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Communicating Successfully Across a Global Business Environment

Whether your organization has a vision for taking its first steps into the global arena or is an established veteran, many companies are seeking new and more effective approaches to broaden their reach and build relationships in foreign markets. The decision to expand into a foreign market should be part of your overall business strategy, not just a sideline. It’s important to ensure your company has reached a level of success and credibility in your local market before attempting to expand. With major financial investments at stake, in addition to potential opportunities gained or lost, many companies underestimate the importance of managing cultural and linguistic challenges.

Impact of Culture on Business

Even beyond language, it is extremely important to acknowledge the differences among cultures and how those differences affect the way you do business.

How will your business be viewed in a new market?

Many cultures appreciate entrepreneurialship and aggressive business practices while some cultures think negatively of any corporate bureaucracy, especially foreign ones. Effective localization of all client-facing material can bridge the gap.

Cross-cultural business is a challenge for all companies. Organizations must be keyed in to the local cultures and customize their offerings to each local market.

This is effectively accomplished by localizing their offerings, maintaining an ongoing cultural assessment of the foreign markets, and ensuring content is updated regularly for those markets. There is never an “end point” and the organization will always need to adapt to the local market. The reverse is very unlikely (that the country will adapt to your organization) no matter how big your brand might be.

Successful globalization strategies lead companies to continually measure the effectiveness of their localization efforts and to be flexible enough to change strategy and tactics as the local markets change.

The Challenges of Globalization

Globalization necessitates complete integration of languages, economies, nations, cultures and technologies and is defined as the progression of an organization where strategies are built to operate effectively across these boundaries. Globalization must be carefully planned at the outset of each expansion step at the highest level of the organization.

Nearly 7,000 languages are spoken in 230 countries and it is imperative for businesses to use the Internet in the global marketplace; customers greatly prefer to buy in their own language. Of course, not every language (or even every country) reflects a viable market for a company. The globalization strategy implemented by a successful company identifies the markets, and corresponding languages, that bring growth.

In each country an organization wishes to do basic e-business there are many legal and regulatory issues that must be addressed.

• German, French, and Spanish are the top three languages companies expect to translate their websites into over the next three years.
• China and India are the two countries these companies are looking to expand in over that same time period.
• This discrepancy illustrates the challenges companies face to decide whether to expand into established, but saturated markets over much larger growing economies.

Corporate Relocation Abroad

Did you know: The average cost of transporting one family for an overseas assignment is $300,000 and the cost of a failed relocation can be over $1,000,000?

Little known or appreciated is the effect that “Culture Shock” can have on an organization’s expatriate employees and families.

• Culture Shock describes the reaction generated by an extended period of time in a new culture. It can be defined by isolation, disorientation, and depression. It is a real financial liability if it results in a failed assignment.
• It is caused by lack of preparedness, resulting in the inability to speak the local language and not knowing how to behave in the new culture.

Tips for Successful Relocation

• Acknowledge culture shock exists, that it will probably affect the assignment one way or another, but that it can be minimized.
• Individuals should prepare themselves and their families by learning as much as possible about the target language and culture.
• Provide employment and social networking resources for employee’s spouse and family.

Localization of Training and e-Learning Content

Localization of training content is essential to the effective hiring and managing of employees abroad. Global employees expect their organization to accommodate their needs to some extent in the local language. They also require training in the same language they use with their office co-workers on a day-to-day basis.

Differences in learning and thinking patterns influence the way people process information. Audiences differ in the way they perceive and value concepts of time, space, money, relationships, power, risk, and even cultural gender protocols.

As a broad example of learning styles, Americans may benefit from a narrative approach, Europeans may prefer a more structured approach, and Asians may expect to learn theory before training. The accurate localization of e-Learning initiatives requires specialized cultural and linguistic specialists with subject-matter knowledge and experience.

Without extensive cultural analysis and adaptation, linguistic subtleties make conceptual content much less likely to be understood by your global employees.

In Summary…

Effectively localizing the communication channels to your global audience is an essential and accepted business practice. Often overlooked, however, are the linguistic and cultural tools needed to communicate within your organization and cope with changes at every level. Firm strategic commitment to managing the expectations and cultural challenges faced by your expatriate team along with adapting your unique corporate style to new environments may be the keys to your organization’s successful expansion abroad.

Source References:

• KOF Index of Globalization
• Geert Hofstede (http://www.geerthofstede.nl)
• Nerella Campigotto
• Amigos - Culture Shock (http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/CGuanipa/cultshok.htm)
• Journal of Intercultural Communication (http://www.immi.se/intercultural)
• Sheila L. Croucher. Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity a Changing World. Rowman & Littlefield. (2004).

About the author of this article

Cyrus Carter is an eight year veteran of the localization industry and has worked extensively with corporations around the country during all stages of global transition in developing linguistic and cross-cultural training solutions.