High context or Low context communication theory is one of the most important
theories in cross-cultural research, which can be viewed as a culture based on the
messages that people within the culture prefer to use (Richardson and Smith, 2007).
It properly links management style and staff behaviour to discuss the issue of
cross-cultural management in communication. According to Richardson and Smith
(2007, p 480) refer to Hall (1976) and argue that cultures cannot be easily classiflied
into HC or LC, but to some extent, “some cultures tend to be at the higher end while
others are at the lower end of the continuum”. In a high-context culture, people
interdepend on each other. Information is widely shared through the word with
potential meaning. In a low-context cutlure, people tend to be individualized, kind of
alienated and fragmented, people do not invlolve with each other too much (ibid).
High context communication tends to engage an indirect way to express while low
context communication prefers direct information exchange (Kim, Pan and Park,
1998, Richardson and Smith, 2007). In a low-context culture, people coming from
other culture can easily match these machinations, but in a high-context culture, these
high-context machinations cannot be easily matched by people coming from
low-context culture (Holden, 2002, p 28). The characteristic of high-context
communication is economical, fast, efficient, and satisfying, however, programming is
time-consumed (Kim, Pan and Park, 1998). Contrarily, low-context massages are
more context-free than high-context communication, information about the character
and background and values of the participants are less influencing on people to make
deals, however, the reliance to make deal is upon the explicit communication (ibid).