September 17 – In Class Group Discussion

  • Sarita Lee, Jason Wu, and Lorena Moreira.

What challenges (or strengths you can utilize based on your experiences) do you see on the way to conducting an ethnographic study in the cross-cultural or cross-language business context? How do you plan to overcome them?

 

Challenges:

  • Recognize the interviewee cultural background to understand and lead the discussion. It is even more challenging when you are not familiar with other culture involved in the process.
  • Language: when there is no translation for specific expressions/words among the languages involved.
  • When the interviewer in a non-native speaker of the languageĀ placed in the interview: lack of confidence/ courage to lead the discussion
  • When the interviewee in a non-native speaker of the languageĀ placed in the interview: core interview content may be missed

Overcome:

  • Be prepared for the interview: research about the theme, possible topics, plan the questions and share them in advance with the interviewee (so she/he can also be more confident about the process), and cultural background of the interviewee.
  • Understand both positions, yours and interviewees, in the process
  • Be open-minded and have patience
  • Different from a more casual discussion, the personal feelings, and beliefs must be placed behind the interview influence so the main goal of the interview can be accomplished

 

 

 

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