Intercultural Issues In The Workplace

This textbook addresses key issues and challenges in contemporary multicultural and multilingual workplaces through the lens of leadership, communication and trust. It draws together contributions from fields including cultural studies, psychology, sociolinguistics, translation and interpreting studies, and business management, making a valuable contribution to the area of language and culture in the workplace. The volume is divided into 5 thematic sections: Intercultural Communication; Cross-cultural Leadership; Economy; Language; and Diversity. It offers a critical analysis on themes that tend to be overlooked in intercultural business and management scholarship, such as multilingualism in the workplace, translation and interpreting in cross-cultural work practices, dignity in the workplace, performing gender in the workplace, and D/deaf people in the workplace. It also revisits themes such as cross-cultural leadership, interculturality and the embedded economy, and managing uncertainty in the context of the contemporary globalized workplace. It then brings everything together in a Cross-Cultural Scenarios chapter at the end, with recommendations for every scenario. Overall, the textbook constitutes an essential resource for honours undergraduate and postgraduate students in these and related fields, as well as academics and practitioners with an interest in globalised workplaces.

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.

Language and Culture at Work provides an overview of the complex role that culture plays in workplace contexts. Eight chapters cover the core aspects of culture at work, comprising: Face and politeness Decision making Leadership Identity Gender Work-life balance The authors draw on a significant corpus of authentic workplace data collected in numerous professional and medical settings involving participants from a variety of different socio-cultural backgrounds (including Chinese, Filipino, Indian, British, Dutch, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Australian). Using in-depth analyses of authentic interactions and interviews, the book proposes a new integrated framework for researching culture at work from a sociolinguistic perspective. This is key reading for researchers and recommended for those working in the areas of sociolinguistics, communication studies, discourse analysis and applied linguistics. It will be of particular interest to students of professional and workplace communication, intercultural communication and intercultural pragmatics.

Presents guidelines, critical incidents, and concrete examples so people in international business ventures, or those working domestically in a culturally diverse workplace, can be understanding, effective, and also enjoy the activity.

Intercultural Communication In The Global Workplace offers student readers the solid theoretical foundation they need and a highly engaging writing style peppered with personal examples culled from the authors' experience living and working abroad. The authors zero in on the specific needs of a firm, from broad cultural and business values to the influence of culture on negotiations, to the structure of the firm and the richness of the message. Legal issues in intercultural business communication are covered extensively. Opening chapters contain detailed discussion of cultural values that influence intercultural business communication.

The Chinese characters for "danger" and "opportunity" form the word "crisis". Ancient Chinese wisdom sees an opportunity in danger. While cultural diversity brings challenges to the workplace, how do we turn these challenges into opportunities? Drawing on their extensive experience working with multicultural and multinational organizations, Lionel Laroche and Caroline Yang provide an in-depth analysis of cross-cultural dynamics in the workplace and offer practical suggestions at both the individual and organizational levels. The book analyzes cross-cultural challenges in six areas: the relative importance of technical and soft skills; cross-cultural communication; cross-cultural feedback; hierarchy; individualism; and risk tolerance. It then provides a solutions framework that encompasses people, systems and environment to bridge the issues that arise from cultural differences. The analysis and solutions are applied in four business contexts: managing a multicultural workforce; competing in the global talent market; collaborating with joint venture partners; and working with offshore resources. If you work with colleagues, managers, employees and customers from diverse cultures, if you are with an organization that has a multicultural workforce and/or global operations, or if your organization collaborates with joint venture partners or offshore resources from different cultures, then Danger and Opportunity: Bridging Cultural Diversity for Competitive Advantage is the book for you.