Essay Example on Intercultural communication is a highly common Phenomenon

Abstract Intercultural communication is a highly common phenomenon which will be more common as the globalization continues to expand People will have to live with other people with different culture and different perspectives of the world Moreover the number of intercultural teams will raise dramatically International students of TU Delft more often than not deal with problems regarding the intercultural communication which is a result of the fact that in many cases before their studies in TU Delft they do not have to communicate and cooperate with other people than the ones that live in their country and have the same culture more or less In this document experiences of intercultural communication are presented and analyzed through the Hofstede s theory of cultural dimension Maleki s dimensional clustering Tuckman's group development stages and Tajfel social identity theory Finally a conclusion of these experiences is presented and respective recommendations are made regarding how to deal with similar situations Introduction Delft University of Technology as the Netherlands itself are places where many people from many nationalities study and live respectively 

The aforementioned situation makes people and especially those who come from countries with high levels of homogeneity in subjects like politics faith and place of birth of the citizens to feel uncomfortable and mostly in many cases unable to communicate properly with people from other nationalities Moreover in the case of TU Delft students there are problems for them to work efficiently in large groups because they are not used to cooperate with people with different perception of the world So some actions may be misinterpreted and people cannot communicate The knowledge that was gained after the first weeks of course Intercultural relations and project management was very useful and let students to understood that the behavior of a person depends mostly on the society that he was born and raised and many times people judge other people by their own measures of course that is not a panacea and the behavior of each individual emanates also and from his own experiences and edification As a result we can understand that in many cases the problems of understanding and communicating with other people are matter of different origins and perception This document has as a goal to describe and analyze two categories of intercultural communication based on the respective theory 

The first case is about interculturalcommunication in everyday life and the second case refers to cooperation between people from different nationalities in order to finish a project Methodology In this section the main theories that will be used in the analyses of the experiences are presented After that the incidents that are be presented are analyzed based on that theory Cultural Dimensions The first part of theory is that of cultural dimensions as they referred by Hofstede Hofstede Hofstede Minkov 2010 According to Hofstede there are six major cultural dimensions which are 1 Power Distance Index PDI 2 Individualism VS Collectivism IDV 3 Masculinity VS Femininity MSA 4 Uncertainty Avoidance Index UAI 5 Long Term Orientation LTO 6 Indulgence VS Restraint IVR Maleki s Dimension Clustering Moreover Maleki s dimension clustering Maleki de Jong 2014 will be used in order to make more specific in some cases what aspect of the cultural dimension is identified The dimensions clustering that were proposed were at a great extend similar to Hofstede s cultural dimension but there was a discrimination of Masculinity VS Femininity and Short Terms VS Long Term Orientation to the following dimensions 1 Mastery versus Harmony 2 Traditionalism versus Secularism 3 Assertiveness Versus Tenderness 4 Gender Egalitarianism 5 Collaborativeness Group Development Stages That theory was proposed by Bruce W Tuckman and was enriched by Bruce W Tuckman and Mary Ann Jensen Tuckman 2001 In the aforementioned theory there are five stages in a group development procedure and they are accompanied by the respective actions regarding the group structure and task activity The stages of the procedures and the respective actions are as follow Table 1 Stages of Group Development Tuckman 2001 Description Group Structure The pattern of interpersonal relationships the way members act and relate to each other Task Activity The content of interaction as related to the task at hand 1 Forming Orientation testing and dependence Testing and dependence Orientation to the task2 Storming resistance to group influence and task requirements Intragroup conflict Emotional response to task demands 3 Norming openness to other group members Ingroup feeling and cohesiveness develop new standards evolve and new roles are adopted Open exchange of relevant interpretations intimate personal opinions are expressed 4 Performing constructive action 

Roles become flexible and functional structural issues have been resolved structure can support task performance Interpersonal structure becomes the tool of task activities group energy is channeled into the task solutions can emerge 5 Adjourning disengagement Anxiety about separation and termination sadness feelings toward leader and group members Self evaluation Social Identity Theory According to that theory social groups provide their member with an identification of themselves in social terms Tajfel Turner n d The first stage of the social identity theory is the categorization in which people categorize everything in order to be able to make easily conclusions The second stage is the identification in which people identify themselves as part of a group The third and final stage is social comparison in which the members of the groups tend to judge each other in order to prove their superiority in the examined aspect and to enhance their self esteem McLeod 2008 Moreover the theory of the black sheep effect will be taken into account According to that theory the ingroup members tend to have more extreme evaluation compared to outgroup members either favorably or not Marques Yzerbyt Leyens 1988