While the above approaches are relevant to the development
of many types of managerial strategies and tactics,
this study is concerned specifically with communication
issues. An approach to national culture that was developed
by the cultural anthropologist Hall is, thus, appealing in this
context [10 – 12]. In fact, Hall declared that ‘‘culture is
communication’’ [12]. If a person is to communicate effectively
with someone from another culture, he/she must be
able to ‘‘decode’’ the message properly. Without such a
code-breaker, two people from different cultures may see or
hear the same message but may screen that message very
differently by unconsciously ignoring or increasing the
importance of various parts of the message. In addition,
one may interpret the message content differently, ‘‘seeing’’
or ‘‘hearing’’ the message so that it is consistent with his or
her cultural norms. Both the sender and the receiver of a
message are products of their own fields of reference or
expertise, that is, the sender has been socialized given his or
her own external cultural environment, as has the receiver.
The less these two fields of experience or reference overlap,
the more ‘‘distant’’ one person’s cultural background is from
another’s, and the more difficult clear communication and
understanding is between the two