According to Nancy Adler (2008), she gives a good definition of cross cultural management:
“Cross-cultural management explains the behavior of people in organizations around the world
and shows people how to work in organizations with employees and client populations from many
different cultures.”
The importance of cross-cultural management lies in the on-growing co-operation between companies in different
countries where difficulties may arise because of the different cultural backgrounds.
One of the well-known researchers in the field of culture and management is Geert Hofstede (1980). Therefore,
Hofstede’s work is considered indispensable to any study on culture and management. He developed what is
called a “dimensional approach to cross-cultural comparisons.”
As the world is witnessing nowadays “globalization”, more and more companies are being run in different places
all around the world. This will result in more activities all over the world which result in communication across
cultures. Culture is something that human beings learn and as a result, learning requires communication and
communication is a way of coding and decoding language as well as symbols used in that language. For example,
humans communicate through many means other than language such as facial expressions, gestures, body
language, posture etc.
In other words, culture and communication can be considered inseparable, if one is to be exposed to a certain
culture, then communication becomes a must. The first to introduce the term “intercultural communication” was
Edward T. Hall which he defined as “communication between two persons of different cultures”. The term
“Intercultural business communication” is a new term in the world of business which may be defined as the
communication that takes place within businesses whereby there are employees from different cultural
backgrounds. On the other hand, there is another term which is “International communication” which means the
communication that takes place between nations and governments rather than individuals (Chaney & Martin,
2011). Therefore, good knowledge of intercultural communication as well as international business
communication is of utmost importance to give individuals the opportunity to compete internationally.