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COOPERATION ACROSS CULTURES: FROM BASIC COMPONENTS OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION TO NEW STRATEGIES IN DIVERSITY MARKETING
Subbotina Olga Anatolevna, Crimean Federal V.I. Vernadsky University, Simferopol
E-mail: [email protected]
Sonawane Uppal, Cardiff Metropolitan University, United Kingdom (UK)
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The study seeks to explore the factors which influence bias-free communication to develop effective strategies in diversity marketing. The synergetic approach combined the knowledge of cultural dimensions, basic components of cross-cultural communication and revealed a successful applicability of discourse analysis (DA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) in defining basic types of communicative behaviour in multicultural organizations with further implementation of the findings in the framework of cross-cultural marketing.
Key words: cross-cultural communication, diversity marketing, cross-cultural marketing, discourse analysis (DA), critical discourse analysis (CDA).
Globalization as the modern and ongoing process of development within diverse human activities: communication, politics, science, business and marketing predetermines new dynamic approaches for thorough investigation of cooperation tendencies across cultures.
Cross-cultural communication in all spheres of human life takes place in a culturally determined reality. Therefore, it implies deep awareness of basic components that form cultural identity and understanding how to cooperate bias-free, flexible and sensitive attitude to individuals with different cultural backgrounds.
The aim of this paper is to observe the impact of cross-cultural communication on working out successful strategies in diversity marketing.
A synergetic approach that has already been proved successful for investigating
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dynamic phenomena [37] is used in this work to analyze dynamic cross-cultural features of corporation developing globally. It blends frameworks from cultural studies, cross-cultural communication, discourse issues and marketing providing an opportunity to turn the study into non-linear thorough research.
Definition of culture
Modern cross-cultural studies is conceptually related with the classic definition of culture provided by well known author anthropologist E. B. Tylor in his "Primitive Culture": "Culture or civilization, taken in its wide, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" [39,p.1]. Identifying the complete entirety of the world in all its material and social clusters the term has become basic and widely cited during decades. Rethinking of inner systematic tools of culture phenomenon and further development of cultural studies brings to narrowing down the definition of culture to the maintaining and distributing population over the available land. This eco-approach to studying the issue was unique but far from reflecting the essence of compound and well organised system as culture is. Hence, a number of scholars have aroused discussion on cognitive definition of culture stating that "a culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action" [1, p.46] confirming this definition with an idea that "by culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and irrational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of men" [27]. Obviously, the cognitive approach outlines the inner essential systematic elements of culture notion. Although exactly social background of cultural studies that defines culture as a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society, the interaction process of individuals possessing socially marked features and giving logically built concept of the phenomenon as "... a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life" [5] leads us closer to the modern meaning of culture in the field of cross-cultural studies.
Lasting and ever-growing research interest predetermined variety of conceptions for investigating cultures, their basic values, features and integration effects. Thus, according to S. Dahl [5], E. Schein [36], A. Giddens [13] and other scholars the major conceptions in this area are put forward by E.T. Hall [15, 16, 17], G. Hofstede [18, 19, 20, 21, 22], F. Trompenaars and C. Hampden-Turner [38] and S. H. Schwartz [34, 35, 36]. Apparently, efficient outlook of different approaches is essential and explains the coherent nature of Hofstede's definition of culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from
another" [22, p.51] which is mostly cited in the cross-cultural studies on psychology, sociology and management as well as Hofstede's framework for understanding national differences proved to be one of the most influential and widely used frameworks in cross-cultural business studies and the approach has been successfully developed by different researchers [26, 23, 6, 24].
Global integration of individuals and groups with backgrounds different at each level of cultural dimensions [21]: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity and uncertainty avoidance and long-term/short-term orientation is directly related to basic values (evil vs. good, ugly vs. beautiful, unnatural vs. natural, abnormal vs. normal, paradoxical vs. logical, irrational vs. rational) shared within the manpower of international organizations. Thereby, it affects communicative strategies and organizational culture as a whole.
Communication interactions and culture dimensions
In fact, there are two main ways of communication distinguished in the theory of communication: one-way communication and two-way communication. In one-way communication progress the addresser (or sender) transmits the information to the addressee (or receiver) without any feedback expressed (questions, emotions, etc.). During two-way communication the interaction between the addresser and the addressee is taken into account through addressee's response or reaction that reveals the outcome of communication. From one hand, cross-cultural communication implies cultural differences of any kind between the addresser and the addressee, from the other hand communicators might represent the marketing sector where the two-way communication is supposed to be the main one displaying how successful this or that marketing strategy is. Thus, basic communication components should be studied in combination with traits of cross-cultural marketing. Important constituents of verbal communication: reliance on words to communicate, importance of written, agreements made in writing, agreements made orally, attention to details expressed verbally along with crucial constituents of non-verbal communication: body language, eye contact, gestures, space, touch, etc. requires cultural comprehension.
Dissonance in practical use of Hofstede's and Hall's frameworks in business studies and communication is quite prominent. According to A. Engelen and M. Brettel [7] most studies build upon some type of cultural dimensions to derive cultural dependencies, although the framework from G. Hofstede [21] dominates, since 60% of all studies apply at least one of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. The percentage of studies that build upon these dimensions have increased continually from 36% to 78%, with the cultural dimension of individualism, which plays a part in 52% of all studies, having the strongest role. The second most frequent cultural dimensions are those of E.T. Hall [15]: low-context versus high-context communication and polychronic versus monochronic time understanding. Despite the broad application of Hofstede's
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model in business studies and marketing its interrelation with communication interactions is insufficiently explored and presented in the literature giving priority to Hall's high-context and low-context cultures.
Endeavors to investigate communication across cultures through cultural dimensions took place in different spheres of knowledge: psychology, education, tourism, etc. but when diversity marketing occurs mostly cultural features of different ethnic groups of employees are discussed avoiding the analysis of their communicative styles that can be directly related to the marketing strategies development. Hence, the authors intend to investigate and consequentially incorporate the outcomes of studies on communication across cultures to define basic factors constructing cooperation at bias-free marketing.
It makes the difference to conduct the research on the crossroad of cultural dimensions and speech dimensions: speech acts and speech genres that construct certain discourses [14, p.216] reflecting the communicative strategies of the speakers (pragmatics).Their mutual influence has already been proved: "Most important, what applies to material culture and to social rituals and institutions applies also to people's values, ideals, and attitudes and to their ways of thinking about the world and our life in it" [42, p.2]. And this conception lead to the conclusion that "In different societies people not only speak different languages and dialects, they use them in radically different ways. Describing and explaining such culture-specific ways of speaking is the task of 'discourse and culture' studies" [4, p.232].
Cultural Dimension of power distance in the context of discourse and
power
One of the most widely used and discussed dimensions in culturally related studies is power distance. A concept of power is itself controversial, ambiguous and it arises discussions in social sciences. Scholars have also argued that social power is a multidimensional phenomenon that can be exercised simultaneously on three distinct dimensions: the individual, organizational, and cultural dimensions of power [29]. Each dimension has a complex nature and the level of complexity is enhancing accordingly. Thus, organizational dimension of power is based on individual but larger and more complicated in scope as soon as cultural dimension of power is even more complex. The third dimension of power works as a remarkably effective macrolevel social glue because of the way that it encourages individuals to apply themselves insatiably to the pursuit of those things that extant cultural systems are designed to provide [29, p. 671]. This socially established experience has been expressed by M. Foucault [9, 10] in the approach to discourse and discourse analysis that explores the principles managing meaning-making and focuses on how power is operationalized through the language.
Various dimensions of language and power are explored to focus upon two
major aspects of the power/language relationship, power in discourse, and power behind discourse [8, p.43]. The research of 'power in discourse' includes 'power in cross-cultural encounters' reflecting the possibility of miscommunication because of differences in discoursal conventions: "People may thus be denied jobs and other valuable social 'goods' through misconceptions based upon cultural insensitivity and dominance" [8, p.48]. 'Hidden power' of discourse is reveled in the manipulative context of mass media: "producers exercise power over consumers in that they have sole producing rights and can therefore determine what is included and excluded , how events are represented, and ... even the subject positions of their audiences" [8, p.50]. The same way it works through different means of commercials and advertising. Consequently, 'a hidden effect of power' is everywhere, it is 'behind the discourse' [8, p.55] in everything that serves to the social order.
From this point of view, exactly the cultural power constructed by 'behind the discourse' mechanism determines social motivation for mainstream activities and make for designing cross-cultural marketing. For instance: "Our hunger for automobiles effectively sustains the viability of numerous global industries that are bent on satisfying consumer desires, for example, petroleum, steel, shipping, and so on" [29, p.671]. As a result, it leads to the opinion that the third face (dimension) of power "can be perceived as a thoroughly enveloping blanket of power that steers microlevel individual behavior toward goals that bring about the reproduction of prevailing sociocultural macrostructures" [29, p.671].
Thereby, manner and matter of cross-cultural marketing is clear if looking at it through the prism of culture, discourse and power. It outlines the direction of studies aimed at exploring merchant discourse vs consumer discourse establishing customers' expectations about goods and services quality across cultures and assisting in marketing strategies. The works of such type have already been undertaken [32, 40, 3] showing the growth of discourse-based approaches in marketing and consumer research. Application and utilization of discourse analysis (DA) as one of the qualitative methods can be valuable in designing questionnaires for measuring cultural peculiarities of customers, their expectations and perception in the context of cross-cultural marketing.
Further investigation displays that conception of power distance is formed under the circumstance of at least two individuals' communication: "superior" and "subordinate", it reflects the interacting process of three power dimensions (from individual - through organizational - to cultural) and emphasizes its connection to social institutions. Thus, power distance has been defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from above [21, p.9]. The common key features of high power distance (HPD) society are: power is a basic fact of society antedating
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good or evil: its legitimacy is irrelevant; hierarchy means existential inequality, subordinates expect to be told what to do [21, p.9]. Literature review on interrelation of distance to the power and cross-cultural communication in international organizations shows that people from high power distance cultures value obedience, conformity, and share a willingness to subordinate themselves to autocratic, paternalistic managers [30]. But from the other hand they are not eager to deviate from what is expected of them and fear approaching, disagreeing, and communicating with their superiors [22]. When they need to interact with others, they engage in obedient, peaceful, cooperative communication strategies that allow compromise with or collaboration with others [25]. Summarizing it all, G. Hofstede [20] stated that there is a considerable dependence of subordinates on superiors in high power distance societies.
In contrast, the common key features of low power distance (LPD) society are: use of power should be legitimate and is subject to criteria of good and evil; hierarchy means inequality of roles, established for convenience; subordinates expect to be consulted [21, p.9]. It predetermines the fact that in low power distance cultures, there is limited dependence of subordinates on superiors, and a preference for consultation that is interdependent between superiors and subordinates.
Irrelevances in cultures and societies towards power distance are reflected in communicative strategies of individuals who are either employees or managers of international organizations and cooperate at diversity marketing. The issue can be explored through critical discourse analysis (CDA) as soon as it is adopted to reveal the linguistic character of social and cultural processes and structures [2] and has a scientific background proved in literature [11, 43, 8, 41].
CDA scholars admit that concepts such as globalization, power, ideology, and hegemony often figure in CDA studies that attempt to capture the interconnections among discourse, power, and social organization [41, p.145]. The researchers suppose that it makes possible to apply CDA approach for qualitative study of cross-cultural marketing as soon as the emphasis on interdisciplinarity has resulted in an engagement with a variety of theories outside of the linguistic canon, most often in sociology, cultural studies, and political economy [41, p.145]. Thus, studies show that individuals with high power orientation tend to be obedient, ask more questions, prefer close-ended assignments, prefer detailed instructions and will follow those instructions completely, report frequently to their managers and verify that their managers concur with their suggested direction, rarely, if ever, disagree with their boss [28]. On the contrary, employees with low power orientation are likely to be empowered, make decisions without consulting their managers, prefer open-ended assignments, prefer general instructions and the freedom to choose one's own approach, feel relatively comfortable disagreeing with their boss [28]. It should be noted that these opposite ways of non-verbal and verbal behaviour correlate with hierarchy and egalitarianism
highlighted by Schwartz [35]. Consequently, the incorporation of CDA and the concept of power distance (HPD vs. LPD) into cross-cultural communication of diversity marketing outlines a few mainstream strategies revealing mutual relations between individuals (superiors ^ subordinates):
Table 1
Basic types of communicative behaviour in cross-cultural organizations
superior HPD ^ su- superior LPD ^ supe- superior HPD ^ su-
perior HPD rior LPD perior LPD
superior HPD ^ sub- superior LPD ^ sub- superior HPD ^
ordinate HPD ordinate LPD subordinate LPD
subordinate HPD ^ subordinate LPD ^ subordinate HPD ^
subordinate HPD subordinate LPD subordinate LPD
Conclusion
The interdisciplinary approach developed on the principles of synergetics in this paper outlined the new perspectives of cross-cultural communication in diversity marketing. The findings revealed that application of discourse analysis (DA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) on the basis of cultural dimensions by G. Hofstede (i.e. power distance) assisted to define basic types of communicative behaviour in multicultural organizations. Successful communicative strategies worked out inside the companies on the level of employees (subordinates and superiors) will help to develop outside marketing strategies oriented at studying customers expectations, perception and satisfaction. For that the new outlook at SERVQUAL instrument [44] implemented through discourse lenses into questionnaires and surveys to give the clear picture of ongoing processes in diversity marketing will be suggested.
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