Why there is need to study IHRM and cross culture management?
For our purposes let's define culture as the way in which each of us is programmed to behave in the environment. Cultures are like icebergs; some features are apparent to anyone not in a fog, while others are deeply hidden. Above-the-surface features include overt behaviors: how people dress eat walk talk relate to one another conduct themselves during public ceremonies such as weddings or funerals. Also included are such things as social distance. Other aspects are so far below the surface that they are hard to recognize. We may see evidence of these aspects, but we usually can't pinpoint them precisely and usually don't have a clue where they came from.
They are hard to define even for our own culture because we take them in with our mother's language. This might include such things as: how we encode and retrieve information What is justice? Music? Proper parenting? Beauty or ugliness? What meaning is attached to "teaching" stories? What does being well educated mean? What constitutes status?
OTHER ISSUES INCLUDE
DIFFERENT ASSUMPTIONS
USE OF LANGUAGE
INAPPROPRIATE DELIVERY MEDIUM
CULTURAL SPECIFICITY
Communication Miscommunication across cultural lines is usually the most important cause of cross-cultural problems in multinational cos... Miscommunication can have several sources, including:
• Differences in body language or gestures. The same gesture can have different meanings in different parts of the world. For example, Bulgarians shake their heads up and down to mean no. In addition, the way people count on their fingers is not universal: The Chinese count from one to ten on one hand, and eight is displayed by extending the thumb and the finger next to it. The same gesture is interpreted as meaning two in France and as pointing a gun in North America
• Different meanings for the same word. Like gestures, words can have different meanings or connotations in different