Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Intercultural Communication

When examining organizational learning in MNCs, it is clear that a strong intercultural component must be included in order to study and understand how organizations can be successful. MNCs by their very nature are engaged in business in a number of countries with often widely divergent cultures. This leads to increased ambiguity concerning meaning. ‘It is the ambiguity of meaning that marks the boundaries of culture’ (Cohen, 1985: 55)—‘the boundary is where the ambiguity begins, where managers can no longer be sure of the correctness of their interpretation of what is going on’ (Apfelthaler and Karmasin, 1998: 8). Ambiguity can lead to anxiety. Communicating with strangers (people from other cultures) is both a source of anxiety and a means for diminishing it. ‘Reducing anxiety is one of the major functions of communication when we interact with strangers’ (Gudykunst and Kim, 1997: 27), because it can lead to more accurate predictions and expectations about a stranger’s meaning and behavior.

Ting-Toomey emphasizes the interactive nature of intercultural communication in this definition, ‘the symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities negotiate shared meanings in an interactive situation’ (1999: 16–17). Cultural communities are ‘groups of interacting individuals within a bounded unit who uphold a set of shared traditions and way of life’ (Ting-Toomey, 1999: 18). The symbols they use are verbal and ...