At a recent conference on transnational marketing, a CEO commented that “In today’s increasingly globalised business world a knowledge of business alone is not sufficient to achieve success; a greater awareness of intercultural communication is also required.” Do you agree or disagree with his opinion? In a well-structured essay explain your ideas using clear examples to support your ideas. Distance and time are no longer the biggest obstacles to doing business, as result of human innovation and technological progress. And with the development of communications and wide-spread cooperation all over world, more and more companies are exploring the international market. (Johnson 2012) Intercultural communication has become a crucial factor …show more content…

For example, “We stressed the objectives of the meeting and would like to reach an agreement with them during the negotiation. To our surprise, no one gave us a clear point whether they agree or not. China employees are not involved in the decision making. ” says the American manager of a manufacture industry firm. (Melany,2010) China is high power distance culture. In China firms, autocratic management styles focus power at the top and low-level employees have no decision-making right. In America firms, by contrast, managers and subordinates cooperate with each other to achieve company goals. They seek decision making role in the business negotiation. Another instance can show that status and power play an important role in high power distance country. A young manager from American came to Russia to attend an important meeting, which decided whether his company’s product can enter into Russia market smoothly or not. However, the senior management of Russia firm thought that he was too young to attend such important meeting and American company would not willingness to cooperate with them. (International Business Cultures 2010) In the end, the cooperation failed. In this case, we can learn that a visitor’s formal title and status are important to win an introduction when doing business in Russian, where the high distance culture is dominant. The young American manager overlooked this point, their