Equality/ hierarchy: This is one of my most favorite aspects of culture scales. When eastern and western business cultures meet, this is one aspect that definitely comes into play. Hierarchy is deep rooted in eastern business culture (EBC), while the western business culture (WBC) highly practices equality. When a person from WBC works in an EBC environment, the people at the work place might misinterpret the person’s demeanor (like freedom of expression, treating the persons of all cadres equal) to being disrespectful. A person from EBC would not expect subordinates to offer suggestions or disagree with superiors. Looking the other way round, a person from WBC would have a tough time to get used to communicating with superiors at ease and taking suggestions from subordinates. However, keeping in mind, all the differences between work cultures and taking measures to cope up with the odds would resolve the misinterpretations.
Direct/indirect: Persons belonging to different ends of this scale, might have a lot of misunderstandings in their perceptions of tone of conversation. I personally put a lot of effort in conveying the tone of message, when it comes to indirect communication. Because, written communication could convey the message, but might not be in the right tone. There is always a danger that precise and right words which are actually sound polite while discussing in person, might seem impolite when put into a written mail, or any other indirect form of