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Differences and difficulties in intercultural management interaction 267

2. The case study

This chapter aims to supply preliminary, tentative answers to these questions by
referring to an example of intercultural management reality captured in a small
1
qualitative case study of 26 German and British human resources managers
working together in the post-merger integration process subsequent to the take-
over by the German parent company of its new British subsidiary company. The
data discussed concerns the differences in the profiles, communication styles
and management behaviour noted by the German managers about their British
colleagues and vice versa, and the difficulties reported by the German managers
about working with their British colleagues and vice versa. The self-report data
was collected in a questionnaire using open questions and in focus-group activ-
ities prior to the designing and conducting of an intercultural training workshop
for the managers concerned.
It should be emphasized that this is a small case study which yields a single
snapshot of a complex reality and which makes no claims to completeness or
conclusiveness in its description of Anglo-German management interaction.
Rather the discussion of the data is to be understood more as a criticism of the
prevailing research base and the (mis)use to which some of it is put in intercul-
tural communication training in business and management. It should also be re-
garded as a suggestion for a more promising approach to designing targeted
cross-cultural management communication training and indeed as an argument
for more interactionist-based and self-report research insights.
Before examining the data yielded by the case study to answer question 1
above with respect to Anglo-German management interaction, we should per-
haps recall what differences between British and German value-orientations can
be derived from the Hofstede study and what differences between British and
German communication styles can be derived from Hall’s work.
The conventionally assumed differences lie firstly in the areas of German
low-context communication (Hall and Hall 1990: 7) contrasted with British
higher-context communication. According to Hall, high-context communi-
cation is characterized by large amounts of information which is not “coded, ex-
plicit [or] transmitted” (Hall 1976: 79) but is assumed or known to be shared and
therefore accessible and understood by those involved in the communication
process. This stored information, which Hall refers to as “context”, plays a large
part in high-context communication. Extreme high-context communication is
located at one end of a continuum, and at the other end we find extreme low-
context communication, in which “the mass of the message is vested in the ex-
plicit code” (Hall 1976: 79).
Low context communication is typically characterized by features such as a
reliance on words rather than non-verbal signals to communicate, an emphasis
on detail and exactness resulting in literalness, and verbal self-disclosure and di-