Intercultural Workplace Communication

Abstract

The workplace is a highly meaningful context for intercultural communication where persons who come from different countries, identify with different ethnic groups or speak different languages get to collaborate and develop relationships with one another. Needless to say, interpersonal communication in the workplace has always been a primary area of interest for intercultural communication research. Early scholarship focused on the preparation of U.S. military personnel, diplomats, business people, and missionaries for overseas assignments. However, the increasing pluralization of the social landscape has bolstered research endeavors. These days, the scope of intercultural workplace communication inquiry comprises everyday face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions in encounters, relationships, groups, and teams in a variety of working arrangements, and across a range of public and private sector organizations worldwide. The scholarship also draws on the organizational approaches of antidiscrimination and diversity management that emerged in the United States and have subsequently been exported to and reinterpreted in workplaces around the world. Researchers have looked into such workplace communication processes and phenomena as social categorization, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination, conflict and its management, organizational satisfaction and identification, socialization, supportive communication, interpersonal relationship development and informal interaction, negotiation of shared workplace culture, knowledge sharing, decision-making, learning and innovation, or leadership and management. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ways languages are used in interactions at work.

Diversity and Social Interaction at Work

“…As an objective fact, diversity has typically been examined in workplace literature as either a resource or a challenge to organizational functioning and outcomes (Lahti 2015a;Lahti & Valo 2017). The purported differences in interpretations, knowledge, and skills of diverse employees have been related to better decision-making, innovation, and learning.…”

“…Although imagined, cultural and social identities are by no means any less real; being imagined as members of less prestigious groups may have very tangible consequences for the working life of individuals. While power inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination have been given ample attention in workplace literature, these discussions have mostly focused on members of specific social categories who experience mistreatment because of their natural differences (Lahti 2015a;Lahti & Valo 2017). Intersectionality is an alternative approach that offers a more nuanced understanding of oppression.…”