Draft

Thousands people leave the familiar behind, heading to new environments. Students study abroad, employees transfer offices and work oversea, people have conference or travel to a different country. People start challenging themselves to experience in a totally unfamiliar place, where almost everything seems not to make sense at first. As same as me, I decided to study abroad, and then will back to my home country after graduation, using knowledge I learned here to help my parents’ business. Several cultural transitions will be made throughout my life, and obviously, I will encounter cultural conflicts and language barrier for sure. Between different regions, or even between individuals, always have infinite differences, and of course, individual cannot use one’s own standpoint to judge on another culture. In a position of an internationally-educated businesswoman, what possible difficulties will I encounter with and how should I solve those conflicts to satisfy both cultures without being in any bias position? Thesis statement

As a result of global boom, the world is becoming more cosmopolitan with the thriving of international business. These international relationships can work as a springboard for the prospect of expanding the business, but also bring the risks that may harm the negotiation with partners if the business does not know how to deal with cross-culture conflicts. So for business that want to expand to other countries, the more skills that one company’s employees have in intercultural competence, the more chances that company successfully expand business in foreign country. Being as an import distributor, my parents’ business already established some connections with foreign countries. They contact with foreign customers by using email, so they already have some kind of experience working with other cultures, other countries. Thanks for the developments and advances in telecommunication and transportation, the geographical isolation has broken down, and communication with other in distance becomes much easier. Being internationally-educated in America, the ability to communicate with countries that speak English isn’t a problem for me, but there are still a lot of countries prefer using other languages such Mandarin or Spanish. So using interpreters and translator is one of the possible solutions. But it can affect the business both positively and negatively. Even though one can be more careful to state the message concisely while waiting for the first message to be translated, the translator and interpreter may convey the wrong message because the limitation of words of one language to fully translate the intended message in the original language or as because of nuances of the languages involved. As Afred G. Smith has wrote in his preface to Communication and Culture: “Culture is a code we learn and share, and learning and sharing require communication.” We can understand that culture and language are intertwined, so translating one language to another sometimes cannot bring the whole meaning that lead to misinterpretation. I can learn other language, which commonly use such as Mandarin, but there are still a lot of linguistic and cultural differences that I cannot understand thoroughly as clear as people who lived and experience with it.

Another concern is the differences in the way people communicate with each other. Between regions, or even individuals, have infinite cultural differences, which mean they have several alterative ways to communicate. However, I can recognize some dissimilarity between social customs if I pay attention in the way people communicate with each other. By using both verbal and nonverbal way, communication shows the cultures and beliefs of that specific culture. For example, according to the research of Canning, a company whose expertise lies in intercultural communication, find out that people from a culture such as Switzerland, German believe that personal relationship for every single partner is not necessary, while there are many cultures (such as Asian, Africa) prefer building personal relationship first in order to make a good business relationship. Even though everyone properly responds positively to “human warmth and empathy,” the need for personal relationship varies between different cultures. (Carte, 151) By learning other cultures, I know what appropriate actions should be used with people from different culture and avoid the misunderstandings that can harm the relationship with my foreign partners. No culture is better than the other, and individual’s perceptions can never be accepted as a universal standard. But there is a lot of people still do not think this way, both in conscious and unconscious way, then later lead to ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s own culture is better than others. In order to understand other culture, we should put ourselves “in their shoes (position) at every stage (91),” even though it seems to be impossible to erase all the perceptions from one’s childhood.

For me, when I go back to my home country, Vietnam, there are several problems I need to watch out for. Things I studied here can be seen differently in Vietnam, governmental regulations for example. As I have learned from my business class in America and read from “International journal of project management,” written by Rodney Turner, the countries such as Sweden and Ireland, people believe more in the use of Laissez-faire, an environment in which the intervene of government is limited as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs, while in Vietnam, a communist country, the intervene of government is almost everywhere. Specifying and learning the target clients and market I want to take part in is really important, and I cannot understand thoroughly by only reading books or learn it from school. I grew up in Vietnam, so I know most of the national characters and tradition customs, but during the time I leave, there will be changes. Five years is not much compare to the process of development of a country, but it is long enough for some alterations to be made, especially in culture. If I want to work in Vietnam, I should know about the customers’ present needs from my products and these needs vary between different regions.