A Study On The Intercultural Communication Situations And Chinese Employees’ Competence In Multinational Enterprises

As an important field of intercultural communication, there were many theories aboutintercultural communication competence (ICC) abroad, especially the acculturation andintercultural training researches. While in China, those researchers focused on theintercultural language, intercultural comparing and how to improve the ICC from foreignlanguage teaching. There isn’t any research from the business management angle.Based on overviews of former researches, this study put forward its own theorysystem, set up the interviewing syllabus and investigated the current ICC in two kinds ofsituations, as the internal and external. Our detailed studying work included the follow twosteps. First, we made a deep overview of former researches, and then we put forward ourown theory system about the structural elements of ICC, which were environmentawareness, organization training and personal behaviors. What’s more, the environmentawareness consisted of difference in language, religion, manners and customs, culturalself-love. The organization training consisted of code of conduct, decision-making, humanresource management, executing and administration support. While the personal behaviorsincluded the stand point, interests, experiences abroad, personal act, sense of worth andfiltering information. Secondly, we interviewed44objectives who were from the foreigncompanies and Chinese firms about their current ICC in the two kinds of situations whichwere mentioned above.Our results have showed that:(1) Both of the two kinds of companies would meet the internal interculturalcommunication situation in their globalization, but there were differences in theirintercultural team building and the influence elements on the intercultural communication.(2) Both of the two kinds of companies had different requirements in employees’ ICCin the internal intercultural communication situation. The language competence was thebasic requirement, while the Chinese firms abroad would pay more attention onemployees’ self-concept and motivation. What’s more, the training project aboutintercultural communication was still in an elementary stage in the two kinds of companies.(3) There were big differences in the external intercultural communication situationbetween the two kinds of companies. The foreign companies in China mainly deal withthe intercultural communication with foreign customers, while the Chinese firms abroadneed to communicate with the government aboard, middleman and foreign customers. Ineach situation, the focus of communication conflicts and the solving method weredifferent of course between the two kinds of companies.