Edward T. Hall communication context in Organizational diversification

1. Q. How halls communication context can be applied in the diversified
work place?
Ans: Organization is the workplace of various tribes, age, sex, culture,
tradition and many more things. We cannot expect the same psychology of
employees all over our organization. Although we can minimize the diversity
from the stage of recruitment but we cannot completely ignore it. Thus we
can have a diversified work place in every organization. It is one of the
major issues of the managers to maintain harmony in the work place. And
Cultural context is one of the major bases for diversification in the work
place because we can find people for different cultural background in the
same place. Cultures tend to reveal workers themselves in various situations
and react towards them. Business practices are directly affected by deeply-
held cultural attitudes toward work, power, trust, wealth and way of
communication by the employees. Communication is the main foundation of
business, since business is a collective activity and Communication styles vary
largely all over the globe, and these contribute in the formation of business
styles.
The most useful concept for understanding these cultural differences
in business is Edward T. Hall’s (1976) distinction of low-context and high-
context cultures. It explains much about how negotiation proceeds, how
agreements are specified, and how workers are managed in the organization.
Edward Hall, anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher, explains about
the two different cultures distinguished on the basis of the role of the
whole situation, background, or environment connected to an event, a
situation, or an individual in communication. He explains how business
practices are reflected by low-context and high-context characteristics.
Low cultural context worker are direct and straight forward. The
information and meaning they want to forward are explicitly stated in the

2. message. They prefer individualisms over groupism. They Value direct verbal
interaction and is less able to read nonverbal expressions or the body
languages of the speaker. Cultures in western European rely more heavily on
low context communication. These include Australia, Canada, New Zealand,
and the United States, as well as much of Europe believes in low -context
communication. On the other hand, people from high context communication
are opposite of the low context one. They make belief of the way we are
behaving or thinking and predict meaning and information. The messages are
less explicitly stated directly. They value more group sense. They Values
indirect verbal interaction and is more able to read nonverbal expressions.
In high context communication, the message cannot be understood without a
great deal of background information. Most of the Asian countries are from
high context communication background. Japan, china, Korea, Germany and
many other countries follows high context culture.
As we know now, these two cultural people are completely facing
towards opposite direction and managing them is a very much difficult task.
So managers should be very much sensitive in dealing in between these two
types. If the boss is from high context and the lower level employees from
low context culture, there may be high chance of the birth of conflicts
between them. Employees may directly express whatever he/she may be
feeling which can directly affect the psychology of the boss. Similarly if the
boss is explaining or expressing his thoughts about anything good or anything
wrong in the organization the employees may feel it very difficult to
understand what actually his boss maybe trying to let him know, because the
boss may not be saying it directly or in the way the employee wants to listen
about the problem. And in the same way if the boss is from low context and
the employees are from high context, there may again occur similar kind of
conflicts in the organization. The boss might tell anything directly, either
good or bad, which can bring the outcome of dissatisfaction among
employees in the organization and it can result in the employees grievances

3. and as these unsatisfied employees cannot express their dissatisfaction
directly and though if they try to express their dissatisfaction even then
the boss may not be able to understand what actually the problem is, due the
way he delivered his unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Therefore these two
contexts of cultural communication must be studied well in organization.
The low context and high context cultural people also differ in making
contracts. The low context societies want to perform every activity with
regard to every detail or showing great care and completeness. Even if they
are renting a car for a day they may require four pages of fine print to spell
out how to deal with every possible future event that cannot be predicted
with certainty. Once a contract is signed, there is no flexibility in the terms
unless both parties agree to renegotiate. If a party fails to deliver, the legal
system is expected to enforce compliance. But in case of high context It is
not necessary to write everything (or perhaps anything) down, because
mutual understanding and a handshake is sufficient. When there is a written
contract, it may be more a memorandum of understanding than a binding
legal document. Because the terms are not certain or definite, there is plan
for adjustment as the situation develops. As for compliance, the parties are
more likely to rely on a pre-existing trust relationship than a legal system.
Thus a department managers in different departments and these two
different cultures may find problem in dealing every deals and making every
contracts and so with the workers. Low context cultural people takes time as
a money whereas high context cultural people takes time as a relationship.
Similarly high context cultural person are very much individualistic, they only
prefers their own benefits rather caring about what other thinks but high
context cultural person cares about other’s feeling and what other thinks
about them in every step they take.
Since organization is the home of different cultural context oriented
employees and thus every employee must have knowledge about both aspect
of the cultural background and how to deal with them. If someone is from

4. high context culture he should be encouraged indirectly and his mistakes and
problems should be delivered to them in their own high cultural context way
so that they may be able to understand what actually is happening and they
must not feel they are being dominated. They should be told through various
methods using body languages and other similar meaning ways and praising
them too. But if we are handling low context cultural background societies
we must face them directly and point out about their problems directly and
let them deal about it. As well as if want to listen towards them, we must be
very attentive and curious to every way the high context cultural people is
saying and his body languages are showing; And we must not feel any kind of
problem with the way a low context cultural people sharing their views. They
way they say directly we must not take it in an offensive way. Thus we can us
hall’s communication context in diversified workplace by knowing each
other’s cultural context; we must have knowledge about one’s own culture
and the cultural background of other employees too.