Intercultural Interactions In The Multicultural Workplace

This volume explores the work environment in multinational corporations. To do so, it integrates studies on the organizational sciences, cross-cultural management, positive psychology and sociology within a single comprehensive framework. Twenty-two authors from six countries identify the challenges in multicultural workplaces, the positives of interactions, cultural clashes and their organizational preconditions. They add inter-organizational, institutional and critical perspectives to the analysis within the framework of multinationals and complex, hybrid cultural environments. The book addresses the needs of researchers in the areas of intercultural management, and those of practitioners in international human resource management.

This book systematically investigates intercultural experiences of Polish managers and specialists delegated by their multinational company (MNC) on an international assignment to China. The book employs narrative inquiry to explore language, intercultural communication, collaboration, learning, and expatriate adjustment in the MNC. This approach offers new insights into intercultural experiences, communication, and cultural challenges faced by an under-researched group of professionals exposed to intensive collaborations with the local managers and employees. The findings also illustrate how the expatriates learned to better navigate the multicultural and multilingual business context and what factors facilitated and inhibited their learning and adjustment. Encouraging the qualitative, context-sensitive examination of expatriate-local personnel interactions, the book will be an invaluable source for scholars and practitioners interested in, among others, novel approaches to investigating language and intercultural communication in international business, cross-cultural management, qualitative cross-cultural research, as well as for lecturers and students interested in Central Europe and China.

Measureable, data driven outcomes are not the only indicators of success in today’s multicultural and globalized workforce. How employees interact with their colleagues and customers is also a significant factor in their career development. Luciara Nardon draws on her extensive research and international experience to guide employees and managers through the ambiguous and uncertain waters of today’s multicultural workplace. Each intercultural encounter is unique, involving different people, contexts, dynamics, and actions which general cultural protocols are unable to address. In Working in a Multicultural World, Nardon offers a comprehensive framework for understanding intercultural interactions and developing skills for successful intercultural situations. Numerous examples and exercises, including how to reconcile personal beliefs of equality with a hierarchical workplace and how to respond to perceived aggressiveness in business negotiations, enable employees and managers to embark on reflective processes that will springboard their intercultural competence. Working in a Multicultural World is an accessibly written and valuable resource for all professionals in today’s workplace as well as students and travelers interested in intercultural relations.

From language classrooms to outdoor markets, the workplace is fundamental to socialisation. It is not only a site of employment where money is made and institutional roles are enacted through various forms of discourse; it is also a location where people engage in social actions and practices. The workplace is an interesting research site because of advances in communication technology, cheaper and greater options for travel, and global migration and immigration. Work now requires people to travel over great geographical distances, communicate with cultural ‘others’ located in different time zones, relocate to different regions or countries, and conduct business in online settings. The workplace is thus changing and evolving, creating new and emerging communicative contexts. This volume provides a greater understanding of workplace cultures, particularly the ways in which working in highly interconnected and multicultural societies shape language and intercultural communication. The chapters focus on critical approaches to theory and practice, in particular how practice is used to shape theory. They also question the validity and universality of existing models. Some of the predominant models in intercultural communication have been criticised for being Eurocentric or Anglocentric, and this volume proposes alternative frameworks for analysing intercultural communication in the workplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.

This book is a theoretical and practical discussion of intercultural communication and interaction and is aimed at academic courses as well as professional development programmes. It focuses, from a critical perspective, on the intercultural dynamics established between the members of multicultural groups/teams in various types of work environments. Selected academics and other experts on intercultural communication and interaction, representing different approaches and professional experience, joined, collaborated and contributed to the fulfilment of a three-year project where they developed a model in eight axes: - Intercultural Responsibility, Emotional Management, Intercultural Interaction, Communicative Interaction, Ethnography, Biography, Diversity Management and Working in Multicultural Teams. Each chapter provides an interdisciplinary account of its topic as well as an activity which aims to illustrate the ideas proposed.