Intercultural Communication

Intercultural Communication

The world has become a smaller place than it used to be. This is due to the use of computers, telephones, and the internet. When something happens on one side of the world the other side of the world can be informed within a very short of the occurrence. Just recently, a tsunami hit many countries shorelines and the news service had reports of it on web sites and television stations within hours of the wave hitting the shore. This new era in technology has enabled humans to talk across state and country lines like we are right next door to them. I recently made a service call, concerning my home’s DSL service, and the technician on the phone was located in India.

I work for Hewlett-Packard’s manufacturing department, here in Houston, where the computers I support are shipped all over the world. The service I perform at Hewlett-Packard is to provide consultation services to sales teams, customers, and factory personnel. Most of my services are provided through phone conference calls and the email system. My position can be a lot of fun, but it can offer many challenges also. One of the challenges is working with other countries and their sales teams. When I first started this job manufacturing had what they called regions like: AP (Asia Pacific), LA (Latin America), Japan, Canada, and Europe. The Latin America region consisted of Mexico and South America. South America was broken into many smaller sub-regions like: Brazil, Venezuela, and Chile to name a few.

My intercultural communication issue happened when I was having a conference call with a sales manger and his team from Mexico. During the conference call I kept referring to this sale as being for the Latin America region. Part of my job is to make sure they understood the shipping and customs procedures to make sure the computer did not get hung up anywhere in the system. I referred to the deal being shipped to Latin America one to many times and the sales manger got very upset at me, and said “We are not part of Latin America, we are Mexico.” From a manufacturing, customs, and shipping perspective, there was no difference between Mexico and Latin America. I knew they were different as a people and as a culture, but the procedures to ship a product to either country were the same. As the conference call progressed I mention Latin America region a couple of more times not really thinking that the sales manger was taking great offense to this reference. The next thing I knew he let me know in a very stern voice that I had better not refer to them as Latin America again and, if I did, we would be having a meeting with my manager. It finally sunk in that I was crossing a line with him, and was being insulting towards him and his culture. He misunderstood my point of reference and took the reference personally. I had not meant to be insulting toward him or his culture.

The next day I called him to figure out what went wrong and why he got so upset. We talked and he told me that Mexico was not part of Latin America. Mexico was an independent nation with its own history and Latin American was not part of it. To him Latin America was the countries within South America. I had to explain to him that I was only referring to them as Latin America on a procedural basis. He agreed to forgive my ignorance as long as I did not refer to his team as being part of Latin America.

During the research of this paper, I found a web site called “Mexico Matters.” This web site places one possible insight