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In an era of relatively instantaneous contact between organizations across the seemingly shrinking globe, why should one consider cultural distance at all? Simply because culture affects virtually all of human behavior. For example, culture has been defined as ‘‘the software of the mind’’. Hofstede’s extensive research on culture has helped conceptualize one of the most popular theories of cultural types, as evidenced by well over 1000 citations from Cultural Consequences reported in the Social Science Citation since 1980. His approach to culture initially identified four underlying value dimensions: (1) individualism vs. collectivism, (2) large vs. small power distance, (3) strong vs. weak uncertainty avoidance, and (4) masculinity vs. femininity (a fifth dimension, long- vs. short-term orientation was added later). Another framework for the understanding of culture was developed by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner. It was based on 50,000 cases of managers from multinational and international corporations from over 100 countries. In their approach, cultures differ in the specific solutions they choose to problems. They then identify cultures based on seven fundamental dimensions. Their approach is similar in some respects to Hofstede’s dimensions. 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. In fact, Hall declared that ‘‘culture is communication’’. 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. Hall’s low- (LC) and high-context (HC) dichotomy provides a simple two-category basis for grouping the cultures of many different countries to help understand the hidden codes in communication. In his framework, in LC cultures, most of the information flowing between sender and receiver is contained in the message itself. Consequently, the message needs to be explicit and detailed because each party will rely almost solely on the information contained in the message itself. On the other hand, in an HC culture, less explicit and detailed information is carried in the message itself. Instead, the sender and receiver rely more on the context of the co本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。