Socio-cultural barriers

Socio-cultural barriers

A few important ones are:

(i) Cultural background is different
Different cultural background leading to different pronunciations and accents for speaking the same words can spoil the delivery of a message. It the recent cricket match series in Australia between the host country and Indian team, there was a piquant situation because „bastard‟ is an accepted form of communication in Australia and „monkey‟ is an accepted admonition in any heated personal discussion in India.

(ii) Personal space and public space
Some cultures permit greater personal space than others. If the same is not available even in a not-so-formal interaction, it may upset some. Even the way of addressing in different regions of the same country can create misunderstanding.

(iii) Sense of time
Experience confirms that a western visitor from the USA or Europe would like to get straight into business without significant preliminaries beyond wishing one another and getting introduced. However, a typical Asian may start with preliminaries as a warm-up and may even prefer to have a cup of tea before coming to the formal part of the agenda. It is said that Japanese like to have a game of golf before sitting for any serious meeting!