Communication Between Cultures

its employees. That is, regardless of whether it is a multinational corporation, an ele-

mentary school, a rural healthcare clinic, or any other service or product provider, the

organization and its personnel are accountable for engaging in competent intercultural

practices. The challenge, then, is for providers to ensure that all employees are sensi-

tive to the cultural variations existing within the workforce, among customers, and in

the relevant cultural groups in the local community and that workers possess the nec-

essary skills for effective interaction. And the first requirement is for personnel at all

levels—executive, managerial, and workforce—to understand that acquiring those

skills requires effort and time.^70

The first step in achieving the goal of intercultural competence in any occupa-

tional context is to create and nurture an organizational policy (i.e., organizational

culture) that recognizes the need and benefits of multiculturalism. Such a policy will

create a sense of organizational inclusiveness and promote successful intercultural

engagement with clients and stakeholders. The most widely employed means of creat-

ing greater intercultural awareness and skill development is through formal or infor-

mal training programs that create cross-cultural understanding and raise own-culture

awareness. However, self-study offers another viable means of gaining cultural

knowledge.

Training programs are normally structured to meet specific organizational require-

ments, and the content can be“cultural general,”“cultural specific,”or a combina-

tion. Programs focusing on cultural general training are designed to provide

employees with an appreciation of what culture is and how it varies and its influence

on individual behaviors and communication to include one’s own culture. Organiza-

tions staffed by employees from a variety of cultures will find this type of training ben-

eficial, especially supervisory personnel charged with overseeing a multicultural

workforce. Teachers who manage classrooms with students from a variety of cultures

and health workers serving culturally diverse patients would benefit from cultural-

general training.

Culture-specific training focuses on specific culture with the objective of providing

in-depth knowledge and understanding. These programs benefit organizational

personnel who must interact with individuals from a single culture, such as a Filipino

nurse working in a predominantly Vietnamese American neighborhood or a

Euro-American teacher in a Hispanic-majority school district. Likewise, a U.S. busi-

ness team negotiating a contract with a large Korean firm would be better prepared by

having an appreciation of Korean culture and communication styles.

Regardless of the context, organizations operating in culturally diverse environ-

ments require cultural competence and effective intercultural communication skills

in order to manage employees and serve clients successfully. As an illustration, we

will conclude with a short description of how one large multinational corporation

has made multiculturalism a core competency.

ABB is a large corporation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with some

150,000 employees working in approximately 100 countries and whose website is

available in over thirty languages. In 2014, ABB was ranked 259 onFortune’s Global

500 list:^71

Formed in 1988 from the merger of two international engineering companies—the Swiss

BBC company and the Swedish ASEA—ABB acquired more than 230 companies in

50 countries within a decade. It didn’t build its corporate culture on that of its parent

companies, but on its diversity. The core of its management philosophy was to respect

Death and Dying Across Cultures 375

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