Cross Cultural Awareness for Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cross Cultural Awareness for Business - Essay Example Essentially, culture refers to the traditions, set of values, and norms or practices that tend to influence the ways in which individuals behave, think, make a judgement and also their perceptions within a group setting. The perception that employees may have about an organization tends to influence the way in which they tend to complete organizational tasks that may not be in line with the deadlines. This brings about the idea of cultural competence that refers to the ability for individuals within an organization to interact in an effective manner with people from different cultures. This may draw from their worldviews and the understanding of other people’s culture’s and also being tolerant of them (French, 2010). Based on this overview, this essay will delve into the emic approach in understanding and managing people in the workplace that have cultural differences by referring to the works of two writers. The focus will be on the value of their contribution to cross-cultural managers and also refer to four countries in which this approach is applied. Ideally, the emic and etic approach is a form of field research performed with the aim of obtaining various viewpoints within a social group from with the observer’s perspective and also from that of the subject at hand. In much detail, the emic approach determines the way in which people from a locality think, they way that they perceive and explain things, the way they behave as per their rules and also the things that bring meaning to them. These approaches to to manage cross culture within the workplace were developed by Kenneth Pike in 1954 to which his suggestion was that when both of them integrate then this is likely to yield more positive results (Ritchey, 2011). The emic approach requires the examining of each culture in order to determine the way in which those applying this approach interpret certain observable facts. The emic approach is drawn from the phonemic term and the etic