Impact of Norms and Values on non-verbal Communication in International Business

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3 (A), Pforzheim University (Economics), course: Cross-cultural management, language: English, abstract: As a result of improved and extended infrastructure and communication world-wide, there has been a change of the markets, which turned more and more international during the recent years and decades. In order to be successful and competitive in future enterprises have to think global and use the given opportunities to do business by using the whole dimension of the extended markets. Nowadays there are international corporations, joint-ventures, mergers and business relations with enterprises and people from foreign countries. This fact implies increasing communication on an international level between people with different languages and cultures. But cross-cultural conversation is far more complex than having the ability to communicate verbally by speaking another language. While the verbal communication is just a minor part of the communication process there is additionally para-verbal and most important of all non-verbal communication to be considered as an important key for successful communication not only on a cross-cultural level. Therefore the following paper tries to give an overview about the importance of non-verbal communication in interpersonal relations with a closer look on some practical examples of cross-cultural difficulties in interpreting.