Q. How halls communication context can be applied in the diversified

work place?

Ans: Organization is the workplace of various tribes, age, sex, culture,

tradition and many more things. We cannot expect the same psychology of

employees all over our organization. Although we can minimize the diversity

from the stage of recruitment but we cannot completely ignore it. Thus we

can have a diversified work place in every organization. It is one of the

major issues of the managers to maintain harmony in the work place. And

Cultural context is one of the major bases for diversification in the work

place because we can find people for different cultural background in the

same place. Cultures tend to reveal workers themselves in various situations

and react towards them. Business practices are directly affected by deeply-

held cultural attitudes toward work, power, trust, wealth and way of

communication by the employees. Communication is the main foundation of

business, since business is a collective activity and Communication styles vary

largely all over the globe, and these contribute in the formation of business

styles.

The most useful concept for understanding these cultural differences

in business is Edward T. Hall’s (1976) distinction of low -context and high-

context cultures. It explains much about how negotiation proceeds, how

agreements are specified, and how workers are managed in the organization.

Edward Hall, anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher, explains about

the two different cultures distinguished on the basis of the role of the

whole situation, background, or environment connected to an event, a

situation, or an individual in communication. He explains how business

practices are reflected by low-context and high-context characteristics.

Low cultural context worker are direct and straight forward. The

information and meaning they want to forward are explicitly stated in the

message. They prefer individualisms over groupism. They Value direct verbal

interaction and is less able to read nonverbal expressions or the body

languages of the speaker. Cultures in western European rely more heavily on

low context communication. These include Australia, Canada, New Zealand,

and the United States, as well as much of Europe believes in low -context

communication. On the other hand, people from high context communication

are opposite of the low context one. They make belief of the way we are

behaving or thinking and predict meaning and information. The messages are

less explicitly stated directly. They value more group sense. They Values

indirect verbal interaction and is more able to read nonverbal expressions.

In high context communication, the message cannot be understood without a

great deal of background information. Most of the Asian countries are from

high context communication background. Japan, china, Korea, Germany and

many other countries follows high context culture.

As we know now, these two cultural people are completely facing

towards opposite direction and managing them is a very much difficult task.

So managers should be very much sensitive in dealing in between these two

types. If the boss is from high context and the lower level employees from

low context culture, there may be high chance of the birth of conflicts

between them. Employees may directly express whatever he/she may be

feeling which can directly affect the psychology of the boss. Similarly if the

boss is explaining or expressing his thoughts about anything good or anything

wrong in the organization the employees may feel it very difficult to

understand what actually his boss maybe trying to let him know, because the

boss may not be saying it directly or in the way the employee wants to listen

about the problem. And in the same way if the boss is from low context and

the employees are from high context, there may again occur similar kind of

conflicts in the organization. The boss might tell anything directly, either

good or bad, which can bring the outcome of dissatisfaction among

employees in the organization and it can result in the employees grievances

and as these unsatisfied employees cannot express their dissatisfaction

directly and though if they try to express their dissatisfaction even then

the boss may not be able to understand what actually the problem is, due the

way he delivered his unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Therefore these two

contexts of cultural communication must be studied well in organization.

The low context and high context cultural people also differ in making

contracts. The low context societies want to perform every activity with

regard to every detail or showing great care and completeness. Even if they

are renting a car for a day they may require four pages of fine print to spell

out how to deal with every possible future event that cannot be predicted

with certainty. Once a contract is signed, there is no flexibility in the terms

unless both parties agree to renegotiate. If a party fails to deliver, the legal

system is expected to enforce compliance. But in case of high context It is

not necessary to write everything (or perhaps anything) down, because

mutual understanding and a handshake is sufficient. When there is a written

contract, it may be more a memorandum of understanding than a binding

legal document. Because the terms are not certain or definite, there is plan

for adjustment as the situation develops. As for compliance, the parties are

more likely to rely on a pre-existing trust relationship than a legal system.

Thus a department managers in different departments and these two

different cultures may find problem in dealing every deals and making every

contracts and so with the workers. Low context cultural people takes time as

a money whereas high context cultural people takes time as a relationship.

Similarly high context cultural person are very much individualistic, they only

prefers their own benefits rather caring about what other thinks but high

context cultural person cares about other’s feeling and what other thinks

about them in every step they take.

Since organization is the home of different cultural context oriented

employees and thus every employee must have knowledge about both aspect

of the cultural background and how to deal with them. If someone is from

high context culture he should be encouraged indirectly and his mistakes and

problems should be delivered to them in their own high cultural context way

so that they may be able to understand what actually is happening and they

must not feel they are being dominated. They should be told through various

methods using body languages and other similar meaning ways and praising

them too. But if we are handling low context cultural background societies

we must face them directly and point out about their problems directly and

let them deal about it. As well as if want to listen towards them, we must be

very attentive and curious to every way the high context cultural people is

saying and his body languages are showing; And we must not feel any kind of

problem with the way a low context cultural people sharing their views. They

way they say directly we must not take it in an offensive way. Thus we can us

hall’s communication context in diversified workplace by knowing each

other’s cultural context; we must have knowledge about one’s own culture

and the cultural background of other employees too.