1. Cross cultural communication MBA 4 th Semester 2011

2. What is culture? Culture is derived from a Latin word cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate“ is a term that has various meanings. In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture“. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: – Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, which is also known as high culture – An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning – The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

3. Conti… In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. The term "culture" in anthropology has two meanings: (1)the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2)the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively

4. Conti… In simple terms - Culture is nothing but a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, and norms of behaviour. It refers to coherent groups of people whether resident wholly or partly within state territories, or existing without residence in any particular territory.

5. Cross Cultural Communication Cross-cultural communication also referred to as intercultural communication, is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures. Cross-cultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other.

6. Conti… Effective communication with people of different cultures is especially challenging. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking— ways of seeing, hearing, and interpreting the world. Thus the same words can mean different things to people from different cultures, even when they talk the "same" language.