Examples Of Cross Cultural Conflict In The Movie Outsourced

Decent Essays
In today’s increasingly diverse world, intercultural communication is very common in our workplaces. Being able to communicate and work with people across cultures is becoming more important all the time.( Louise Rasmussen). Thus when people of different cultures interact, they usually operate on cultural norms that govern intercultural communication along with different perspectives and approaches which often make communication challenging. The film ‘Outsourced’ highlights how communication between employees can be challenging within the American and Indian Cultures focusing more on the different cultural values in both cultures like power distance, individualism and collectivism, high and low context, etc. The main character, Todd is an …show more content…
In the article, ‘Cross-Cultural Conflict’ ‘conflict occurring between individuals or social groups that are separated by cultural boundaries can be considered “cross-cultural conflict.”because communication breaks down in the face of profound and consequential cultural differences.’ (Kevin Avruch). In India,workers reflect a high context culture. For example,when Todd asks Puro if he can take a long trip to recover a shipment that has been sent to a wrong location, Puro declines the request in a very indirect manner “No problem,” he says, “But first I must sleep for two hours’. Todd’s straight-talking style that reflects a low-context culture where communicators state their views and desires directly.In the film, he did not hide his displeasure of the call centre in Gharapuri. and addressed the work ethics in the office as ‘a disaster’. During Todd’s first day of work, he confronts the Indian workers by saying, ‘the high customer complaints is a cultural thing and things go faster when customers feel that they are talking to a native English speaker’. Another example I feel highlights why differences in both cultures can be challenging is language barriers coupled with heavy accents and mispronunciations, an example is when Asha demonstrates how ‘Internet’ is pronounced in India versus how its pronounced in America. Having an accent myself, it becomes very difficult to have a lasting communication with others without getting interrupted with questions like, ‘Could you repeat that again,? and ‘I’m sorry I don 't understand what you mean,’ even though I speak English, I speak it differently like the Indian employees in this

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