Intercultural Business Communication

In today's corporate world, the need to be able to understand and communicate efficiently and properly is essential. Communicating with individuals with a different background can be difficult if not known how to approach properly. That is why intercultural communication is very important in today's world of business. Intercultural business communication helps to deal with intricate times many business people often have when working in and international setting. An interview with the chairman of Transco International Cargo Service, Mr. Y.S.M Naushad Khan was held to help explain the importance of Intercultural business communication. Using literature reviews and the interview, the contention of this essay is to explore the issues surrounding intercultural business communication.

Intercultural communication in business is one of the most critical factors contributing to business growth and success in today's ever more complex global market as implied in an article written by the Springhills International Education Group. (http://www.springhillsgroup.com/b2b/html/intercultural.php, April 30th 2006). Mr. Y.S.M Naushad Khan, the interviewee stated that "having the knowledge of intercultural business communication is a necessity" (Khan 2006), being an international cargo service provider, the ability to understand how a customer should be treated depending on their culture is essential to his business. The unawareness of such an important factor could lead to the loss of customers. Another issue surrounding this topic is as Kazuo Nishiyama contends, "unless both participants are bilingual...they will find communication very difficult" (Nishiyama 2000, pg. 9). Linguistic communication is also a vital part of a successful intercultural business, the inability to comprehend with foreign business partners would be an issue when it comes to making business deals. Non-verbal communication is known to be one of the main issues to intercultural communication. It is the "communication that doesn't use words", (Locker & Kaczmarek 2001) misinterpretation of an individuals non-verbal behaviour such as body language or gestures can be quite impolite to some if not known how to react to it.