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Sources of miscommunication in email: searching for contextual information in communication between chinese and danish collaborators

Published: 21 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Based on an interpretative case study investigating the communication between Danish and Chinese engineers in a global medical engineering company, we identified four key sources of miscommunication: 1) lack of common communication protocols; 2) exclusion of participants; 3) political motives; and 4) misinterpretation of common terms. This paper posits that all four challenges are related to a lack of contextual information due to geographical dislocation and not, as initially assumed, to cultural differences. This finding is essential when investigating cross-cultural communication, because it suggests that we should not forget to examine ordinary communication issues when researching communication between people from different cultural backgrounds.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ICIC '12: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Intercultural Collaboration
    March 2012
    170 pages
    ISBN:9781450308182
    DOI:10.1145/2160881
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    Published: 21 March 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. distributed collaboration
    2. global engineering
    3. intercultural collaboration
    4. miscommunication
    5. virtual teams

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    • (2024)Working Across Boundaries in Urban MorphologyISUF, Urban Morphology and Human Settlements10.1007/978-3-031-58136-6_10(211-229)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2024

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