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.