Communication
Cross-cultural communication occurs among o0r between people that do not share experiences or understanding of the world. The understanding is on the basis of national origin, race or gender. The communication faces a number of challenges. One of the challenges is the diversity of the communication styles among different cultures that brings misunderstanding of the spoken and unspoken word or nonverbal cues that arise during communication. There is also a problem of different attitude towards the conflict whereby some cultures take a conflict as a positive thing and others take the conflicts as negative that brings misunderstanding. The prejudices can also limit effective cross-cultural communication. When a people feel that his culture is superior that the others is another problems of cross-cultural communication. The other prejudice can be the preconception that the other party's culture is hostile illiterate or uncivilized can create antagonism or pessimism. There can be different styles of decision-making, disclosure of material facts and task completion among the people communicating that are barriers to the effectiveness in the communication.
One of the barriers towards effective communication is the choice of words. There can different understanding of the meaning of the words used by the sender and the receiver .The differences thus becomes a barrier in their communication. There can be also a problem of language when people ac communicating where the one of the parties is not familiar with the language that the other party uses. The differences in familiarity with dialect between the communicating parties can hamper communication too. People that are emotional can find it hard to understand when the other parties are communicating a point. The emotions thus prevent the effectiveness of the communication. Another problem towards effective communication is the listening skills of the sender and the receiver. People with poor listening skills can find it hard to get the point when someone is sending a message to them. Suggestions and clarifications become too hard to make when parties are not listening. Physical barriers such as lack of telephone boots can hamper communication. Lack of computers or internet services can also prevent sending of Email too. The distance between the parties communicating can be a barrier of the face- to -face communication. The last barrier is prejudice. People that form bore hand opinions about the person communicating or the subject matter can miss the important message.
Downward communication occurs when the party sending the message is in the higher rank than the receiver of the message. Upward communication occurs when the party sending the message is in the lower rank than the person receiving the message. Lateral communication occurs when the communicating parties are in the same rank. When an employee sends the message to the supervisor, it is upward communication but if it is the supervisor that sends the message to the employee, it is downward communication. When the employees in the same rank communicate, it is lateral communication. The same case applies when it is the supervisors that are sending the message to one another.