Cultural Differences in Crisis Communication
The Japanese society is well-known for high appreciation of politeness, modesty, and harmoniousness. All these features were demonstrated by people even in the crisis time: people waited to pay their goods in the damaged supermarkets and saved electricity as much as possible. Japanese people trusted their government, thus they depended more on it than, for instance, Americans. However, crisis made people doubt the competence of their government as if it opened their eyes to the dangers of complete trust. There were no dialogue between frightened people and politicians who were afraid to undertake responsibility. The Japanese had more and more questions to their government which was losing its control over the situation. Some people even decided to act by themselves in order to get rid of radioactive materials. Moreover, the victims of the disaster faced discrimination.
At that moment, the government tried to involve only the Japanese to find the solution. After a while it recognized the fact that it needed assistance of the international community, but the precious time was lost. Moreover, the fact of discrimination was furthered to the victims of the disaster. I agree that the Fukushima accident demonstrated the lack of a global mindset of the Japanese politicians and reflected long-lasted history of cultural insularity. Culture of collusion between the bureaucracy and industry made decision making process very hard and time consuming. Some of the supervising governmental agencies turned out to be completely dependent on the private sector. Thus the country faced consequences of its overconfidence, closed-mindedness, high sense of cohesiveness and “in-group” mentality. While in a peaceful time these features can be classified as positive, in a crisis time it played a bad trick with the Japanese.
While Japan suffered from its insularity, some countries are being changed due to their excessive openness. Our world is becoming more and more globalized with the large numbers of people living and working in a multicultural world.
Universities and workplaces in are especially exposed to cultural diversity. As it become comparatively cheap to travel, the information is no longer difficult to get, people prefer seeking their place in the other countries. Business and government have no other option as to adapt to such changes. Diversity of cultures adds to creativity, but also creates many challenges such as the question how to manage this diversity.
Interacting and working with people from different cultural background is as interesting as it is difficult. It turns out that not many people can call themselves culturally competent. To understand person’s behavior it is important to focus on the external culture as well as on the internal one, which is far deeper and more complicated. However, cultural competence can ensure better cooperation and understanding. Sometimes the clash of different cultural “icebergs” can have especial new value.
Intercultural competence combines cultural one and the ability of cross-cultural communication. It represents the collision of cultural icebergs of two people. The emphasis here should be made on the ability to understand and communicate rather than on the knowledge of another culture. The interactions on interpersonal, political, social and economic level can be possible only if people possess intercultural competence. Otherwise conflicts and misunderstandings were inevitable which would make cooperation ineffective.
Understanding all this, governmental and private organizations provide intercultural trainings for children and adults. I believe that this theoretical level is necessary, but hands-on experience is always better even in terms of understanding new culture.
