A Study On Acculturation Of Western Business People In Guangzhou

With the advance of globalization,political,economic,and cultural exchanges among various ethnic groups in the world are becoming frequent.More and more people leave their countries to work and study in other countries.However,cross-cultural exchanges bring sojourners not only new feelings,but intense tension and anxiety caused by the collision of different cultures.When cultural conflicts gradually accumulate,sojourners will have various psychological problems.The phenomenon of not adapting to the new cultural environment is called cultural shock.In the process of acculturation,most sojourners will experience cultural shock,which can directly affect their study,work,and daily life.Therefore,the study of acculturation has gradually attracted widespread attention.As an international metropolis,Guangzhou has frequent international business exchanges.Not a few foreign-funded enterprises in Guangzhou are from European and American countries,and business people from these countries take up a large proportion of foreigners permanently residing in Guangzhou.However,the distance between western culture and Chinese culture is relatively large.Thus,western business people may encounter some difficulties while adapting to Guangzhou.Therefore,this research intends to study the acculturation of western business people to provide them with some suggestions on cultural adjustment,and providing some inspiration for future research as well.Based on previous researches,three research questions are put forward in this thesis:1)what is the status quo of western business people’s acculturation in Guangzhou;2)how do the three intercultural contact factors(knowledge about China,empathy ability and language skills)affect their cultural adjustment;3)how to help the western business people better adapt to Guangzhou.Based on the above research questions,this thesis combines Collen Ward’s ABC acculturation model and Black’s three-dimensional model,developing a new three-dimensional model.Thus,western business people’s acculturation status is analyzed from three aspects: psychological adjustment,general adjustment,and work adjustment.Next,the correlations between the three intercultural contact factors for effective communication and general adjustment,work adjustment are illustrated.Finally,some suggestions are made according to the relationships to help western business people better adapt to Guangzhou.This research mainly adopts the method of quantitative analysis.The questionnaire of this research is designed by borrowing questionnaires of the predecessors.By distributing thesis questionnaires and electronic questionnaires,82 copies are collected,of which 77 are valid.The data is sorted and entered into SPSS 26.0.First,after somedata are selected to analyze the reliability and validity,the questionnaire is assured proper for analysis.After that,the demographic information is analyzed by means of frequency and percentage,while the three aspects of acculturation and intercultural contact factors are analyzed by mean values,maximum and minimum values.Data shows that though the psychological adjustment of western business people is generally well,some of them are anxious about weight loss and eating habits.As for general adjustment,some respondents have difficulties in adjusting to local eating habits,entertainment,and social etiquette.Furthermore,most of them have great difficulties in adjusting to deep culture like local values,world view,etc.They encounter a few problems in work adjustment except for local work habits and problem-solving methods.Next,the Pearson correlation coefficient is used to reveal the correlations between three intercultural contact factors and cross-cultural adjustment.Results are as follows: knowledge and empathy are significantly positively correlated with intercultural adjustment,while language is positively correlated with work adjustment and overall adjustment.Considering the results,the author provides two suggestions for the local government:launch community-based Chinese food projects and carry out some convenient consulting projects for foreign newcomers.Besides,suggestions for promoting the three intercultural contact factors are given to help them better adapt to Guangzhou.Finally,the author summarizes the limitations of this study are: quantitative analysis limits new findings;the sample size is not large enough;the research results tend to be more positive,and longitudinal data is not included.For further research,cooperation with a certain company or the local government would be able to enlarge the sample size.Also,a longitudinal analysis could make more scientific research,and a semi-structured interview may promote the localization of acculturation theories.