The Mediation of Cross Cultural Communications
by Computer Communication Systems


Course :
Certificate in Online Education & Training
Lecturer: Anita Pincas
Institute of Education
London University
20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL
John R. Swartz
January 15th, 1997

Running Head: Computer Mediation of Cross Cultural Communications

Abstract

While there have been a plethora of  research and publications on cross-cultural communications, the world is now undergoing an explosion in global communications which is augmenting the global transfer of information in education, finance, health, government and business. Increasingly, the computer is assuming the dominant role in global communications and given the orders of magnitude growth in international communications, it is time to review the impact of computer mediated communications (CMC) as it relates to cross-cultural communications, training and education. It is time to ask whether CMC helps or hinders global communications. Does it present a platform for the improvement in the transfer of data cross-culturally? Does it improve the understanding between individuals and organizations of different cultures? Will it reduce or increase the potential for tension and misunderstanding;  and, what is the best way of utilizing this new medium in cross-cultural communications?

Introduction
Human communications is enormously complicated. It is made up of an almost unending array of variables which include: Human cognition ; Physical constraints , which limit communications potential, such as how well one can hear or see, or what their intellect is, or how fast or slow they can read; Educational constraints , which determine at what level, in what topics and with whom an individual can, or prefers to, or has the opportunity to communicate; Social and power constraints , which structure communication relationships and how communications is conducted; Subliminal communications , which unconsciously changes the message, or creates a new one;   Cultural constraints , which augment an individual's perception of time, space and distance; Technical constraints , which increase or decrease the potential to communicate, change the interpretation of the information received through the choice of medium that is used, and which can change the message through the method by which the message is displayed, such as in the use of text, audio, video and photographic montage, or graphics. There is mimicking, and body language, and para-language, and language itself, and vocabulary, and the language of the sane and insane, technical language, and religious language, and much more. Each one of these areas is worthy of a study in its own right, and each could easily take up the remainder of this paper.

However; one of these topics by itself  is not communications, for communications is the confluence of them all, and understanding only one will not provide an understanding of human communications, much less an understanding of how computer mediated communications (CMC) will impact communications cross-culturally. It is for this reason, that we must review the some key aspects of human communications, albeit briefly, to provide a basis of discussion about the impact of CMC on cross-cultural communications.
The purpose of this paper is to act as a preamble for future research on the nature of human/machine interface as it relates to communications, optimal methods for the transfer of technical information, and the operational performance of individuals involved in this process. Here, I will limit my discussion to: an introductory review of the various elements of human communications as outlined above, all of which will be impacted by CMC; and the question of  "what impact will CMC have on cross-cultural communications."  In the process of this paper, I will offer suggestions and submit questions on some issues that have not been discussed in the resource literature. This discussion of communications will be weighted toward technical communications, but it will not be discussed exclusively as such, because education, business and personal communications also share the same characteristics in terms of collaboration and the acquisition and transmission of knowledge.

Research Method

My research sources include: thorough reading of over 75 books, articles and research papers on general, cross-cultural and technical communications. Only a small portion of this literature will be referenced here, but the sum of it influenced my thinking for this paper. These sources are included in the bibliography. I conducted a survey of seven foreign born,  long term American residents to determine their understanding of American-English culturally bound phrases. I  participated in a post graduate program in on  On-Line Education & Training with the University of London. The class was made up of fifty educators from all parts of the world and we actively participated in group projects on-line. Finally, I have more than fifteen years of experience living and working in foreign cultures in the areas of government and business, and in conducting business internationally. My most recent experience includes four years of  full time employment as Deputy General Manager of International Marketing for a large Japanese electronics manufacturer located in Tokyo, where I am the only foreign employee at the corporate office of more than one hundred Japanese individuals. This position requires daily contact with my Japanese colleagues at the executive and rank-and-file levels, in planning, training, daily business and socializing,  and frequent business and social contact with our international dealer network which spans the globe. As a result,  cross-cultural communications is a significant part of my daily professional and personal life. My other long term international experiences took place in  Mexico, France and Lebanon, which enriched and personalized the topic of cross-cultural communications as no text ever could. As a result of this experience in the cross-cultural arena, I will draw on personal examples as well as those from the reference material.

Understanding the basis of human communications

Beyond cognition itself, the first determinants of one's ability to communicate lie in their neurological capabilities such as: sight, hearing and touch, which act as the receptors of communications; and speech and  the ability to perform physical movement, which are the human communications delivery systems. Limitations in any one of these areas will necessarily impact the ability of an individual to communicate. However, this does not mean that an individual that is missing one or more of these neurological capabilities will not be able to communicate, simply that their style of communicating will be different and may be out of sync with their culture. Conversely, many individuals who are neurologically handicapped also go on to develop outstanding communications skills. Helen Keller is a good example. Having lost her ability to see and hear in 1882, when she was two years old, she went on to become a well known and respected lecturer, author and teacher in the early to mid 1900's.
In his discussion of the importance of mimesis in the development of language in humans, Donald Merlin gives an excellent example of individuals overcoming neurological constraints in communications:

Further evidence for the independence of pure mimesis comes from the documented lives of illiterate deaf-mutes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before the diffusion of formal sign languages. Without any effective training regimens to help them communicate, such individuals had to survive without any of the lexical, syntactic, or morphological features of language. They couldn't hear, and thus couldn't have had a sound-based lexicon of words; they obviously lacked an oral lexicon; they couldn't read or write and thus lacked a visually based lexicon. In the absence of a deaf community with a formal sign language, there was no signing lexicon either. Thus none of the lexical components of language were available, and this would have eliminated the possibility of constructing anything we might recognize as true linguistic representations. Yet they often lived remarkable lives.   ...by recorded accounts were quite sophisticated in their use of pure mimesis, both in constructional skill and in communicative and metaphoric gestures . (Merlin 1993)

It is obvious, however, that at the current stage of CMC, lacking sight would dramatically impact the ability of an individual, cross-culturally or otherwise, to effectively use this medium, and as far as we know, mimicking is not possible in textual format.
Neurological potential can be broken down into three basic forms:  auditory, visual and kinesthetic (Bandler & Gringer 1976 pp 4).  All communications is generated and received by the human via these pathways, and in a normal individual without severe psychological or neurological limitations in these areas, the data flow is constant and  simultaneous. There are two additional sensory channels: smell and taste, but they are not normally used in communications by most of us. However, smell is consciously used by the Arabs as a window on the emotional state of an individual with whom they are communicating (Hall 1969 pp. 49). Their social distance is within limits that allow them to "bathe" in the breath of the other. According to Hall:

Arabs apparently recognize a relationship between disposition and smell. The intermediaries who arrange an Arab marriage usually take great precautions to insure a good match. They may even on occasion ask to smell the girl and will reject her if she "does not smell nice." Not so much on esthetic grounds but possibly because of a residual smell of anger or discontent.

Because of the unique history of each person, input is also unique to each of us.  This causes our reference structures to evolve differently. The reference structure is the individual's personal map of the world that, more or less, resides inside of him and which allows him to interpret and act toward his world in his own personalized way (Bandler & Grinder 1975 pp 12). In essence, this reference structure is the result of  a series of neurological and experiential filters through which incoming and outgoing data passes.  In the process of communications between two individual, the message must pass through the filters of each for interpretation by their unique reference structures. The greater the neurological, psychological, cultural, educational or experiential differences between the individuals, the greater the differences in their reference structures will be and the harder it will be to communicate. According to Bandler and Grinder (1976) :

The most thoroughly studied and best understood of the representational systems of human modeling maps is that of human language. The most explicit and complete model of natural language is transformational grammar. Transformational grammar is, therefore, a meta-model - a representation of the structure of human language - itself a representation of the world of experience.
Human language systems are, themselves, derived representations of a more complete model - the sum total of the experience the particular human being has had in his life...

Just as individual reference structures and their resulting maps of the world are different, so therefore, are the individual's reactions to the same real world events. Further, individuals place different values on their visual, kinesic  and auditory representational systems which may cause them to favor one particular system over the others. This, in turn, further colors their way of interpreting and communicating information.

Predicate are words used to describe the portions of a person's experience which correspond to the process and relationships in that experience. Predicates appear as verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the sentences which the client uses to describe his experience. (Bandler & Grinder 1976 pp 9)

This results in differing representational systems as shown below: (Bandlere & Grinder 1976 pp 10)

He felt badly about the way she held the crawling child.   [kinesthetic-felt, held]
The dazzling woman watched the silver car streak past the glittering display.  [visual-watched]
He called out loudly as he heard the squeal of the tires of the car in the quiet streets. [auditory-called, heard]
The man touched the damp floor of the musty building [kinesthetic-touched]

It is easy to see why some people have more difficulty in understanding each other than others. Those with similar representational systems would be more in sync with each other than those who have different representational systems. The farther apart these systems are in the individuals, the more difficult it is for them to communicate. Further, it may be that this phenomena does not just exist in voice communications, but in written communications as well. For instance, textual information written in the same representational language as the reader's orientation may be easier for him to understand than text written in a different representational language. As an example, the sentence "Sue walked briskly through the rain,  feeling the cold splash of water on her legs and the soft patter of the rain drops on her head."  might be more understandable to a kinesic individual than an auditory individual. In the references that I reviewed, there was no mention of the impact that text itself had on  non-visually oriented individuals. Would it be more difficult for the kinesic individual to understand Sue's walk above because he had to use visual skills to read it? This point may be worthy of additional research, as we may find communications utilizing multiple representational methods may enhance the understanding of the information being sent. This may be particularly true in the transmission of technical data which is more critical in nature.

Subliminal Communications
Going beyond the inner oriented and interpretive aspect of communications which determines how an individual sees his world, and influences the content of his message to others, we must also consider subliminal communications. This is communications that flavors the content of the message and helps to provide richness and feeling or, conversely, emits negative or dissonant cues that are disruptive to the communications process. This form of communications, which cannot usually be transmitted in textual form, includes: the frequency and nature of eye contact; autonomic nervous system responses, such as pupil dilation under stress;  the physical distance assumed by the speaker from the recipient and his general use of space; tonality of the speaker's voice and intonation patterns in his speech; tempo of the speaker's speech; pauses in speech;  the volume of the speaker's voice; synchronization of the speaker's speech and movement with that of the recipient, which includes breathing and mimicking the actions of the recipient;  facial cues; body language and, even ornamental wear.

Subliminal communications is learned through one's culture and is augmented by his personality.  This is understandable, for in order for an individual to get along in his society, it is necessary for him to learn the rules of the society, which include mannerisms, overt communications, and subliminal communications. If improperly learned, the individual will not be in sync with his culture. His actions will seem unnatural and out of sort in his interaction within his culture. Of this Edward T. Hall says:

Entire systems of behavior made up of hundreds of thousands of details are passed from generation to generation, and nobody can give the rules for what is happening. Only when these rules are broken do we realize they exist. (Hall 1973 pp 70)

Professor R.L. Birdwhistell, a Senior Research Scientist at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute devoted much of his career to the study of kinesic behavior in humans [ kinesics was coined by Birdwhistell ], which is human communicative behavior that involves body motion. Concerning the learning of kinesic behavior he says:

The child is born into a society already keyed for his coming. A system exists into which he must be assimilated if the society is to sustain itself. If his behavior cannot, after a period of time, become predictable to a degree expected in that society, he must be specially treated. In some societies the nonassimilator will be allowed to die; in others he may be given special institutional treatment. This special treatment can range from deification to incarceration. But ultimately the goal is the same: to make that child's behavior sufficiently predictable that the society can go about the rest of its business.. (Birdwhistell 1970 pp 6).

A particularly good example of cultural differences and similarities in kinesic behavior  took place while I was having lunch in a restaurant in Tokyo. Having lived in Tokyo for four years, many of the mannerisms of the Japanese have become familiar at both a conscious and unconscious level. I was the only non-Japanese in the restaurant, or so I thought, because all of the faces were Japanese. Yet, there was one little spot of dissonance in the room.
Sitting at a table was a nicely, but not overly dressed Japanese woman about thirty five years old, and her daughter of about twelve. They were close enough that I could see their features and mannerisms clearly, but far enough away that I couldn't hear their voices. Outwardly, they were the same as all of the others in the restaurant, yet, something was different. I couldn't place exactly what it was, except that I felt a vague sense of closeness toward the mother and daughter.
This intrigued me throughout lunch. Finally, I finished eating and walked by their table on the way out of the restaurant. As I did so, the lady and her daughter looked up pleasantly, made firm eye contact and smiled. Something that never would have happened with the other individuals in the room. Immediately, I knew that they were American. Their movement, rhythm, use of the physical space around them, gestures, and smile were unquestionably American, a fact confirmed when I heard them resume their conversation.
Although no comments were exchanged between us, their smiles indicated to me that they shared my pleasure in seeing a fellow countryman in a room full of "foreigners." Our culture had transcended our race, and this was exhibited without having spoken.

Despite my many years living within foreign cultures, no other event stood out as clearly as this one did, in showing the impact of one's culture on their kinesic behavior.

Verbal and kinesic subliminal communications can be learned and manipulated by actors, politicians, healthcare givers and good sales people. Though, for the most part, it is beyond the consciousness of the communicator, and many times, of the recipient as well. Further, attempting to display newly acquired subliminal behavior may appear to be unnatural to recipients from the culture the individual is attempting to emulate.
Charisma must also be a form of subliminal communications. I suggest that charisma must be a highly developed pattern of all of the right cues. Whatever they may be. But, it must also transcend culture somehow, as exhibited by the global popularity of certain public figures such as: Magic Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and others. One of the best examples of this global charisma was found in John Kennedy. I was told by a number of different U.S. Foreign Service employees who where dispersed among various U.S. embassies around the world during the time of his assassination, that lines of people from the local cultures, many of whom were crying,  formed to pay homage to the late President by signing the registers on display at these embassies.
None of the reference data that I reviewed mentioned charisma, but a study of the phenomena as it applies to various modes of communications may be valuable in creating a more effective CMC model for global use.

While the subliminal communications discussed above are not prevalent in text based CMC, that we know of, the rapidly approaching use of voice communications via Internet and other forms of CMC conference systems, interfaced with video communications, delivered either via CD or wide band communications links, will provide increasing potential for the intrusion of subliminal communications.  
Further, textual communications may, in fact,  not be without its own form of subliminal communications. In his book entitled Verbal Behavior: Adaptation & Psychopathology Walter Weintraub, M.D. (Weintraub 1981) outlines his research in the identification of psychopathic problems through the patient's speech mannerisms. He identifies fourteen categories that "reflect the operation of psychological coping mechanisms."

1.Quality of speech.    8.  Negatives.
2.Long pauses.  9.  Qualifiers.
3.Rate of speech.       10. Retractors.
4.Nonpersonal references.       11. Direct references.
5.I [use and frequency].        12. Explainers.
6.We [use and frequency].       13. Expressions of feeling.
7.Me [use and frequency].       14. Evaluators.

While Weintraub was concerned with identifying psychopathology through an individual's speech, he also succeeded in showing the relationship between one's choice and frequency of certain words to his personality or psychological orientation. While I am not aware of any research on whether or not this can be extrapolated to textual communications, I suggest that this, indeed, is a possibility. If it comes to pass that this is so, then it may prove to be a conduit through which subliminal communications is transferred via text through CMC.
The form of  delivery system that CMC uses also impacts the potential transmission of subliminal communications. Synchronous communications is CMC in which individuals are communicating in real time, much like a face-to-face communications and video conferencing. With asynchronous communications however, each individual communicates when he or she desires, as their message will be picked up by the recipient at a later time, much like email or fax. Asynchronous communications is currently, and probably will continue to be the most frequently used form of CMC for global  or cross-cultural communications because of different time zones, which make real time communications on global proportions difficult. This may result in a dampening of the effect of any form subliminal communications via CMC because of its distancing from the reality found within synchronous forms.

Social & Cultural Elements of Communications
Synchronization
It is shown above that in interpersonal communications it is important to develop patterns of communications that are familiar to the individual with whom one is interacting in order to communicate effectively.  The following discussion takes a closer look at the various cultural elements that impact successful interaction between individuals and whether or not these elements are, or can be communicated, and therefore mediated via CMC.
Edward T. Hall did considerable research on the various ways in which individuals and cultures communicate and interact. Included in, but not limited to his study are the topics of: cultural synchronization and rhythm (1983); cultural concepts of space, distance (1969) and various types of time (1973, 1983); and, high/low context cultures (1983). Hall confirms the position taken by Bandler and Grinder, that individuals view the world through different reference structures.  Hall's works were published in the same era as the works by Bandler and Grinder and add real life examples of how an individual's reference structure (Bandler & Grinder 1975, 1976) is influenced by one's culture, and the impact that this influence has on his behavior within his culture and beyond it. He concentrates primarily on the Native Americans in the American South West, White America and Japanese, but also includes English, German, French and Southern Europeans and Latin Americans as a way of broadening his explanation.
        In his discussion of rhythm and synchronization(Hall 1983, pp. 154~160), Hall says that you can't have one without the other.

...Not only do Native Americans have a beat and rhythm all their own which is reflected in their music, but each region and town in the United States has its own rhythm as well as music.  An excellent example was recently provided in the opening scene of the movie Nine to Five ,...Miss Parton sings the music with ground-level shots of people's legs and feet as they walk down the street. One fantastic shot zeros in on feet and ankles, in beat, cutting to a shot of three metronomes-in sync with each other and the beat of the city. It's only a short shot, but it sent shivers up my spine."

In order for a culture to function efficiently, it must be synchronized, and you can't synchronize two events without rhythm. This rhythm manifests itself as an underlying cultural drum beat that acts as a  bonding agent which harmonizes a culture and binds it together by providing a recognizable pattern of action for its members.

Individuals also synchronize during their face-to-face conversations. (Hall 1983 pp. 148~154). The ability to communicate successfully depends upon the level of synchronization that takes place. Normally this synchronization is unconscious, but it is possible to purposely synchronize with another's movements, speech pattern and posture. Consciously emulating the rhythm and kinesic pattern of the individual with whom you are speaking will usually put him at ease because he and the person with whom he is communicating will be dancing to the same beat. This is a common sales technique that makes its appearance in a number of sales "How to's," and in sales training courses. Bandler & Grinder (1981 pp. 43) even show the effectiveness of this technique in hypnotherapy. In describing "Nonverbal Pacing and Leading" they say:

All hypnosis can be usefully thought of as feedback. At this moment Bob is sitting in front of me. We are passing lots of information back and forth both verbally and nonverbally. Out of all the messages that we offer each other, some are conscious-that is, he and I know that we are offering them-and some are not.
One thing I can do with Bob's messages is to select those which I can identify as being outside of his awareness, and begin to feed those back by body mirroring. As I feed those back, one of two things will happen. His consciousness will alter and he will become as are of those things, or his unconscious responses will simply be amplified, so that more and more of this responses will be unconscious and fewer and fewer of them conscious.

In telephone and telegraphic communications, some level of synchronization is also possible, such as matching the speed and  rhythm of one's voice or telegraphic transmission to that of the other party. As a matter of fact, having been trained while in the U.S. Navy in telegraphic communications, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that you can find a personality in the Morse code that you are receiving, as no two "fists" are the same. At times it is enjoyable to have a telegraphic conversation with an individual with whom you are in sync. But, the converse also is true, which can cause a shudder when you hear the wrong person on the other end of the transmission. This same phenomena may have influenced field intelligence agents of old, who were involved in clandestine operations in foreign countries, such as "Communist China." Frequently, these individuals would insist on communicating only with a single individual at the intelligence operations center [ To my knowledge, this is not documented in print; however, having been involved in the intelligence field in the past, I found that  this is a fairly common story that is passed along among colleagues in the profession ]. One reason was that trust was developed between the two parties, and given the vulnerable position of the clandestine agent, he "spooked" when there was any change in the system and its personnel. However, I suggest that it may also have been the  synchronization that developed between the two individuals  during their telegraphic communications that instilled a sense of trust and familiarity between the two communicators and bound them together in the same manner that face-to-face synchronization does. Further, the sensitivity of the field agent's situation may have exacerbated his tendency to "bond" with the originator of a familiar synchronous telegraphic signal.

In asynchronous CMC,  I suggest that synchronizing as noted above is not possible due to the inherent time delay related to this type of delivery system. There is no spontaneity  in email and faxes, and asynchronous CMC is similar in terms of its delayed response format. Even if synchronous video conferencing becomes a global reality, momentary delays in transoceanic transmissions, similar to some long distance telephone calls, may possibly disrupt the communications enough to change the character of subliminal communications, and its ensuing synchronization.
There is one other aspect of synchronization that I would like to suggest as a possibility that should be investigated, if it hasn't been so already. That is the potential for synchronization within textual communications [ which is the primary form of CMC now ]. Just as I've suggested above that Weintraub's research into the analysis of speech to determine psychopathology in individuals may be extrapolated into the potential for the textual transmission of subliminal communications, I am suggesting here that textual communications may also provide a conduit for synchronization among individuals. In brief, individuals may synchronize their written correspondence in response to one that they receive. Of course, content must continue along the same lines, but what about style and the rhythm of writing?

Cultural Space & Distance

Cultural space and distance refers to the way that an individual views the space around him and his physical distance in relation to other humans and objects. The impact of this aspect of cross-cultural communications relates both to communications and to ownership. We only have to look at most of the major wars fought throughout human history to see the importance of space & distance perceptions in ownership. The German rationalization "Lebensraum" says it all. The much quoted meaning for this word in American classrooms is "living space." But, to the Germans, it also means "opportunity, one's chance, no obstacle, stepping stone."  Allied intelligence analysts in 1936 would have been remiss had they not included this additional meaning in their reports, as a full understanding of this word may have telegraphed the intentions of  Nazi Germany in time to prevent World War II.

Political and technical language concerning cultural space and distance play an important role in any new communications medium or system, including CMC, when trying to communicate information about construction projects, territorial rights and any other political or technical issues.  But,  as far as proxemics is concerned, it is "the study of the cultural, behavioral, and sociological aspects of spatial distances between individuals," and in this respect, I see no impact resulting from CMC as the communicators are physically removed from each other.
Time

Hall spends quite a bit of his time on the meaning of time and its various manifestations as applied cross-culturally. He cites : Biological Time, Personal Time, Physical Time, Metaphysical Time, Micro Time, Sync Time, Sacred Time, Profane Time and  Meta Time (Hall 1983 pp. 13~26). Culturally he outlines two general types of time,  Monochronic and Polychronic. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus only on Monochronic and Polychronic Time, as they refer to the way that time is managed within a culture.
Hall primarily relates monochronic time to Northern European cultures and cultures, like the United States that sprang from them. Polychronic Time relates to Latin, Arab, Mediterranean and a number of other cultures around the globe. Basically, monochronic time is linear in nature. The clock is ticking and with it an opportunity to do something: Meet a client, have lunch, start a report, go to the dentist, etc. This is important to the monochronic individual, because time that passes "unused" is time lost, never to be regained again.  However, the polychronic individual is living in a non linear world, where events are handled by their level of importance as they happen. In this world, relationships are the most important and take precedent over all else. If this interferes with an appointment made with a monochronic individual  "...well, he should understand that relationships are most important."  In the polychronic world, there is power in relationships and if someone is able to meet an important figure before you, or if someone is able to walk ahead of a line and enter a busy restaurant before you, "they must know someone that I don't." This works when all individuals are polychronic, but if a monochronic individual is in the line, trouble starts, because he loses time when another individual steps into his time slot.

        There is a lot to this concept that cannot be covered here. Our purpose is to relate the impact that CMC will have on cross-cultural communications, and we do so here, as it applies to time.
The primary purpose of bringing up the monochronic-polychronic aspects of time here is to show that power relationships can change when mediated by computer communications systems. In the polychronic cultures the worker is less able to function without the direction of his boss. In American companies this is  much less so, and with the introduction of the computer into American business, and the downsizing of middle management, and the weaker power ties within a monochronic culture to begin with, the shifting of power farther down the line may not be as noticeable as in a polychronic culture. In what may be the most comprehensive and important study conducted on cross-cultural communications and relationships, in book form entitled, Culture's Consequences , the author Geert Hofstede (Hofstede 1984) parallels Hall's discussion of monochronic-polychronic cultures. He terms it the hierarchy of power relationships "Power Distance Index" (PDI) and outlines power relationships as follows: (Hofstede, 1984 pp. 94, 95).

We owe to French and Raven (1959) a well-known classification of the bases of social power into five types: reward power, coercive power, legitimate power (based on rules), referent power (based on personal charisma of the powerful and identification with him or her by the less powerful), and expert (specialist) power. I surmise that, other things being equal, there will be more coercive and referent power used in the high PDI societies and more reward, legitimate, and expert power in the low PDI societies.
...in high PDI countries the underdog is the first to be blamed for anything wrong in the system whereas in low PDI countries the system is blamed ...
...the blame may revert to the powerful, and this is the "revolution" philosophy on the high PDI side: Change the top person and you change the system.
...In Low PDI Countries: Managers like seeing themselves as practical and systematic; they admit a need for support.
...In High PDI Countries: Managers like seeing themselves as benevolent decision makers.
...In Low PDI Countries: The way to change a social system is by redistributing power.
...In High PDI Countries: The way to change a social system is by dethroning those in power.

        

The introduction of CMC into a polychronic (or High PDI) culture may have a very disruptive effect. CMC is only effective if it links the individuals directly. This speeds communications. The additional explosion of information from data bases, research papers, Internet, and the increased speeds of normal business communications places considerable pressure on the individual to manage his time more effectively when using CMC but, it also empowers him as the possessor of information which is currently controlled by the managers. I suggest that this increasing empowerment, along with a propensity for revolutionary change will slowly change the power structure in polychronic cultures by circumventing and dethroning the power figure. If this turns out to be the case, we can expect to see considerable cultural, business and political change taking place in polychronic cultures in the upcoming years as a result of CMC.
On page 96 Hofstede provides a chart entitled Origins of Power Distance Norm , which outlines the characteristics of Low PDI vs. High PDI countries. By reviewing these characteristics, we can gain an idea of what countries may be the most affected by the intrusion of CMC technology:

Moderate to cold climates       Tropical and subtropical climates       
Survival and population growth more dependent on man's intervention with nature Survival and population growth less dependent on man's intervention with nature 
More need for technology        less need for technology        
Historical events: early legislation applied to rulers; one-son inheritance     Historical events: early legislation not applied to rulers; divided inheritance 
Less traditional agriculture, more modern industry, more urbanization   More traditional agriculture, less modern industry, less urbanization   
More need for education of lower strata (literacy, mass communications) Less need for education of lower strata 
Greater social mobility and strong development of meddle class  Less social mobility and weak development of middle class       
Greater national wealth Less national wealth    
Wealth more widely distributed  Wealth concentrated in hands of small elite     
Political power based on system of representation       Political power concentrated in hands of oligarchy or military  
Strong will to be independent; smaller size of population       Little popular resistance to integration into a large state: large size of population   
Historical events: independence, federalism, negotiation        Historical events: occupation, colonialism, imperialism 
Less centralization of political power  Centralization of political power       
Faster population increase in wealthy countries Slower population increase in wealthy countries 
Technological momentum of change        More static society     
Children learn things which elders never learned: less dependent        Children dependent on parents and elders        
Some teaching is two-way        Teachers are omniscient, teaching is one-way    
More questioning of authority in general        Less questioning of authority in general        
Figure 1
        With the change in power relationships, we may also see a change in the social structure of the polychronic  or High PDI society. As power figures are dis-empowered, their relationship to the community in general may change as well.
Enhancing Communications
We will now move from the human side of communications to the technical side and its execution. My primary concern here is how to enhance the quality of  CMC communications so that it is understandable, and so that it maximizes its potential cross-culturally. This subject applies equally to intra-cultural as well as cross-cultural communications. Communications poorly executed will have a negative effect, while the opposite will be true of high quality communications.
Text
In my review of some 75 books, research papers and articles for this paper, only one discussed the importance of textual communications, and the one that did was acquired from a search outside of either "cross-cultural communications" or "communications technology." It was selected because it specifically deals with "the influence of print on sociocultural organization and change (Kaufer & Carley 1993)." It appears that despite the fact that textual information is the most prevalent form of information, it has been overlooked as a serious area of study by individuals studying cross-cultural communications and CMC.

Textual format cannot be surpassed in the storage and transmission of data. Voice and video take up too much space if stored on video or audio tape, or stored digitally. Further, this form of communications frequently requires a wider  bandwidth for transmission, and takes more time to transmit than text. Read-write CD's and PD-CD's are making video and audio storage much more viable, but the transmission of high volumes of this type of data is still more appropriately handled via mail and package express. Text is the easiest format in which to store and retrieve data, and it is still the dominant form of global information transfer. In a nutshell,  text will be with us a long time, and it is important for us to understand its role in CMC and cross-cultural communications.

The study of the impact that print has made on human communications is not only important, but fascinating as well. As I feel that CMC is but another form of mass printing, it is important to briefly review the history of print, so as to be able develop an historical perspective and to be able to discuss the impact of the information explosion as it relates to  cross-cultural communications occurring via CMC. Kaufer and Carley (1993) did an excellent job in briefly detailing this history, as I can't improve upon it, I will quote them below:

Although printing techniques were available in China since the 3 rd century B.C. and movable type in the West since 1440, the speed of print changed little between 1440 and the last quarter of the 18th century. As late as the 18th century in Europe, the production of paper and print remained handicrafts (Innis, 1951). Paper remained, in many cases, more fragile, rougher, and harder to ink and illuminate than parchment (Reynolds & Wilson, 1968). Printing was dominated by the wooden hand press. Not until the late 18th and 19th centuries were the basic mechanisms for industrializing printing and paper making developed.
In 1790, Nicholson patented the concept of the steam-powered cylinder press and in 1810 Konig received a patent for the first implementation of a steam-driven hand press. In 1814 the introduction of the cylinder steam press with self-inking rollers increased printing speed from 300 copies per day to 1,100 per hour (McGarry, 1981, p. 47). In 12814, the Times of London put out the first newspaper from Konig's machine with a production capacity of 1,100 impressions per hour. In 1817, Konig invented a double cylinder press with a production capacity of 1,500 impressions. The next year, the Times commissioned two engineers, Applegath and Cowper, to make further improvements in Konig's invention, and by 1827, they had a double cylinder press that could produce up to 5,000 impressions per hour. By the 1830s, improvements in the steam press made possible serial fiction (publishing a book in affordable installments). It also made possible increased runs of editions. For example, runs of Dickens' Pickwick Papers grew,  over the century, from 400 to 40,000, and eventually to 100,000. Steam printing increased the production of, and reduced the price of, books in England throughout the 1830s and 1840s. The number of titles rose from 580 in the 1820s to more than 2,600 by mid-century and the average price of new books fell from 16 shillings to just over 8 shillings (Williams, 1961, pp. 158-168).
In the 1840s a new revolution in printing speed dawned with the rotary press, which linked eight or more cylinders rotating in contact with a central cylindrical print surface. An American, Richard Hoe, patented the first rotary press in 1845, and in 1847 it was used to print the Philadelphia Public ledger . Applegath,  working on a different rotary design in England, patented his new rotary machine in 1846. The rotary presses of the 1840s could handle 8,00 impressions per hour; by the 1860s, this rate had increased to 25,000 impressions. The process of creating paper by mixing wood and rag pulp was patented in 1844. Major applications for the rotary press of the 19th century were for letter press (printed matter) rather than for lithography, required for illustrations. In 1860, newspapers began to replace rags with straw, allowing for the lighter, cheaper, and thicker Sunday paper *Innis, 1951, pp. 25-26). In 1905, the first offset lithography presses went into production, which combined lithographic and rotary printing, sometimes called offset rotary. Today, modern newspapers handle upwards of 30,000 impressions per hour using offset rotary presses (Forkert, 1933; McMurtrie, 1937; Moran, 1973; Oswald, 1928; Winship, 1968).

        
What mass printing did was to take the control of knowledge away from priests, and politicians and place it in the hands of the common man. Once knowledge is disseminated in this manner, it becomes increasingly difficult for governments to control their populations. For this reason, you see today the attempt to prevent access to the Internet by Iran, China and other religious and dictatorial powers. It has been said that the down fall of the former Soviet Union was brought about by the fax machine. Whether or not this is true, there is no doubt that information is the enemy of centralized control.
The advent of the Internet and its increasingly global access has taken this dissemination of information beyond comprehensible proportions. No longer are there restrictions to information access due to limitations in the technical process of printing or the availability of paper. No longer are there delays in information transfer due to the need to send it by horseback, ship or airplane. Today, information is omnipresent and immediate. There are no limitations brought about by geography or time. The amazing production of 30,000 impressions per hour that is noted above in Kaufer & Carley's article palls in comparison to the information that is immediately available via Internet.

As an example, recently, when seeking information on the Internet about Hewlett Packard Company, my search located 112,000 sources on the subject in less than ten seconds! Further, the research articles noted in the bibliography located at the end of this paper were located through an Internet source by the name of "Electric Library," which has over 1 million research papers, articles and radio interview scripts. Including printing all 33 papers [ some 25 pages long ] for review away from the computer, the process took about two hours [ The search: ten seconds; reviewing: about fifteen minutes; & printing: about 1 ;frac12; hours ], and the cost for the service is only $10.00 per month for unlimited access.
In another example, I am associated with an on-line group of over 1500 individuals who are involved in on-line training, information transfer and education. They include educators, scientists, business people involved in communications and technical people involved in various forms of information processing and transfer. The membership is global and represents regions as far reaching as Africa, Brazil and Russia. Each day all 1500 of us receive updates about ongoing projects taking place around the globe. Information of this magnitude would have been impossible to access a few years ago without a team of full time researchers, but now it is updated daily, and is waiting on our email servers each morning. Further, this is interactive, so that any individual with access to this network can make comments, ask questions, etc. of any of the individuals members, or of the group as a whole.

The point here is that all of this data is available in textual format, and given its global accessibility and enormous base of information, the form in which the text is presented can greatly influence global cross-cultural communications. One obvious impact is the overwhelming presence of English in global communications. Because language is a mirror of a culture's reference structure, consider the potential impact of a world transferring information that does not truly represent the way that they have learned to think, understand and communicate.
        Consider, for a moment, the use of culturally bound phrases. Despite the fact that many individuals from around the world have an excellent command of English as it is spoken in North America [ as an example ], their command of culturally bound phrases appears to be virtually non existent.

I became interested in this area a number of years ago, while still living in the United States. This interest was sparked by a comment by a Lebanese born friend of mine who had lived in the United States for fifteen years and received his business degree from the University of Washington, in Seattle. [ Coincidentally, he makes his living in the printing business, and is highly successful at it.] He said that when he was a freshman, one of his professors told the class that they had to learn a certain portion of the text "by heart." My friend was at a loss as to what the textual information had to do with his heart!
I decided to conduct a brief survey of some foreign born individuals whom I knew in the Seattle area to determine what problems they had with culturally bound phrases. They were all residents of the United States and had lived there for periods ranging from eight to thirty years, and all had a good to excellent command of American English. Included were an English couple, engineer & airline representative (30 years resident); a Lebanese couple, owners of printing company (20 years); an Austrian machinist (30+ years); a Russian civil engineer (8 years); a Mexican, airline employee (educated in the American school in Mexico City and 8 years in the U.S.). The gender of the group was well balanced with three men and four women, and they were all well educated.
From James Rogers' book The Dictionary of Cliches (1985 ) which contains 2,000 entries, I selected 93 culturally bound phrases or cliches and presented them to the group noted above. Following is the list of phrases:

A-1     By the book     Go whole hog    
Ace in the hole The chips are down      Hit pay dirt    
Achille's heel  A clean slate   In the pink     
Acid test       Climb the wall  It's the pits   
Across the board        Close shave     Keep your fingers crossed       
Albatross around the neck       On cloud nine   Keep your shirt on      
All thumbs      A cock and bull story   Knuckle under   
All wet To get cold feet        Lay an egg      
All in the same boat    Come off it     Let it all hang out     
Arm's length    Cut no ice      Let sleeping dogs lie   
As the crow flies       Cut and dried   Long shot       
At loggerheads  Dark Horse      Low man on the totem pole       
Have an ax to grind     Dead to rights  Make no bones about it  
Babe in the woods       Deep Six        Millstone around the neck       
Back to square one      Dog eat dog     No skin off my nose     
Back to the drawing board       Down in the dumps       Off the wall    
Back to the salt mine   Down in the mouth       On the fence    
Bag of tricks   Draw the line at        Over a barrel   
A whole new ball of wax Drive you up the wall   Pass the buck   
Bark up the wrong tree  Dyed in the wool        Put on ice      
Bear the brunt  Eat crow        Raise the roof  
Beat around the bush    To have egg on your face        Spill the beans 
Beat a dead horse       Face the music  Stand pat       
Behind the 8-ball       A fair shake    Take it with a grain of salt    
Beside himself  Fill the bill   Tongue-in-cheek 
Betwixt and between     Fly in the Ointment     Turn the tables 
Blow your own horn      Fly-by-night    Wet blanket     
Bone of contention      Get a handle on it      White elephant  
Break the ice   Get in on the ground floor      Wild-goose chase        
Burn the midnight oil   Get it down pat Wing it 

These particular phrases were selected because I felt that they were commonly used in our social and business language and assumed would easily be understood by most native American English speakers with at least a high school education. Subsequently, since living in Tokyo, I also frequently hear these phrases spoken by U.S. business people when speaking with their Japanese associates, and am frequently called upon by my Japanese colleagues to interpret them as well.
        I was surprised when I found that most of the words on the above list were not known by any of the individuals in the group. Further, the one's that were known, were not known collectively, but rather, only by one or two individuals in each case. While this exercise was not conducted in a truly scientific manner, nor did it consist of a significantly viable sample size, it does elude to the potential for misunderstanding when dealing with textual information on a global basis and suggests that further study in this area is necessary.
The importance of face-to-face communications

Since the company at which I work is technically oriented, much of our daily communications deals with the need to transfer technical information between our Japanese employees and our global agents, customers and subsidiaries. The transferring and sharing of technical information is difficult enough when it is done within the same cultural and linguistic context; however, the addition of cross-cultural and distance variables greatly complicates the process. At times, it seems as though there is no substitute for face-to-face communications, as much of the subliminal communications that we discussed above appears to be missing via CMC; and if it isn't missing, but exists at a more esoteric level as I suggested above, it won't normally be consciously apparent to the individual receiving the information.
A good example of communications problems that can occur in cross-cultural communications that may not be possible to correct via CMC took place when an English speaking Japanese engineer by the name of Yoshida, and I were working on a very important presentation concerning a whole new technological paradigm that our company was developing. The success of this project would change the entire direction of our company, and it was important for us to explain the technology and its implications to our top international executives at our annual Global Strategy Meeting.

        Yoshida-san and I had more than twenty hours invested in developing the presentation, as we were learning the technology as we developed the presentation. We frequently work together and the process was going smoothly without any problems ... until we came to the following page in our presentation :

While the above slide should appear clear and understandable, Yoshida-san was hesitant about some aspect of the slide. This surprised me, as much of our presentation was highly technical and I felt that if there were going to be problems, they would be in the technical areas. But, we bogged down and it took over 1 ;frac12; hours for us to agree on the correct wording for this one slide.
The Japanese have a way of hedging when faced with something that they don't agree with. Frequently, it is undetectable to those uninitiated with their culture, but for one who lives here, the signs are very apparent. Yoshida-san had a problem, but couldn't come right out and say what it was, despite the fact that we are friends and work together frequently.  Finally, after going through the wording on the page innumerable times, I could see Yoshida-san's hesitation, albeit almost undetectable, on the word "Change," which I italicized and underlined above for the sake of our discussion here. After questioning him about it, he agreed that he had a problem with it, because all of the items listed below it really didn't need changing... entirely . He felt that the word "Change" reflected negatively on the company and didn't want to use it.
        The solution to the above problem came from our physical proximity and my familiarity with their culture and communications patterns. Detecting a problem of this sort via CMC would be very difficult indeed.


The need for excellent organization of data on CMC
Despite the fact that CMC is an excellent medium to use for the fast and thorough transmission and retrieval of information, organization can be a problem, particularly when dealing with ongoing projects that involve distributed membership. This became quite clear during my study of on-line training and education at the University of London where a class of fifty individuals, distributed around the world, were expected to work cooperatively on-line. Because of inadequate organizational methods, the management of all of the data became increasingly difficult as the course progressed.

Consider a normal face-to-face conversation. Ideas are presented and the individuals hearing them assimilate them into their thinking. If a new idea comes along, they assimilate the new idea or reject it. In either case, the spoken idea does not exist in any specific place, it only resides in the person's mind in some fashion, or it has been discarded.

However, ideas in cyberspace  "physically" exist somewhere. Usually in a file of some sort. When new ideas are presented, they are not really assimilated by the computer to represent a new or modified line of thinking, but are, instead, stored as a new file. Consequently, each idea "physically" adds to the content being stored, and this can very quickly get out of control. A mentally assimilated idea needn't grow, it only needs to change form, to shape itself to conform with the new thinking. But, cyberspace ideas occupy an ever increasing amount of space; and the management of these ideas and the space they take takes a lot of effort and organizational skills. A great fault of CMC is that old and no longer useful ideas or information don't seem to ever get discarded and new information of value is not automatically assimilated or refined. Hence we need to create larger storage devices in which to keep them. When it comes time to retrieve this information, or to try to make sense of it, it becomes very difficult. As the global use of CMC increases, this problem adds to the other problems that already exist concerning the cross-cultural transfer of information. There is no question that the need to organize and manage this data will provide a whole new discipline in our newly acquired age of information transfer.
Presentation of Data
        One way of dealing with the growing amount of information is to try to develop new ways of presenting it. Unfortunately, this topic does not seem to be incorporated in most school curriculums. In his book: Envisioning Information , Edward R. Tufte (Tufte 1990) does an excellent job of graphically showing better ways of displaying information that contains large amounts of data. Much of this data is not new, just undiscovered by many of us. Perhaps the best graphical display of data ever presented was created by Charles Joseph Minard in his Tableaux Graphiques et Cartes Figuratives de M. Minard 1845-1869 .  Following is a simple representation of Minard's graph. It displays the entire march of Napoleon's invasion of Russia and the viewer can determine:

.The progressive distance traveled by Napoleon's army.
.All major cities & towns in route to Moscow.
.The temperatures along the way.
.The elevations along the march.
.The attrition of his army during his advance and retreat.

2 Napoleon, War of 1812

This graph is an excellent way of transmitting data either within one's culture or cross-culturally because it displays a lot of information in a simple format, but is not high in graphic content, which takes up computer storage space and slows transmission. Further, there is an absolute minimum of textual data which could be misunderstood.
I have spent many years in developing new techniques in displaying business analysis data. With time and effort excellent presentations can be created which significantly improve the comprehension by the group in assimilating large amounts of data.

There are a wide variety of methods of displaying information that is neither text nor graphic intensive, nor high in cultural context. These methods of data transfer need to be explored and taught to enhance and control the transmission, storage, retrieval and understanding of information.

Conclusion
This paper covers a lot of territory and raises a number of questions. It reviews the critical elements of human communications, and relates these elements to cross-cultural information transfer via computer mediated communications systems. It asked if CMC helps or hinders global communications? If it presents a platform for the improvement in the transfer of data cross-culturally? If it will reduce or increase the potential for tension and misunderstanding, and what is the best way of utilizing this new medium in cross-cultural communications?

In answer to these questions, we can see that CMC both helps and hinders global communications. It helps it by vastly increasing the access to information, but hinders it in terms of information management and its dependence upon an English language information system which may interfere with the perception of non-native English speakers in their understanding of the data.
CMC does present a platform for the improvement in the transfer of data cross-culturally simply because it offers so many sources to which the individual can turn for help and information.
It should improve the potential for a reduction in tensions in some sectors, as in the greatly increased interaction among communicators that tends to exclude reference to age, gender, religion or nationality in the vast majority of communications and promote great awareness and understanding of other individuals. But, it will create tensions by intruding upon and influencing change in local cultures.
The question of  "what is the best way of  utilizing this new medium of communications is much more difficult to answer. CMC is an emerging technology. It is developing at a speed almost beyond comprehension. Today's answers are tomorrow's buggy whips. The answer to this question, I feel, will be found in its execution.
In addition to the above questions, other questions arose during the development of this paper. Such as the influence of text on kinesic comprehension and the use of multiple representational systems to improve comprehension in communications and synchronization in human communications. Also questioned is what is the nature of charisma and its potential in improving communications?
The dilemma of data management within the CMC environment was also discussed, with the suggestion that new methods of displaying data be developed to simplify the process of displaying large amounts of data in a simple format, and suggested  a serious need for further investigation, training and  education in this area.
As noted in the introduction, each of the areas that is discussed is worthy of an in depth review in its own right. However, by breaking this information down into component parts, it would not be possible to gain an understanding and appreciation of the magnitude the global information explosion. This explosion encompasses information systems, culture and technology. It is new and exciting, but it is also highly complex. It has the potential of transcending cross-cultural misunderstandings, but the magnitude of its capability can also be confusing and subject to mismanagement. We are in a new era that demands new research, education  and understanding in order to master it.