Business

Conclusion

The globalization of our world economy often leads to mergers and acquisitions that bring international businesses to your hometown. Mergers can make companies more productive, better able to handle competition, and lead to lower prices for consumers, but they can also lead to lost jobs and resentments. When your company has been acquired by a large multi-national corporation, with a CEO that speaks another language, is in a different time zone, and has "strange" business practices, it's often brings with it great sadness and difficulty. A community can crumble. A way of life can disappear. The loss of a livelihood can harm families for generations. It's cold comfort but remember that the process isn't personal and certainly isn't an indictment of your work ethic.

It's also important to remember that each intercultural encounter occurs in a social and political context that extends well beyond the individuals and businesses involved. Strong feelings and jealousies exist within nations and between nations. Large political events such as terrorism impact business, but smaller ones such as changes to traffic laws do as well. Worldwide we are struggling to handle health epidemics, immigration, and climate change—each able to disrupt global business agreements in a blink of an eye.

The real challenge in intercultural business communication is believing that our vast worldwide differences can also be the source for our creative international solutions.