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Business Communication Needs : A Multicultural Perspective

Valerie Priscilla Goby Journal of Business and Technical Communication 2007 21: 425 DOI: 10.1177/1050651907304029 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jbt.sagepub.com/content/21/4/425

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Approaches and Practices

Business Communication Needs

A Multicultural Perspective
Valerie Priscilla Goby
Zayed University, Dubai

Journal of Business and Technical Communication Volume 21 Number 4 October 2007 425-437 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/1050651907304029 http://jbt.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

How should we teach international business communication? What role can multiculturalism play in the business communication classroom? Can we identify a set of business communication requirements that are valid across different cultures? This article enters this discussion by presenting a small empirical study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cyprus university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. The findings reveal some interesting correspondences between the needs expressed by students in these different countries. In addition, the multicultural environment of the North Cyprus university studied suggests that multicultural interaction increases students sensitivity to the need for a nonethnocentric approach to international communication. The findings also indicate that respondents in multicultural settings may be more inclined to engage in groupthink because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict. Keywords: multiculturalism; cross-cultural interaction; communication needs; international business communication; groupthink

ogers (1999) illustrated that nowadays virtually all business communication is international in some sense and that teaching material must represent the challenges of cross-cultural and cross-border exchange that our students can expect to face at work (p. 110). In the same vein, Kinnick and Parton (2005) insisted that business communication training that does not include an intercultural component is inadequate. Many recent studies have focused on the challenges posed by the new realities of international business communication. For example, Osland et al. (2004) examined team projects in which the team members had different
Authors Note: This research has been funded by a Research Seed Money Award from Eastern Mediterranean University. 425

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cultural backgrounds and worked from geographically distant locations. Poncini (2004) conducted an in-depth study of language use in multicultural business meetings. And Andrews (2001) extended this new interest to communication pedagogy by integrating the cross-cultural element into its treatment of technical communication rather than treating it as an isolated topic. But we need to explore further the multifaceted reality of intercultural communication and how we can best teach it. This article contributes to the discussion of how we should proceed with the complex task of developing our international communication training by presenting a small study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cypress university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. But first I review the literature concerning culturally determined differences in communication behavior.

A Review of the Literature on Intercultural Communication Behavior

Nieto (1996) argued that an ethnocentric perspective accounted for the identification of culturally determined differences in communication behavior that dominated business communication teaching and research for decades and spawned an approach that examined cultures in terms of their differences, an approach that E. H. Weiss (1998) considered to be a subtle form of intolerance and condescension (p. 261). But the rise of the global economy, the spread of computer-mediated communication (CMC), the burgeoning ethos of political correctness and inclusion rather than marginalization, and the condemnation of stereotypes have contributed to a change in this approach. In the 1990s the focus shifted from the portrayal of difference to the search for convergence. Scollon and Scollon (1995) stressed that communication occurs between individuals, not cultures, and I (Goby, 1999b) proposed that we look for the ways in which human interactions converge rather than diverge. Following this trend, Henry (2000) argued that we must refrain from attempting a definitive depiction of cultural practices if we are to understand how workplace writing creates cultural realities. A similar argument was made by Herrington and Tretyakov (2005), who suggested that the confusion experienced by U.S. and Russian students in their international online project illustrates the unfeasibility of drawing up fixed rules for technical communication. But Artemeva (1998) illustrated how problems deriving from culturally determined expectations vis--vis engineering reports can be obviated through contrastive rhetorical analysis.

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And St.Amant (2002), who pinpointed the problems of creating identity and establishing ethos that arise in the expanding domain of international CMC, proposed that scholars conduct an interdisciplinary comparison of the research in CMC and in intercultural communication, a research track he termed international digital studies (p. 197). Much of our research in cross-cultural communication, however, rests on the frameworks of cultural analysis developed by Hall (1976) and Hofstede (2001). Many recent studies have investigated the validity of these models, which some scholars have modified or replaced. Ess and Sudweeks (2005) synthesized critiques of the use of these frameworks in analyzing international and cross-cultural communication within the context of CMC. For example, they pointed out that the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project used a set of cultural values different from those used by Hofstede and that the validity of the choice of these alternative values has been supported by Javidan, House, Dorfman, Hanges, and De Luque (2006). Arguing against the use of large-scale, multicountry surveys such as those conducted by Hofstede and the GLOBE project, Earley (2006) favored devising other theories that can explain organizational phenomena in diverse cultural and national contexts. But, however we choose to define and analyze culture, we cannot deny the elemental and gargantuan role that culture plays in all aspects of communication behavior. Apart from the obvious variations in their communication behavior, members of diverse cultures may incorporate subtle, nebulous differences in their assumptions regarding communication that are hard to identify yet have a crucial impact on attitudes and practices. Nevertheless, despite the importance of cultural variation, we might consider if a nucleus of similar business communication needs exists alongside culturally determined differences. That is, does the context of business communication produce a body of needs that parallels culturally determined differences? All human activities have a universal core of identity. For example, the activities that define searching for in-group status, fulfilling family responsibilities, exercising group leadership, and so on are essentially the same across cultures. Some scholars (e.g., Dryud, 2002) have proposed that identity in cross-cultural communication is probably insubstantial; however, a changing perspective of multiculturalism and globalization and the trends in scholarship I described suggest that the issue of converging business communication needs merits exploration. Believing in the validity of experimenting with the concept of converging business communication needs, I (Goby, 1999a) investigated the communication needs of business communication students in Singapore and assessed

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the results against those of comparable U.S. studies. I found significant commonalities between my study and that of Hynes and Bhatia (1996). The studies conducted by Reinsch and Shelby (1996, 1997) also displayed findings that were similar to mine. Beamer (1999) contended that the question of this identity between the U.S. and Singapore studies can be answered by a number of demographic and perceptual studies (p. 461). Nonetheless, although we might be able to explain such points of identity, we could also conclude that these comparative findings suggest a potentially universal set of business communication needs. Naturally, even within the specific realm of business communication, many requirements and realities derive from the cultural backgrounds of the actors. Although I do not wish to downplay such cultural differences, I hypothesize that an investigation of the business communication needs of respondents in multicultural settings would uncover, alongside culturally determined communication differences, a universal core of business communication needs. If this hypothesis is correct, then the findings from such an investigation will further validate the trend away from cataloging cultural differences. With this notion in mind, I wanted to see how student responses in yet another diverse cultural environment would compare with those of students in the U.S. and Singapore studies; therefore, I conducted a simple comparative study to see how the perceived needs of students in a third ethnocultural context would compare with those of students in the U.S. and Singapore studies.

Method
I chose the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) as the setting for this study. My reason for choosing Singapore and Cyprus as contexts for studies that I could compare with the U.S. studies was simple: I had taught at universities in these countries.

Setting
TRNC is a small country located in the north of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Cyprus was a colony of Britain until 1960, after which time ethnic conflict between Greeks and Turks escalated into a war that led to Turkeys invasion of the island and its subsequent appropriation of the northern area of the island. This area declared its status as an independent country in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes its sovereignty. The Greek South

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Cyprus and Turkish North Cyprus have been separated by a United Nations buffer zone since 1974 (North Cyprus Main Facts, 2007). TRNC has a population of 264,172 (Turkish Cyprus, 2007), and the adult literacy rate is 97.6% (CIA Factbook, 2007). After 1974, large numbers of Turkish Cypriots migrated to other countries, most notably the United Kingdom, and London is now host to a Turkish Cypriot community that has a population that is at least half, if not equal to, that of TRNC (Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2003). TRNC has become a regional hub for third-level education, and it is now home to six universities with more than 35,000 students in attendance, most of whom are from overseasmainly from Turkey, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa. The medium of instruction at these universities is English. In cultural terms, TRNC provides an ethnocultural context that is quite different from those of the U.S. or Singapore studies. Nominally, it is a Muslim country although it is highly secularized. Although the local population consists of ethnic Turks, the contemporary culture of TRNC has been molded by the many nations who have occupied the island over millennia, previous interactions with the larger population of ethnic Greeks, the British colonization of the last century, and the large number of foreign nationals who live and work or study there.

Sample
The sample for my study comprised 85 postgraduate students (50 men and 35 women) undertaking MA or MBA courses in a Faculty of Business and Economics. Of these 85 students, 8 were from North Cyprus, 19 were from Turkey, and 58 were from other countries. Of these 58 foreign students, 24 were from Eastern Europe, 13 were from Africa, 12 were from the Middle East, and 9 were from Asia. They were all 27 years of age or younger, except for three students, who were ages 28, 29, and 33.

The Questionnaire
In the Singapore study, I (Goby, 1999a) gave the student respondents a questionnaire designed to probe the needs and shortcomings of their business communication course. The questionnaire included this list of 11 topics:
interpersonal communication skills job interviews role of communication in business organizations international business communication

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communication theory and concepts dynamics of meetings/groups handling aggressiveness (in colleagues, clients, etc.) doing research for business purposes arguing a case interviews for press/radio/television writing manuals, policies, and procedures

The questionnaire asked the respondents to choose any number of topics they would like to pursue in their business communication course and to rank their three most desired topics as first, second, and third. I considered this simple questionnaire to be an adequate investigative research tool in that it was able to elicit the respondents perceived communication needs, which was my targeted topic for this comparison study. Thus I administered the same questionnaire to the Cyprus respondents.

Results
Table 1 shows the number of Cyprus students who selected each of the 11 business communication course topics and the number of students who selected each course as their first, second, and third choices. Table 2 displays a comparison of the overall rankings of these topics between the Cyprus and Singapore studies.

Interpersonal Communication Skills

As Table 2 shows, all the topics, with the exception of international business communication and handling aggressiveness, display a difference in ranking of only one or two places. Interpersonal communication skills was the topic most in demand in the Cyprus study and second most so in the Singapore study. This topic also had many individual first place rankings in both studies28 out of 85 in the Cyprus study (see Table 1) and 17 out of 52 in the Singapore study. Job interviews, a type of interpersonal communication, featured in the top three in both studies, which is not surprising given students general concern with securing employment after graduation. Some comparable U.S. studies display very similar findings. For example, Reinsch and Shelby (1996, 1997) conducted two major studies of MBA students in the United States, and their population samples included hundreds of students from all regions of the United States and up to 45 other countries. The first study (1996) revealed that the respondents greatest need was the

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Table 1 Cyprus Students Selections of Business Communication Course Topics

Number of Students Who Selected Topic (N = 85) 61 Number of Students Who Selected Topic as First Choice 28 Number of Students who Selected Topic as Second Choice 17 Number of Students Who Selected Topic as Third Choice 10

Course Topics Interpersonal communication skills International business communication Job interviews Doing research for business purposes Dynamics of meetings/groups Role of communication in business organizations Handling aggressiveness (in colleagues, clients, etc.) Arguing a case Writing manuals, policies, and procedures Interviews for press/radio/ television Communication theory and concepts

58

11

10

56 51

15 1

14 1

9 2

45 44

10 6

8 6

12 9

37

13

36 35

2 4

7 1

6 6

34

26

ability to handle face-to-face scenarios, and consequently the researchers advocated the teaching of informal interactive skills. Their later study (1997) found that respondents were most interested in three of the six topics ranked highly in my Singapore study, namely, interpersonal communication skills,

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Table 2 Comparison of Overall Rankings for Each Business Communication Course Topic Between the Cyprus and Singapore Studies
Course Topics Interpersonal communication skills International business communication Job interviews Doing research for business purposes Dynamics of meetings/groups Role of communication in business organizations Handling aggressiveness (in colleagues, clients, etc.) Arguing a case Writing manuals, policies, and procedures Interviews for press/radio/television Communication theory and concepts Ranking in Cyprus Study 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Ranking in Singapore Study 2 7 1 5 4 8 3 6 10 9 11

handling aggressiveness, and dynamics of meetings/groups. Similarly, Hynes and Bhatias (1996) respondents indicated most interest in the topics of oral presentations, impromptu speaking, and listening/interpersonal skills. These findings, therefore, indicate a high level of identity between the U.S., Singapore, and Cyprus studies in that interpersonal skills are considered very important by the respondents in all three cultural settings.

International Business Communication

This studys findings suggest that exposure to communication with foreign nationals increases students interest in studying international business communication. The topic of international business communication was ranked second highest in the Cyprus study but only seventh in the Singapore study. I suspect that the strong appeal of this topic for the Cyprus respondents is spurred by the diversity of nationalities among the students and faculty there. Students are in daily contact with peers and instructors from various parts of the world, and this exposure may generate a keener awareness of the advantage of prior knowledge for cross-cultural communication. In contrast, the entire sample of the Singapore study consisted of local Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in Singapore.

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In Hynes and Bhatias (1996) survey of 250 graduate business students in the United States, international business communication was ranked least important. This low interest may stem from what T. Weiss (1997) described as the enduring dominance of U.S. models in professional communication training. As Du-Babcock (2006) pointed out, business communicators who were born in the United States have traditionally taught U.S. models to U.S. and international students. The U.S. students may tend to assume that they can carry their well-known culture with them into new cultural settings. Dolby (2005) has argued that American students strong national identity often prevents them from exploring the possibilities of global affiliation (p. 101). The Cyprus respondents, all of whom come from societies that are not internationally well known, may be less likely to think in terms of transporting their own cultural practices into global settings.

Multicultural Contact Zone

By accident of being an English-medium institute in a central Mediterranean location, the university attended by the students participating in this study has become what Grobman (1999) cited Mary Louise Pratt as describing as a contact zone, a social space where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power (p. 428). That is, the multicultural dimension that Grobman, Rogers (1999), and many others have insisted that professional communication courses should feature is already present in the classroom, if not in the curriculum, providing the setting for what McLaren (1998) described as the learning experience that is achieved when interactions occur between host and guest cultures. Nonetheless, as ODowd (2003) pointed out, a multicultural setting does not necessarily ensure cross-cultural interest. An example of a technically multicultural context that does not seem to prompt cross-cultural learning is described by Connor (2005). In his account of MBA students at a Singapore university that profiles itself as a multicultural study environment, Connor explained that the two major ethnic groups of Chinese and Indians are polarized there. That is, students are reluctant to engage outside their own ethnocultural background despite instructors attempts to develop strategies to encourage greater cross-cultural interaction and interest. In the case of my Cyprus study, however, few of the student respondents, and indeed few of the universitys student body, are locals (less than 10% of the total number of respondents). The students, therefore, are more motivated to depart from their original national and ethnocultural background. The transient, youthful

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nature of this multicultural university setting probably ignites a greater cross-cultural interest than does the ethnically entrenched and politicized multicultural environment at Singapore. In addition, North Cyprus, in spite of its past isolationist policy, has been highly welcoming of foreign nationals within its borders and tolerant of cultural differences.

Diversity and the Spawning of Hyperconformity in Professional and Educational Settings

Apart from the different degrees of interest shown in international business communication, the only other significant contrast between the Cyprus study and the U.S. and Singapore ones is the ranking of the topic of handling aggressiveness. This topic was ranked in the top four choices in Reinsch and Shelbys (1997) U.S. study, third in the Singapore study, and only seventh in the Cyprus study (see Table 2). Of course, culturally determined ideas about what constitutes aggressiveness and its effective handling vary greatly. But does a multicultural environment encourage individuals to exercise greater caution and reserve in self-expression? Are individuals in such an environment more inclined to hyperconform, to engage in groupthink, because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict? In reviewing studies of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, Jabs (2005) found that the different implicit communicative rules of different subcultures were identified as the cause of the organizational groupthink that kept members from expressing their dissent and thus precipitated the eventual disaster. That is, diversity across organizational subcultures may prompt groupthink. Analogously, the diversity of national culture in Cyprus may prompt the respondents in my present study to engage in groupthink to avoid any risk of displaying aggressiveness. Handling aggressiveness, therefore, is less important to the Cyprus respondents because they tend to preempt it.

Implications of the Study

The study I have described here is preliminary and tentative, yet it brings to the fore two separate issues. First, it implies that there is more identity in the communication needs of business students across cultures than we might have supposed. To explore this hypothesis, we need to investigate the communication needs of business students more deeply and in more diverse cultural settings. The value of such research would be that it might ultimately streamline business communication instruction by revealing a core of skills that could form the structure for all international communication pedagogy.

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Such a corpus of knowledge would be invaluable for corporate communication training as well as for university curricula. Second, this study implies that the presence of a real-life international component triggers an understanding of the urgency of cross-cultural awareness and training. This line of reasoning was suggested by Connor, Davis, De Rycker, Phillips, and Verckens (1997) and was their impetus for establishing an international writing network of business communication students. The students who participated in my Cyprus study were obliged to move beyond their original conception and interpretation of the world when they left their own country to study and live within a new cultural context. Such real crosscultural exposure, McLaren and Rashid (2002) insisted, is essential for successful cross-cultural training. We perhaps need to devise as many ways as possible to introduce authentic multicultural components into our courses so that students can experience navigating the passages of international communication. For example, Gerritsen and Verckens (2006) devised a program to connect business students internationally via e-mail to provide a real-life international component in their business communication pedagogy. Herrington and Tretyakov (2005) have described a pedagogic venture in which students from Russia and the United States interact online. They argued that the confusion experienced by the students provides them with an opportunity to learn to cope within the intricate context of international communication. And Bowen, Sapp, and Sargsyan (2006) described how many business communication programs in the United States are teaming up with business communication courses in other countries to develop curricula that are truly international and to encourage deeper understanding of culturally determined differences. Williams (2006) has implored academics and students alike to raise the bar for better cross-campus communication. Perhaps authentic interaction within a multinational group of studentswhether these students are interacting at a university such as the one in my Cyprus study or online from different campuses across the globecan provide the practical experience of more contrived interactions that will help raise that bar for international communication.

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Valerie Priscilla Goby was an associate professor of communication at Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus and is now at Zayed University, Dubai. She has a PhD in the sociology of language and has published widely on various communication and cross-cultural issues.

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