Politics of colonialism in intercultural communication: Case of Indian managers

Abstract

The objective of the study is to analyze the communicative experiences of Indian managers with other culture interactants from a geopolitical perspective of colonialism. The authors collected data from 21 Indian managers working in diverse industries with experience of working in multinational environments. The study discovered that contrary to the thesis of cultural distance that presupposes ease of communication with culturally proximal countries, Indian managers voice their predilection for working with the culturally distant West. This study contributes to intercultural communication literature by presenting an interpretation of such communication through a geopolitical perspective that recognizes colonialism and asymmetric power relations of global value chains (GVCs) as factors intersecting with intercultural discourses. It is in this aspect that studies focusing on intercultural business communication should go beyond the bounds of conformity to the essentialist cultural paradigm of Hofstede, Hall and Trompenaars to explore the complexities that underlie interpersonal conversations in multinational transactions beyond the stipulations of a semiotic focus. An important implication of this study is that training for intercultural business communication needs to go beyond sensitization to language and semiotics to address the evaluative compulsions that are triggered owing to years of subconscious conditioning by the potent geo-political and historic forces of colonization.