Multicultural Communication And Cross-Cultural Communication

The workforce in the United States no longer consists of only Caucasian or American workers. According to the 2014 Foreign Summary Report from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/internatl/companies.shtml) there were 912 foreign companies registered and reporting with the SEC. Additionally, companies employ people from other countries locally as well as overseas and relocate or expand to other parts of the world due to globalization. All employees, whether from this country or another, have language and cultural differences that can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication among coworkers. In order to understand how other cultures communicate, we should learn about other cultures and the ways they communicate with each other. When all team members make an effort to understand each other better, a more cohesive team is formed. International

21). Each of these categories impacts how people think, act, and communicate. No two cultures are the same. Some may share similar characteristics, but the specific combination of the above categories create a unique perspective for each nation or culture.

Cross-cultural communication occurs when people from different countries communicate and at least one person is a non-native speaker of the language they are speaking or writing in. Nonverbal cross-cultural communication forms are posters, brochures, television and radio ads, and newspapers (Dong & Liu, 2015, pp. 21-22). Following a cultural list of “dos and do nots” is not enough to ensure that employees communicate effectively with one another because each person’s culture impacts not only the words actually spoken but also how the listener responds to what is