Introduction
It should come as no surprise that people from various cultural backgrounds have quite varied perspectives, ideas, and methods that they might use to alter an organization significantly. It is critical to understand how to create successful Business Communication Across Cultures in order to optimize international cooperation. The impact of language barriers on knowledge processing in multinational teams by Helene Tenzer, Markus Pudelko, and Mary Zellmer-Bruhn was chosen for the paper critique to understand such performance better. This work was written for the Journal of World Business a journal in the field of international business for people involved in it. This qualitative research looks at how communication and, in turn, knowledge processing are impacted by linguistic variety in global teams. The main tasks are to answer two questions how do language barriers affect communication in multinational teams (MNTs), and how do language-induced communication impediments affect MNT knowledge processing? Overall, the article studied is conceptual since it focuses on qualitative research. In addition, it uses induction and abduction instead of empirical pieces of evidence to support the arguments.
Discussion on the Issue
It is possible to think of cross-cultural management as involving cross-cultural decision-making, cross-cultural communication, and negotiation with others, as well as cross-cultural leadership and motivation. By analyzing the article chosen, discusses the grasp of the complex ways that language barriers affect learning assessment and communication in multinational teams. It is impossible not to agree that language barriers frequently hamper international business communication. Misunderstandings are more likely to occur when one side speaks a foreign language or has a translation. It is crucial to consider that many cultures and languages play their roles in a global work environment in different ways (Tenzer et al., 2021). For example, depending on the culture, a “maybe” can mean an actual “maybe,” or it can also be a politely worded refusal. Therefore, an ignorant view of cross-cultural management can even decrease the work efficiency of international team members.
Results
In addition, this research presented some findings on the importance of language in business communication. MNTs frequently bring together speakers of several mother languages, in addition to people from various national and cultural backgrounds; this communication is extremely sensitive to language barriers (Tenzer et al., 2021). The biggest attention is paid to the language barrier, which can even influence transaction costs and affect the selection of target countries for direct investments. According to extensive qualitative interview data in this essay, two types of language barriers, evident and hidden, have a detrimental impact on intercultural dialogue participation and sensemaking. In multilingual teams, it has also been summarized that linguistic variety impacts communication, which in turn affects how information is processed (Tenzer et al., 2021). As a result, the reduced team engagement in communication impedes both simple and complex tasks of knowledge-based processing, which is due to a lack of lexical and syntactic competency in a specific language.
Contributions
To conclude, multinational firms use team-based techniques to adapt to shifting economic conditions and international competition. This article presented that teams rely on intense communication to align the contributions of their members and celebrate diversity since the interdependence between them characterizes teams. Since the research contrasts the socio-cognitive viewpoint on knowledge with language as information processing, the paper unquestionably adds to the understanding of cross-cultural management and diversity. The analysis in this article reveals that language challenges that emerge in the process of building international businesses across cultures can be serious. It is important to continue researching the impact of both overt and covert barriers between speakers of various national languages. However, this work makes a significant contribution since it proves that nationality is not the only group membership that affects a person’s language use. In future research, language should be tied to such dimensions, much as cultural diversity is not just related to national diversity but also to variety in professions, functions, organizations, social class, education, ethnicity, age, or gender.
Reference
Tenzer, H., Pudelko, M., & Zellmer-Bruhn, M. (2021). The impact of language barriers on knowledge processing in multinational teams. Journal of World Business, 56(2), Web.