leading the same organization in the scaling-growth stage as they were at the start-up stage. This may sound obvious, but, in practice, it is no small feat for founders and early-stage CEOs to acknowledge they need to grow and adapt to the same extent as their organizations—let alone take action to do so.

Complexity multiplies as companies grow. This necessitates, of course, increased delegation so leaders and top teams can prioritize what will become their most important role: the management of relationships with key stakeholders, including shareholders and investors (especially in turbulent times or in preparation for an IPO). If this results in a compounding number of granular daily tasks and decisions flowing to top leadership for vetting, it spells trouble: the speed of decisions will no longer match the organization’s speed.

Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America

A fast-growing food company found its broad ambitions challenged by the limits of its operating model. The CEO was the sole owner of enterprise finances, making accountability unclear across functions and geographies. Resources weren’t allocated for strategic effectiveness and efficiency, and SG&A expenses were spiraling as a result. Talent shortages in critical roles were hampering growth, and the enterprise lacked a performance culture. The company acted, starting with a comprehensive diagnostic followed by the design of a blueprint for how it should evolve. A talent “win room” accelerated hiring for key roles and helped build out the performance management ecosystem. Early results indicate that the company’s operating model is now more intentional, with appropriate profit and loss accountability and resource allocation as well as tighter control over SG&A spending. And the right people are in the right positions, with employees across the enterprise understanding their roles and being held accountable for their performance.

CEOs of growing firms must discern what is needed from them as the company evolves. How do they want to show up? Instead of trying to do everything—as they may have during the early days—leaders need to ascertain what they can and should do, delegating the rest to a top-quality team. But they also need to marry this distance from everyday tasks with keeping the needs of customers at the forefront of their minds. Managing this simultaneous awareness and delegation is at the core of how founders can drive business value as the company grows (see sidebar “Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America”).

Engage the questions to drive growth

While every company is unique, all must adapt as they grow. We recommend leaders take these four questions to heart, reflect on them, and discuss them in depth within the organization. It’s worth investing time and space to dig in because leaders who discern and articulate meaningful answers to all four may derive tremendous value for their organizations. This simple checklist provides founders with an effective way to assess their own leadership health, as well as that of their top teams:

What have we done to focus closely on our top 15–20 critical roles that drive strategic value, understanding what they are and what they do?
Beyond existing leadership skills, which additional skills are needed to scale to the next level?
Which efforts help us define the values and behavioral characteristics of a shaper-leader?
What crucial learning experiences have we developed with ongoing development pushes and apprenticeship opportunities?
What highly customized programs, including comprehensive class options for different topics, do we have for learners?
What pilot projects are creating resilience to prepare leaders in advance?
How are we developing purposeful leaders with a strong understanding of why they are leaders?
How have we developed a unified organization with a culture of “whatever it takes” for customer impact?
How do we continually ask how we can make it better, disrupt, and create “business insurgency”?

4. What is needed from founders?

How effectively am I delegating, spending less time with day-to-day operations and more time on big moves to drive enterprise strategy, such as M&A or product expansion?
What can we let go of so we can stop trying to do everything and work on things we care about instead?
How are we staying in touch with customers to ensure we maintain a deep “frontline obsession”?

Like our imaginary sustainable-mobility founders who hit on something revolutionary, today’s hyperscalers often have the potential to disrupt life as we know it with new ideas and the energy, discipline, teamwork, and persistence it takes to turn those ideas into reality. That opportunity is a compelling call to leadership. But achieving it requires a steadfast growth mindset, a tremendous dose of self-awareness, a commitment to ongoing adaptation, and a clear understanding that in the ranks of the world’s best organizations, leadership development is never finished.

Arne Gast is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Fleur Tonies is an associate partner; Claudy Jules is a partner in the Washington, DC, office; and Alok Kshirsagar is a senior partner in the Mumbai office.

The authors wish to thank Cornelius Chang, Kate Lloyd George, Michael Park, Karolina Rosa, and Joachim Talloen for their contributions to this article.

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The Role of Language and Communication Strategy for Employee Motivation: The Study Case of CV. Kreasi Pisang Indonesia in Makassar

When leading an organization, the leader will hope that every activity will be easily run. A language is a communication tool required by the company to provide direction or work instructions. There are three essential things to create an effective communication. Firstly, the content that is being discussed. Secondly, who is the speaker and the last is how the information is delivered. Based on this theory, the choice of language variety, sentence types, vocabulary and movements are considered to communicate the information. The purpose of this study is to analyze the language communication strategies in motivating employee performance. This study used a qualitative approach by collecting observational data, in-depth interviews with company leaders, and collecting documents to use as relevant literature. The result of this study concluded that organizations design an organizational culture to achieve organizational values and the vision that has been created. By using language that is easy to understand and implement, the campaign “strong health and happy team” was created, which means that to be a strong team you must have a healthy mind and body inorder to feel happy while working.

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