Teaching Business Communication Skills in a Corporate Environment
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Hofstede and Hofstede’s value orientations Hofstede and Hofstede (2007) take into account such notions as power distance, collectivism and individualism, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance and femininity versus masculinity. All the abovementioned features determine language learning. For instance, persons representing the uncertainty avoidance culture may be reluctant to accept novel teaching methods. Solomon and Schell’s culture classification Similar factors are discussed by Solomon and Schell (2009): hierarchy and egalitarianism, group orientation, relations, communication styles, time orientation, change tolerance and the balance between work and home life. Baumer’s culture types Baumer (in Kreyenberg 2008: 171) divides cultures into linearactive cultures, which favour planning, adequate organization and dataorientation, multi-active-cultures, which deal with many issues at the same time, and reactive cultures, praising such values as respect, empathy and courtesy being of top priority. As we can suspect, those from multi-active cultures will perform several tasks at the same time, which can make the teacher, unaware of this cultural aspect, nervous. Gesteland’s culture typology Gesteland (2000) proposes the division into transactional and partnership cultures, expressive and non-expressive cultures, polychromic and monochromic cultures, as well as ceremonial and non-ceremonial cultures. Anyone teaching a representative of a polychromic culture should not be angry when the student is fifteen minutes late. Cameron and Quinn’s culture types A different typology of organizational cultures is offered by Cameron and Quinn (2003), who discuss such cultures as clan (with cooperation and engagement being very important), adhocracy (innovation and vision), hierarchy and market (competition and task orientation). As far as teaching is concerned, we can estimate that those belonging to the adhocracy culture will favour innovative teaching methods, whereas representatives of the hierarchy culture can find role-plays (which treat participants equally) quite problematic.