Corporations and Culture Essay
In “Introduction to intercultural communication” Chapter 15, Jandt suggests that corporations can present the same communication challenges as those of cultures. In this regard, readers are able to draw the conclusions that corporations and cultures have a lot of similarities. To think about appropriate issue, we have to answer two main questions – “In what ways are corporations similar to cultures?” and “Where does the analogy between corporations and cultures end?”. As the rule, people accustomed to perceive culture as the combination of adapted beliefs, values, attitudes, customs, and behaviors that are frequently referred to our days. This approach is wright in fact, however, some more detailed definition is required here. In this order, we should determine culture (in general meaning) as the combination of six dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation and indulgence vs. restraint. In other words, culture is the identity feature, which makes certain community different from another one. The feature of personality (identity) is inherent for corporations as well as for cultures. Regarding this fact the amalgam of shared values, behavior patterns, mores, symbols, attitudes and normative ways of conducting business that, more than its products and services, differentiates it from all other companies (Tay). As you see, identifying factors are pretty similar in both cases. Thereby, Jandt’s claim about the same communication challenges presented by corporations and cultures is to the point. John R. Baldwin provides the next opinion: “Perhaps one of the biggest debates in the field of intercultural communication is whether we can apply the same ethical dimensions or framework to all cultures, or whether each culture has its own standard. The latter view, that each culture determines for itself what is right and wrong, was held by most anthropologists and intercutluralists for a long time, and still held by many”(Baldwin). Corporations’ communication challenges deal with the same problem probably. However, corporations should not be totally perceived as the synonym of culture as some differences are essential. Raymond Tay talks about this issue in next way: “Corporations’ practices are developed and learned from the job to achieve their mission and targets. Besides, individuals can move from company to company. Thus they are more superficial and adaptable than those national culture core values. According to Hofstede, national cultures belong to anthropology; organizational cultures to sociology. Within a large company, various departments can even exhibit different cultures due to working with the different individuals”(Tay). In this regard, corporation is much more flexible than culture. In addition, it is featured as more adaptable. At last, it should be noted that corporation as the combination of patterns and values, is much more exposed to outside and inside influence or impact. This fact doesn’t seem surprising as the world of business competition require readiness to challenges and innovations. As the example, we can remind Toyota, which presented tis “Toyota Way” and derivative clear devotion to teamwork and continuous improvement (“Kaizen”) has given them a competitive advantage and attracted many companies to learn from them. With strong and clear corporate values, companies can enjoy many benefits such as similar standards can be maintained, increased loyalty, higher motivation & productivity and increased management control (). To sum up, the analogy between corporation and culture ends with the differences of confrontation levels and flexibility for innovations and transformations. Being more adaptable, corporations’ are not so strong with their communication challenges.
