The Textbook Didn’t Mention That: An Intercultural Experiential Exercise in Business Communication

Abstract

Although many global MBA programs teach intercultural communication, what happens when the method for teaching that concept becomes mostly experiential? To answer that question, the authors took two very similar classes, both composed of working adults, a Business Communications course in Germany and a Managerial Communications course in the United States, and joined the students into a project that spread over several weeks and had a purposely vague deliverable. While the students believed that the policies and presentations were the most important aspect of the project, the actual aim of this exercise was for them to learn about intercultural communication by doing it. Based on weekly debriefs and a final debrief, group presentations, and individual papers, we concluded that students had increased their understanding of intercultural communication far beyond what they would have gained by merely studying intercultural theory.