ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Social and demographic factors

A multinational manager from a low-context culture negotiates with a counterpart from a high-context culture. The manager is frustrated that the counterpart gives few explicit statements and relies on relationships, tone and shared understanding. Which statement best explains the likely difficulty?

High-context communication conveys much of its meaning through context, relationships and non-verbal cues, while a low-context communicator expects meaning to be spelled out explicitly. The mismatch of expectations explains the manager's frustration; it is not simply a language problem, and high-context cultures value relationships.

1. ALow-context communication relies on implicit cues, so the manager is misreading explicit contract terms
2. BHigh-context communication conveys much meaning through context and relationships, whereas the manager expects meaning to be stated explicitlyCorrect
3. CBoth cultures rely on explicit written messages, so the difficulty must be linguistic
4. DHigh-context cultures avoid building relationships before doing business