more impacted by these many changes than the business community. Over the past
several decades,“outsourcing,”“offshoring,”“multinational enterprise,”“globalized
markets,”“workforce diversity,”“cultural intelligence,”and similar terms have become
common business terms. U.S. corporations’customer-service call centers are just as
likely to be located in India, the Philippines, or Mexico as in Utah, Texas, or Florida.
Online shopping has accelerated commercial exchanges across national borders.
PayPal, for instance, manages approximately 2,000 international transactions every
minute. This type of activity requires companies to open storage warehouses in
various countries in order to expedite merchandise delivery.^5
U.S. corporations focusing on the domestic economy must also be prepared to
manage the contemporary cultural diversity that characterizes both their clientele
and their workforce. For multinational corporations (MNCs), the requirement for
competent intercultural skills extends across all phases of their enterprise—management,
production, marketing, and sales. To gain market location-specific advantages,
MNCs commonly establish manufacturing sites, distribution centers, and sales and
marketing forces in separate countries. This type of organization requires execu-
tives, managers, and often members of the workforce to be familiar with cultural
differences among clients, employees, and local government regulation enforce-
ment agencies. These same people need
to possess the ability necessary to com-
municate across these multicultural
boundaries. Hence, cultural knowledge
and intercultural communication skills
have become fundamental to almost
every type of commercial endeavor—
international or domestic.^6TABLE 10.1 Contexts for Contemporary Intercultural CommunicationBusiness- Negotiations
- Management
- Advertising
- Finance
Legal- Courts
- Lawenforcement
- Contracts
- Oversight/regulatory compliance
Healthcare - Clinical
- Psychological
- Traditional
Social Services- Immigration assistance
- Welfare/unemployment benefits
- Domestic services
Diplomatic - Coalition building
- Maintaining alliances
- Treaties
- Trade pacts
- Goodwill programs
Politico-Military- Peacekeeping forces
- Military exchanges/Joint exercises
- Weapons sales
- Arms reduction verification
- Armed conflict (interrogations)
Source:E.R.McDaniel.REMEMBER THIS
“Globalization can be conceptualized as a situation where
political borders become increasingly more irrelevant, eco-
nomic interdependencies are heightened, and national differ-
ences due to dissimilarities in societal cultures are central
issues of business.”^7Intercultural Communication in Globalized Business 343Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).