Badizadegan, D. and Shell, E. (Producers). (2016, September 7). Healing broken teams from inside out [Audio podcast] retrieved from https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/healing-broken-teams-from-inside-out

The focus of this podcast is about coach Michael Terrell’s insights on effective team dynamics, his process for diagnosing team issues, and examples of how he works through team challenges. The section of this podcast to note is from 29:24 – 30:39 in which Tina and Michael highlight the importance of using mindful communication in the workplace. Although this podcast is rich with situational expertise from coach Michael it lacks an overall focus on communication. This podcast is a great Segway into the importance of understanding communication from afar and allows transition into the following paragraph to discuss cross cultural communication.

Erbe, N. D. (2014). Approaches to Managing Organizational Diversity and Innovation. Hershey, Pa: Business Science Reference.

This book explains diversity in the workplace and how to manage it. How diversity affects organizations and its employees. Cultural diversity is based on the social identity like ethnicity, religion, background, educational system of each employee. This will cover the importance of acknowledging that each employee is different from one another. Specifically between a collective and individualistic society and problems that may arise.

Fine, M. G. (1996). Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: The State of the Field. Journal of Business Communication, 33(4), 485–502. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1177/002194369603300408

This article explains the cultural diversity in the workplace. Business has an impact on cultural differences, but here lays the trap: what may be acceptable to certain people and countries is not the same for others. And throughout business, whether it’s a trade or international connection it has the capability to influence countries, but organizations need to be aware of cultural differences. Thus, they may not act on their background information to different societies and cultures, it may offend or harm them. And may even look like they are forcing their POV on them. So, when firms are dealing with foreign countries, they need to consider that each country has its own different religion and environment. Organizations must be careful when dealing internationally, respect for all.

Fink, G., Neyer, A.-K., & Kölling, M. (2006). Understanding Cross-Cultural Management Interaction. International Studies of Management & Organization, 36(4), 38–60. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.2753/IMO0020-8825360402

This peer review article explains that the way behavioral differences are perceived, interpreted, and managed by individuals; which can lead to unexpected reactions by counterparts. This is extremely relevant in how individuals communicate, managers who take time to see how far cultural dimensions span can be spared many unintentional outcomes. This will provide examples of how communication can be vastly different between two different cultures.

Harzinga, A.-W., Koster, kathrin, & Magner, U. (2010, August 19). Babel in business: The language barrier and its solutions in the HQ-subsidiary relationship. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951610000441.

This article is incredibly valuable for elaborating the cause and solutions to language barriers in the business world. Their research process successfully explains how businesses need to fully understand the language barriers they are currently facing and adopt a mix of solutions that best fit the business. All businesses react differently to different conditions, that is why a mix of solutions that best fit your business is needed in order to remove language barriers. This article is different in how it contrasts many different solutions that businesses can adopt to fight against language barriers.

Mazur, Barbara. “Cultural Diversity in Organisational Theory and Practice.” Cultural Diversity in Organisational Theory and Practice, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e439/3e4ff7887dc600b064870a72653334def7c8.pdf.

This article illustrates how diversity is an important element to the improvement of an organization. If every employee had the same pattern of values, and beliefs an organization would struggle to grow their business or raise their position globally. This supports the idea of encouraging diversity in the workplace while learning to communicate with people from different backgrounds.

Organizational Behavior. (2017, January 4). 8.3 Communication g Barriers. Retrieved from

https://open.lib.umn.edu/organizationalbehavior/chapter/8-3-communication-barriers/.

This article separates the degrees of communication and how unaware we are of subtle verbal and nonverbal communication we engage in which can be perceived much differently than it’s intended purpose. Distinguishing your primary and secondary audience when choosing a mode of communication is becoming increasingly more important in today’s evolving and expanding world. This text provides a structure of how to break down communication and cover many ways in which we send and receive information.

Rogers, C. R., & Roethlisberger, F. J. (1952). Barriers and Gateways to Communication. Harvard Business Review, 69(6), 105–111. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=6777076&site=ehost-live

The general idea in this article is that there are many barriers when it comes to communication since people tend to evaluate you when communicating face to face, which means that they don’t fully listen. When someone is talking to you, they aren’t receiving 100% because the fear of agreeing with their side and/or changing the opposite’s mind. Another thing is that they might include emotion which can also hinder the communication because with feelings involved it becomes harder to clearly convey your ideas to the listener. This can often lead to an obstacle in the workplace; in addition, the article also talks about ways of having effective communication in the workplace by listening with understanding. This can improve the workplace by showing respect to the organization and the people in it, demonstrating that you care about what people are saying. One last thing that is very important in an organization or a group is that it is best to have a third party when there is an argument or discussion, by having an unbiased person to mediate the communication between the two individuals and ensure another person with no feelings is hearing the conversation the outcome is likely to be interpreted clearly.

Singha, D. (n.d.). (2016). How Businesses Can Deal With Language Barriers. Retrieved from https://www.business2community.com/marketing/businesses-can-deal-language-barriers-01679524.

This article varies from the others in the way it elaborates on the different barriers between managers and their employees. This includes being prohibited to work efficiently, and inability to work because of misunderstandings as a result of poor communication skills. This article lays out a detailed proactive approach to preventing poor communication from happening. This contrast is valuable in identifying the effects that poor communication can have on employees and managers.