People from different cultural backgrounds have different ways of sending and receiving
messages and different communicative norms. This leads to errors of interpretation
and understanding, and wrong assumptions about the other person are made. The
underlying reason is that people tend to use the language, assumptions and standards
of their own culture to assess members of other cultures.
This was the case when an Indian business woman who had prepared a proposal in
English for microfinance was turned down by the foreign NGO concerned. The expatriate
manager who conducted the interview recommended that her application should
be refused because of her badly written application letter, and he was not impressed by
her interview performance. But the real reason why the application was unsuccessful

was that the expatriate manager, using the standards of his own culture, was insensitive
to the communicative expectations of the applicant.
In Indian culture, establishing a personal relationship precedes any business agreement.
But the interviewer failed to take into account the cultural context and, during
the interview, immediately started to fire questions at the woman. As a result, the
woman felt tense and uncomfortable throughout the interview and this was reflected
in her rambling and disorganized answers.

1 Why was the woman’s application unsuccessful?
2 How should the manager have conducted the interview?