Cross-Cultural Meetings Increased Communication Differences

When East Asian and American-born MBA students were videotaped while making decisions in meetings for a recent study, cultural differences in communication showed up in every measure the scientists used. When in the minority in the meeting, each group seemed to increase the gap instead of closing it. Americans in the minority were more likely to start talking as soon as the previous speaker finished, which the researchers called "latching." They said it indicated involvement in the conversation was more important to the Americans than consideration for others. East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) talked less in general, and even less when in the minority. Both cultures thus acted closer to their cultural norms on involvement versus consideration when they were in the minority.

In the study, teams of Univ. of Southern California MBA students with at least two years of professional experience performed a simulated decision-making game in English. They were to imagine their plane had crashed, and they had to decide as a group how to rank items salvaged from the crash for importance to survival. Afterward researchers read transcripts of the 20-minute discussions to measure:

• Contribution
• • "number of turns taken"
  • "number of words spoken"
  • "average turn length"
• Participation
• • "number of conversational overlaps"
  • "number of interruptions"
  • "number of backchannels" (brief statements to show the person was listening)
  • "frequency of latching"

Almost no interruptions occurred, so that measure was dropped from the analysis. Overall, Americans contributed and participated more than East Asians on all remaining measures. "Generally, Western individualistic cultures tend to exhibit high involvement style whereas collectivist cultures show more instances of high considerateness style," clinical management communications researchers Jolanta Aritz and Robyn Walker write in their article in the Journal of Business Communication.

The students also were given surveys to measure their assessments of the experience. "East Asian language speakers reported that they did not feel as included, valued, or supported as their American counterparts," the article says. However, the two groups did not differ in "their overall satisfaction with the group decision-making process." (The article did not state whether these ratings changed based on minority status.)

The scientists suggest that Americans became more aggressive in their latching when in the minority to push the East Asian majorities "to adopt the communication patterns used in the Unites States based on the assumption that it is a more appropriate pattern for the situation." However the collectivist East Asians shifted their communication styles even closer to their preferred style to protect their group identify, they conclude.

Leaders of teams from these groups should ensure team members are aware of these specific language tendencies, the authors say. One point of their research is to more specifically identify how cultural differences play out, going beyond the usual generalities.

Source: Aritz, J., and R. Walker (2010), "Cognitive Organization and Identity Maintenance in Multicultural Teams: A Discourse Analysis of Decision-Making Meetings," Journal of Business Communication 47(1):20.