Poland in China (Artwork by the author)

Intercultural communication at work in multinational companies (MNCs) is increasingly common. Workplace communication in MNCs can be highly complex, as is the case when Polish expatriate workers of an MNC headquartered in Western Europe are deployed in China. What are the communication challenges they face and how do they overcome these?

To examine this question, my team and I conducted narrative interviews with six Polish professionals who had just returned from a three-year international assignment in China in late 2016. They had worked to build a Chinese subsidiary of the MNC together with 1,500 local and 150 international employees.

The company language in the Chinese subsidiary was English (and, practically, also Chinese) while in Poland the company language was French (and, practically, also Polish).

The findings of our research have recently been published in the journal Multilingua in an article entitled “Intercultural communication within a Chinese subsidiary of a Western MNC: Expatriate perspectives on language and communication issues”.

Interviewees reported a lot of miscommunication and communication problems, which they ascribed to both language and cultural barriers. In particular, they felt under-prepared when they first arrived and highlighted communication problems in the initial stage of their deployment:

We were sent there without… any preparation for working in a different cultural circle. China is far different from France, Romania, or Hungary. We have lots of factories in Eastern, Southern, and Northern Europe—but these are pretty much the same. We think in a similar way, we have the same working style. But what I saw there… I was completely unprepared for that.

One of my co-authors in China (Image credit: A. Gut)

All interviewees claimed that face-to-face communication with locals was problematic and that English as the company language was part of the problem. They found it difficult to understand the English spoken by their Chinese colleagues and the company jargon. They had to either translate the previously acquired terminology from Polish or French into English, or learn new company jargon, for example, abbreviations of products, company positions, or those used in production management.

In turn, because locals often communicated in Mandarin at work and during social events, expatriates’ lack of Mandarin proficiency prevented them from acquiring information from local superiors, learning about problems within a team, or from participating in decision-making processes. It also hampered integration with locals at lunchtime and led to social isolation and a feeling of not belonging to the work group.

To overcome these barriers, expatriates devised a number of ad hoc strategies such as asking clarifying questions, asking for confirmation, or summarizing the message by e-mail. One interviewee recounted how he simply imitated locals:

I often nodded back (…) and did what they did: nodded, smiled, and so on. Even when I needed something very much, and urgently, I knew it would be difficult to get it due to all the steps you need to go through with them. (…) Sometimes I had to ‘walk in their shoes’ and behave like them. That let me get many things faster.

Another interviewee related that changing the medium of communication from oral to digital worked for him:

One of my employees told me…, because I sent him a message via a chat program, (…) ‘You know what? Chatting with you is much better than talking, because I understand you better [this way].’ So they gave me such signals from time to time.

These communication strategies did not always help to alleviate ambiguity or uncertainty. In fact, they often were experienced as counterproductive, for example when their strategies threatened their Chinese interlocutor’s face, as was the case when they asked for clarifications at team meetings. By contrast, showing respect through simply nodding was felt to be more time-consuming but more effective in the long run.

Our research provided an opportunity for interviewees to reflect on their intercultural communication experiences in China. Their retrospective interpretations were in themselves beneficial as they enabled  them to understand, accept, and appreciate the cultural differences they had encountered in China.

Reference

Wilczewski, M., Søderberg, A.-M., & Gut, A. (2018). Intercultural communication within a Chinese subsidiary of a Western MNC: Expatriate perspectives on language and communication issues. Multilingua, 37(6), 587-611. doi:10.1515/multi-2017-0095