Corporate Communication Challenges A 'Negotiated' Culture Perspective

This study addresses cultural issues in business communication across cultures. The concept of 'negotiated' culture is employed, elaborated and applied to empirical data at organizational and individual contextual levels in intercultural encounters. Communication is viewed as a complex, multi-issued, and dynamic process in which global managers exchange meaning. A multi-contextual analysis is used to describe the dynamics and complexity of sense-making processes at the interface of meaning exchange in the collaboration between Danish and Japanese managers. In particular, the concept of 'negotiated' culture is employed to analyse strategic and operational communication between a Danish company and its alliance partner in the Japanese market. A significant amount of research represents a headquarters or western view of communication processes and cultural challenges in strategy implementation. The present study also includes the partner/Japanese view.