The Impact Of Cultural Factors On The Sino-us Employees In Chinese Cross-cultural Adaptability

The thesis aims to examine the influence of cultural factors on individuals' cross-culturaladaptation competence, focusing on adaptation between American and Chinese incommunication styles in terms of directness and indirectness in giving disagreements orcriticisms.Individuals' cultural adaptation competence tends to be affected by various factors, amongwhich the impact of cultural factors can not be ignored. Differences in national cultures oftenlead to discrepancies in adaptation competence of people from different cultures.Cultural factors include multifaceted dimensions. The dimensions of individualism vs.collectivism (IC) and uncertainty avoidance (UA) from Geert Hofstede's theory on nationalculture are selected in this thesis. Cultural adaptation competence will be examined fromthree dimensions of cognitive competence, affective competence and behavioral competenceproposed by Y. Y. Kim. Besides, two cultural variables, namely, response intensity toexpectancy violation (RIEV) and identity flexibility (IF) are introduced as intermediary linksto establish theoretical relationship between the above mentioned cultural dimensions andadaptation competence.Based on theoretical analysis, the author firstly establishes links between RIEV and cognitiveand affective competence, and the link between IF and behavioral competence. Then byassuming how RIEV and IF relate with the dimensions of UA and IC, hypotheses areproposed on the influence of UA on cognitive and affective competence, and the influence ofIC on the behavioral competence of American and Chinese.To testify the proposed hypotheses, research was conducted by questionnaire, which consistsof two parts. The first part examines the level of RIEV and IF of American and Chinese. Thesecond part is designed along the three dimensions of adaptation competence, exploring intothe cognitive, affective and behavioral competence of American and Chinese.To prove the validity of the hypotheses, firstly, levels of RIEV and IF as well as adaptationcompetence is compared between the two countries based on the results of questionnaire.Secondly, correlation coefficients between RIEV and cognitive and affective competence, andbetween IF and behavioral competence are computed to prove the significance of associationsbetween them.The thesis, by justifying the hypotheses proposed by the author, is helpful in betterunderstanding the discrepancy in the levels of adaptation competence of American andChinese in terms of direct and indirect communication style as well as the reasons of it. It ishopeful that the thesis can contribute to increasing the knowledge of American and Chineseabout the culture of each other, promoting adaptability during their communications, which inturn help improve communication effectiveness and reduce problems caused by culturaldifferences.