Discuss in detail international dimensions of organisational

behaviour with special reference to cross-culture management

in today's global context..!!

Submitted To : Prof. Neelu Rohmetra

Submitted By : Raghav Gandotra (MBA-I)

Roll No. 27

Dated : November 30, 2010

Organizational studies, also commonly referred to as organizational
behaviour or organizational theory, encompasses the systematic study
and careful application of knowledge about how people act within
organizations. Whenever people interact in organizations, many factors
come into play. Modern organizational studies attempt to understand
and model these factors. Like all modernist social sciences,
organizational studies seek to control, predict, and explain. There is
some controversy over the ethics of controlling workers' behavior, as
well as the manner in which workers are treated. As such, organizational
behaviour or OB has at times been accused of being the scientific tool of
the powerful. Those accusations notwithstanding, OB can play a major
role in organizational development, enhancing organizational
performance, as well as individual and group
performance/satisfaction/commitment.

Cross-culture management (also frequently referred to as intercultural

communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from
differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different
ways among themselves, and how they endeavour
to communicate across cultures. Cross-cultural communication tries to
bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural
anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to
establish and understand how people from different cultures
communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some
guidelines with which people from different cultures can better
communicate with each other.
Cross-cultural communication, as in many scholarly fields, is a
combination of many other fields. These fields
include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication.
It has also moved both toward the treatment of interethnic relations,
and toward the study of communication strategies used by co-cultural
populations, i.e., communication strategies used to deal with majority or
mainstream populations.

The study of languages other than one’s own can not only serve to help
us understand what we as human beings have in common, but also
assist us in understanding the diversity which underlies not only our
languages, but also our ways of constructing and organizing knowledge,
and the many different realities in which we all live and interact. Such
understanding has profound implications with respect to developing a
critical awareness of social relationships. Understanding social
relationships and the way other cultures work is the groundwork of
successful globalization business efforts.

Language socialization can be broadly defined as “an investigation of

how language both presupposes and creates a new social relation in
cultural context.” It is imperative that the speaker understands the
grammar of a language, as well as how elements of language are
socially situated in order to reach communicative competence. Human
experience is culturally relevant, so elements of language are also
culturally relevant. However, there are several potential problems that
come with language socialization.
Sometimes people can over-generalize or label cultures with
stereotypical and subjective characterizations. Another primary concern
with documenting alternative cultural norms revolves around the fact
that no social actor uses language in ways that perfectly match
normative characterizations. A methodology for investigating how an
individual uses language and other semiotic activity to create and use
new models of conduct and how this varies from the cultural norm
should be incorporated into the study of language socialization

Effective communication with people of different cultures is especially

challenging. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking—ways of
seeing, hearing, and interpreting the world. Thus the same words can
mean different things to people from different cultures, even when they
talk the "same" language. When the languages are different, and
translation has to be used to communicate, the potential for
misunderstandings increases. The study of cross-cultural communication
is fast becoming a global research area. As a result, cultural differences
in the study of cross-cultural communication can already be found. For
example, cross-cultural communication is generally considered to fall
within the larger field of communication studies in the US, but it is
emerging as a sub-field of applied linguistics in the UK.

As the application of cross-cultural communication theory to foreign

language education is increasingly appreciated around the world, cross-
cultural communication classes can be found within foreign language
departments of some universities, while other schools are placing cross-
cultural communication programs in their departments of education.
With the increasing pressures and opportunities of globalization, the
incorporation of international networking alliances has become an
“essential mechanism for the internationalization of higher education.
Many universities from around the world have taken great strides to
increase intercultural understanding through processes of organizational
change and innovations. In general, university processes revolve around
four major dimensions which include: organizational change, curriculum
innovation, staff development, and student mobility. Ellingboe
emphasizes these four major dimensions with his own specifications for
the internationalization process. His specifications include: (1) college
leadership; (2) faculty members' international involvement in activities
with colleagues, research sites, and institutions worldwide; (3) the
availability, affordability, accessibility, and transferability of study abroad
programs for students; (4) the presence and integration of international
students, scholars, and visiting faculty into campus life; and (5)
international co-curricular units (residence halls, conference planning
centers, student unions, career centers, cultural immersion and
language houses, student activities, and student organizations).

Above all, universities need to make sure that they are open and
responsive to changes in the outside environment. In order for
internationalization to be fully effective, the university (including all staff,
students, curriculum, and activities) needs to be current with cultural
changes, and willing to adapt to these changes. As stated by Ellingboe,
Internationalization is an ongoing, future-oriented, multidimensional,
interdisciplinary, leadership-driven vision that involves many
stakeholders working to change the internal dynamics of an institution to
respond and adapt appropriately to an increasingly diverse, globally
focused, ever-changing external environment. New distance learning
technologies, such as interactive teleconferencing, enable students
located thousands of miles apart to communicate and interact in a
virtual classroom. Cross cultural communication gives opportunities to
share ideas, experiences, and different perspectives and perception by
interacting with local people.

There are several parameters that may be perceived differently by

people of different cultures.These may include:

 Perception of Time: In some countries like China and Japan,

punctuality is considered important and being late would be
considered as an insult. However, in countries such as those of South
America and the Middle East, being on time does not carry the same
sense of urgency.

 Perception of Space: The concept of "personal space" also varies

from country to country. In certain countries it is considered
respectful to maintain a distance while interacting. However, in other
countries, this is not so important.

 Non-verbal Communication: Cultures may be either Low-context or

High-context: Low-context cultures rely more on content rather than
on context. They give value to the written word rather than oral
statements. High-context cultures infer information from message
context, rather than from content. They rely heavily on nonverbal
signs and prefer indirectness, politeness & ambiguity.

With all these parameters, we can say that cross culture management
is becoming one of the important tools for getting cultures together
and paving a way for an effective cross cultural communication.

Just as the recent campaign by Indian telecom company Idea Cellular

potraited on LANGUAGE NO BARRIERS, Cross Culture Management is
also aimed to reduce cultural barriers and make learnings,
communications and internationalizations easier and effective in
context to the organisational behaviour.