Page 292 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

270 Peter Franklin

Table 1 summarizes the differences and difficulties reported by the British
managers and their underlying regularities. Those reported by the German man-
agers, and the regularities possibly underlying them, can be found in Table 2.

Table 1. Differences between German and British managers and difficulties in com-
munication as reported by British managers and possible source of the difficulty
as derived from Hofstede and Hall

Reported as Reported as Possible source
a difference a difficulty
Predicted differences
specialization yes no higher uncertainty-
avoidance
process-orientation yes yes higher uncertainty-
avoidance
rule-orientation yes no higher uncertainty-
avoidance
data-orientation, yes no higher uncertainty-
precision avoidance, low con-
text communication
directness yes no low context com-
munication
planning no yes higher uncertainty-
avoidance

Reported differences
formality yes yes
surnaming yes yes
use of titles yes yes
German-speaking, yes no
multilingual