A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And American Cultural Values In The Workplace

Dramatic development in technology, such as the internet, makes intercultural communication even more commonplace today. Culture has an indispensable influence on communication, and to know about the differences among cultures is a compulsory course for contemporary ordinary people. The research in this field has gained increasing attention and acquired great achievements.In this study, we examine cultural differences from the perspective of cultural value, but unlike previous research, this paper wants to emphasize the work-related values and see how they impact on people's behavior in the workplace. Based on the review and summarization of previous research results, this paper draws five pairs of values as the framework to examine how Chinese values are different from American's and from specific cases we analyze intensively how these values lead to different behavior. What's more, we make a deep analysis of the roots for the Chinese and the Americans to form different value systems. We can draw inferences from both of the case analysis and the root exploration to help deal with any intercultural communication problems with ease.There are five parts in this paper. We start with a brief introduction to the study. Then we have a literature review of intercultural communication both abroad and at home, and draw out a value orientation framework for the present study. Part three and part four constitute the main body of this study, with case analysis and root exploration being the focus of each of these parts. We end up this study with a brief summary plus some implications obtained from this research. We find in our research that because of different historical origins, different traditional foundations, and the infiltration of philosophical thoughts, China and the United States have developed quite different cultural value systems, which reflected in the workplace is taking different value priorities in the same situation, such as respect for authority or equality, self-deprecating or self-presentational, interpersonal harmony or competition, people orientation or problem orientation, and being cautious or adventurous.Some suggestions are proposed for intercultural communication and for further study. 1) We should increase our intercultural communication competence: be open to differences, analyze problems from different perspectives, and be aware of our own culture values, accept and respect those different from ours. 2) Exploring the roots of different values has a profound significance in guiding us to deal with cross-cultural problems properly in our own situation. So it deserves more attention and research in this aspect.