Communicative Strategies in Cross-Cultural Business Environment

Abstract

The present paper looks at a set of communicative strategies employed in the international business by English-speaking business people in general, and auditors and accountants, in particular. The work aims at the relevance of cross-cultural communication and the generally accepted classification of communicative strategies in English. Thus, to meet the objectives, a concept of intercultural communication comes to description to be followed by the stages of the message delivery. These relate to (i) encoding of the message, (ii) choice of a medium / media to transmit a relevant message, and (iii) decoding of the message. As respects intercultural communication, the article speaks of relevance in understanding the particular backgrounds, which the communicants in the international business environment may not ignore. English-speaking business people may make great experts in their professional domain of activities, however, that may not guarantee they would never face a wide range of challenges, which would arise in the course of communication between the business people – colleagues, peers, business partners or just business contacts from different countries. One of the reasons for some difficulty in interaction can link to their belonging to different cultural backgrounds, for example, religious, social, ethnic, educational, etc. It is important to note that the contemporary progress with digitization and globalization influences ways of thinking, beliefs and values. The ethnic identity borders dissolve in the global processes of integration. Open borders and more opportunities to travel and discover the world may not, but impact the personality, their perception and interpretation of the world within and between cultural environments. Therefore, the topicality of the work highlights the need in the unified approach to simplified interaction despite the borders and time zones and moves the needle with the classification of seven communicative strategies business people may employ for work when travelling and speaking English. To help better understand each strategy, the explanations are furnished with the English examples for a certain communicative context.