Strategies for Overcoming Barriers Inherent in Cross-Cultural Research

Abstract

The term cross-cultural implies comparison, juxta-position, and differentiation. Cross-cultural research contrasts two or more distinctive cultural groups in terms of some quality, value, belief or behavior. Business communication examples include studies of business negotiation styles, compliance-gaining appeals, genre creation in electronic media, reader orientation in business letters, and symbolism in group meetings. The focus may be verbal or nonverbal, oral or written, group or interpersonal, organizational or individual communication. Cross-cultural research thus cuts across all other kinds by adding a layer of study: the juxtaposition of two or more cultural groups. BARRIERS This definition of the concept of cross-cultural communication suggests two critical barriers that often impede research: (1) the formidable logistics of gaining access to two or more cultural groups, and (2) failure to acknowledge underlying assumptions about culture, causality, and context. A doser look at these two barriers will lead to some conclusions about how researchers can break through them. THE LOGISTICS OF CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH The logistics of gaining access to two or more cultural groups complicates research considerably. Access often requires physical proximity, psychological insight, and linguistic expertise. To compare cultural groups, the researcher must know people or make connections in order to conduct interviews, run experiments, administer surveys, or gather existing data or documents. Building up the trust necessary for access takes time. Face-to-face meetings usually speed the process, so physical proximity is desirable. Equally critical is psychological insight into the cultural group, which enables the researcher to know what to ask and how to ask it. Such research requires being fully bicultural and having the financial resources to spend substantial time in several parts of the world. Unfortunately, few researchers possess these credentials. Language is an even more imposing barrier in much cross-cultural business communication research. Few researchers are fully bilingual; functional ability in a second language does not provide the awareness of nuances and subtleties of language that are central to the study of business communication. As a result, researchers often depend upon translations of instructions, survey instruments, or sample documents. However, many expressions, images, or ideas are impossible to translate precisely. Communication cannot be divorced from its social, political, legal, and economic context. Translation inevitably changes meaning. An alternative approach used by many business-communication researchers is to use only one language, usually English, for all participants in crosscultural surveys or experiments. In international corporations where the corporate language is English, there is a clear rationale for this approach. Yet, because employees are communicating in their corporate roles, research findings cannot be generalized to larger cultural groups. Whenever nonnative speakers participate in a research study, there arises an inevitable question concerning their degree of fluency. Do participants fully understand the directions? Do participants have the vocabulary in the second language to express ideas fully? What is the effect of time limits? ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH The logistics challenge is a more obvious barrier to cross-cultural research than the second: recognizing researchers'assumptions about what culture is, how it is related to behavior, and the extent to which it interacts with context. Cross-cultural research is impossible if distinct groups cannot be defined and compared. Most cross-cultural business research has defined cultural groups in terms of only one dimension: nationality. Thus, we have studies of German versus French business letters, Brazilian versus Japanese negotiating styles, and Russian versus American compliance-gaining appeals. …