A CRITICAL INCIDENT: TRANSMITTING INFORMATION ON TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS*

“Adjustment to Japan has been much easier than I thought it would be,” Karl Ruch told his wife about a year after their move from Germany. Karl had been sent by an automobile company in Frankfurt to see if he could establish production facilities for transmission systems that would be built in Japan and imported into Germany. Having been told that negotiations take a long time in Japan, he was not disappointed that it had taken a year for a major meeting to be set up with his key Japanese counterparts. But the Japanese had studied the proposal and were ready to discuss it this morning, and Karl was excited as he left for work. At the meeting, people discussed matters that were already in the written document that had been circulated beforehand.

Suddenly, it occurred to Karl that there was an aspect of quality-control inspection that he had left out of the proposal. He knew that the Japanese should know of this concern because it was important to the success of the project. Karl asked the senior person at the meeting if he could speak, apologized for not having already introduced the quality-control concern he was about to raise, and then went into his addition to the proposal. His presentation was met with silence, and the meeting was later adjourned without a decision having been made on the whole manufacture-importation program. Because Karl thought that a decision would be made that day, he was puzzled.

What was the reason for Karl’s difficulty?

*Source: Adapted from K. Cushner and R. Brislin (1996). Intercultural Interactions: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

INTERACTIVE PROBES
(Ask yourself and probe your classmates’ reactions)

(NOTE: See “Chapter 3 Class Handouts” for a printable form containing these questions.)

Click the number with the best analysis and write down the reason for your choice.

1. Karl had brought up quality control, an issue about which the Japanese are very proud. The Japanese thought that Karl was questioning their commitment to quality control.

2. Expecting a decision in a year was still unrealistic; Karl should have been more patient.

3. Karl had brought up an issue on which there had not been prior discussion among the people somehow involved in that special issue.

4. Karl had asked the senior person about speaking; in actuality, there was a younger person present who was in charge to whom Karl should have deferred.