Cross-Cultural Communication Case Study

Question 1)
a) Describe a situation in which you used cross-cultural communication. Explain why this is a good example of cross-cultural communication.
During my work-and-travel gap year in 2011 I worked for 5 months in a luxury hotel in Canada. I was responsible for fulfilling guest requests and supplying the housekeeping staff. I had to work together with co-workers from over 20 different nationalities, but more than half of them were Canadians. A common stereotype of Canadians is that there are very polite, which is in fact true. At the beginning of my job I had some problems with this Canadian attitude. As a German I used to say what I think in a direct way; thanks to my personality I usually do this in a very direct way. For me this has

b) Explain from two different cultural perspectives how this example can be perceived. Use the concept of cross-cultural misperception to explain this.
From the German perspective my behavior in the situation mentioned above would be perceives as normal, because it’s consistent (Adler, 2008). Almost every argumentation between German speakers would be as direct as mine. The Germans learned (Adler, 2008) from their childhood on that it is the best to say what you think in almost every situation and to be honest to each other. So for me it was a consistent (Adler, 2008) behavior that I could argue in the situation in the same way, as I would do it with a German speaker.
Also my perception of the feedback was culturally determined (Adler, 2008) because I was used to get direct feedback. So I selected (Adler, 2008) just the spoken words and screened out the things that were between the lines because I never learned that this is important when you get

collectivism.
According to the Hofstede Center (2011) the United States have a really high score on Individualism, compared to Sweden, which scores more in the mid-field. This is reflected in the case because the American managers work until night and don’t see family time as important as their Swedish colleagues do. They (the Swedish people) are more collectivistic, because they want to spend more time with their family and their kids. The fact that Sweden stills scores high on individualism is because wealthy and countries with a cold climate tend to show more individualism (Jandt, 2010).
But when you take a look at the masculinity vs. felinity scores, you notice a huge difference: While the United States are moderately masculine, Sweden is the least masculine (Jandt, 2010) country of those Hofstede took research on. In Sweden it’s common for male employees on every level to go on paternity leave to spend more time with their newborn child. This can be a problem because they “often do not have the opportunity to explain their desire for balancing their professional and private life to their colleagues from other countries” (Adler, 2008), in this case colleagues from the US. And they might not understand this behavior because they don’t know it from their home country, as well as they don’t understand why the Swedish don’t work until night. In the United