| With the advent of an increasingly interdependent world, organizations around the globe either purposefully seek or have no alternative than to integrate culturally diverse work teams. However, multicultural teams frequently experience frustrations and, occasionally, significant impasses in their performance. This phenomenon is directly related to different work-related values (Bennett and Stewart, 1991; Cox, 1994; Donnellon, 1996; Hofstede, 2001). Consequently, careful exploration of intercultural issues regarding work teams is imperative to better equip working groups facing this reality. Communication is at the core of work team and intercultural dynamics. Therefore, this research focused on communicational patterns and nuances. Cultural differences were conceived as expressions along continuums, rather than opposing absolutes, paradoxes were given special attention, and analysis was couched within power embedded systemic contexts.; International not-for-profit organizations involving Caucasian Unitedstatesians and Salvadorians were the specific context of this study. The organizational protagonist was a not-for-profit organization with offices in the United States as well as in El Salvador. A qualitative methodological framework was adopted. Organizational materials were reviewed, six team meetings were observed, and twelve individuals were interviewed. The sample ensured a gender and cultural balance. Observations and interviews were taped, transcribed, and translated. Interviewees were asked about their experience regarding ten different communicational realms: direct/indirectness, expressing disagreements, asking or offering help, apologizing or resolving conflicts in the workplace, among others. The data analysis was guided by two complementary approaches: a triangulated inquiry approach (Patton, 2002) and a holographic model (Hecht, 1998).; Although research participants virtually had similar perceptions regarding culturally based communication patterns on most realms, there was no single realm in which everyone concurred. For instance, eleven out of the twelve interviewees concurred that Unitedstatesians tend to be more direct than their Salvadorian counterparts in their conversational style in the workplace. However, more complex scenarios emerged regarding apologizing or resolving conflicts. Further research is warranted on all of the explored communicational realms, not in the search of conclusive findings, but seeking deeper understandings of naturally complex and paradoxical realities. Those deeper understandings are bound to be instrumental in the extremely hard development of those so-called ‘soft’ skills. |
