Intercultural Communication & Groups Com 330 August 21, 2012 Dr. David Mezzacappa

Different cultures can be a challenge for anyone, when groups come together they work together and set aside the differences. Sometimes even different cultures make a team even stronger. Everyone thinks differently but may have a great idea that others may not have thought about, there are always Advantages and disadvantages in these types of settings that will also be discussed.
History teaches us that culture always changes because of internal and external influences. Communication between different cultures is a major importance to many people’s lives especially in Today’s world. Both culture and communication have evolved considerably and have become interdependent of one another. Intercultural communication is used in a team or group setting it is a group of people with different cultural backgrounds that have to learn how to communicate, interact and understand each other. Sometimes coming to a conclusion can become a conflict or it can become a difficult task because of the different minds that are coming together. In addition, cultural identities are associated in the larger society with certain power positions, such that some cultural identity groups have greater power, prestige, and status than others (e.g., Ridgeway and Berger, 1986; Nkomo, 1992;Ragins, 1997). Expanding diversity in the workplace or a school environment is as a good way to input fresh ideas into an otherwise stagnant environment, and incorporating new perspectives can help members tackle problems from a number of different angles. Socially different group members do more than simply introduce new viewpoints or approaches, diverse groups outperformed other types of groups not because of of all the new ideas, but because diversity triggered more careful information processing that is absent in homogeneous groups. “Generally speaking, people would prefer to spend time with others who agree with them rather than disagree with them,” ("“generally Speaking, People Would Prefer To Spend Time With Others Who Agree With Them Rather Than Disagree With Them,â€�", Oct 2010).
There are a few reasons its great to have diversity in a Groups, group decisions help to combine individual strengths of the group members and helps the decision-making process. A group decision gains greater group commitment since everyone has his/her share in the decision-making process. It is a strong sense of team spirit amongst the group members and helps the group to think together in terms of success as well as failure. “Researchers find that diverse work groups often have more trouble initially, but over time become more productive than homogeneous groups.” (Steven A. Beebe, John T. Masterson University Of Phoenix, 2009 Pearson Education). As well as having advantages there is also the disadvantages to having a diverse team. Individual opinions can be biased or affected with their own opinions that can hinder the process. One of the major disadvantages is that it is more time-consuming than the process of individual decision-making. It takes longer to be finalized since there are many opinions to be considered and valued. In case of authoritarian or minority group decision-making, the people whose opinions are not considered tend to be left out from the decision-making process and hence the team spirit ceases to grow. Sometimes these differences seem hard to get over, but when a conflict triggers strong feelings, a deep personal need is at the core of the