Towards Cultural Diversity:Threats or Opportunities

摘要

An increasing number of organizations or businesses are finding themselves involved in communication across cultures, or intercultural communication.Culture is a powerful undercurrent in international business and it plays a key role in the effectiveness of a company or even a nation. Managers, teams and organizations are aware of the presence of cultural differences. They have to confront them, to learn from them, and to devise ways of utilizing them creatively in order to benefit from their potential value added. Although difficult to quantify, business leaders, professionals and educators increasingly testify to the impact of intercultural miscommunication on the efficiency, productivity and effectiveness in education, commerce and international relations. It means money lost and many opportunities lost. Conversely, the benefits from improved intercultural communication are considerable. They include greater efficiency and effectiveness. In the past, many assumed that cultural differences were barriers and impeded communication and interaction. With the aim of improving effectiveness in international business, the writer, therefore, is pleased to share ideas how to manage cultural differences more effectively. Rather than experiencing cultural differences as threats to be overcome, the writer challenges those dealing with intercultural communication to experience and enjoy the richness of cultural diversity. The paper stresses the importance of adopting the proper attitude towards cultural diversity and presents a useful framework for approaching cultural differences effectively. This way, both foreign language teachers and business practitioners reay reap benefits from the approach. While foreign language teachers may learn how to help managers build confidence and ability to integrate cultural differences into more rewarding ways of doing international business and international companies will be able to learn to integrate cultural competences into their competitive strategies.