Using Scenarios and Vignettes in Cross-Cultural Business Communication Instruction.

VIGNETTES OR SCENARIOS are particularly effective tools for instruction in cross-cultural business communication and negotiations. Scenarios are short descriptions of situations which in themselves illustrate a conflict or concept sufficiently to provoke the reader or viewer into self-recognition.

Vignettes are the filmed enactment of such scenarios. Because scenarios are short, they can readily fit into even fairly crowded training sessions or classroom schedules. Scenarios frequently illustrate very specific cross-cultural business communication principles. In this respect, they serve the same function as a story that a trainer or professor might use to bring a particular issue to life. However, scenarios differ from such simple anecdotes by provoking an active participation from the training participant or student.

Scenarios vs. Case Studies

In this respect, scenarios bear considerable similarity to the more traditional Harvard case study model. The scenario as an educational medium shares with case studies an ability to sharpen participants' skillsets and remove them from the more traditional educational realm of abstract models or strategies. Fulmer (1992) has described as the central goal of the case-method approach "provid[ing] participants with opportunity to develop analytical, decision-making, and communication skills. Specifically, skills of analysis, including learning how to ask the right questions, decision making, and persuasion are honed in a good case-method class" (p. 33). Fulmer's explanation could equally be describing the objectives of a good scenario. Like case studies, scenarios also have no specific right answer: because scenarios and case studies both attempt to stimulate thought about the process of analysis rather than a specific set of "do's" and "don't's," multiple solutions are possible; since many of these solutions ar e equally applicable, no "right answer" exists. Indeed, trainers or instructors who see a single solution when faced with a scenario or a case study should probably reject that solution as a less useful consideration. A good scenario and case study, in short, should allow room for creative solutions.

Yet scenarios differ from case studies in several important ways. First, scenarios are significantly shorter than case studies. The traditional Harvard case study is comprised, at a minimum, of two to three full pages and can indeed easily encompass dozens of pages, because the case study' covers a much broader frame of reference than the scenario. By contrast, because the scenario focuses on a very specific behavioral conflict or difference, it brings to life concepts that are much narrower in scope. For example, a scenario may focus on the ways in which cross-cultural issues may arise in the circulating of a seven-page document in a meeting (such as a tentative contract, position statement, or, for that matter, even a case-study). A scenario focused on such a small segment of a meeting could nonetheless inspire discussion on the difficulty of reading documents in a second language, the way in which the written word vs. the spoken word is viewed across cultures, the variations of expected formats for differ ent written media, or a host of similar issues. These issues, all important, would unlikely be the main focus of a case study, even if such a scenario were actually included in the case study. The issues in such a case study would more likely include the nature of the meeting, the strategy in the circulated document's proposal, and so forth, To a large extent, case studies are interested in a macroanalytical analysis of a situation, and a case study that focuses on the possible reading of a specific set of behaviors or actions is actually best described as a long scenario.

Next, case studies are generally based on a specific business situation that has already taken place; while this is often the case with scenarios, it need not be so. For example, because the actions in scenarios are so limited, their subjects rely less on the facts surrounding the environment in which the situation takes place. In the scenario of circulating a long document in a formal meeting, one need only know that the meeting is formal and that the attendees come from more than one cultural and linguistic background in order to begin to find something applicable in teaching the material. That the meeting took place at a specific company facing a specific business challenge is, for the scenario, secondary. In contrast, for the case study the details of the specific company and its larger challenge are primary; the cross-cultural difference in behavior is secondary.

Finally, scenarios serve as effective means of describing embarrassing behavior before it has taken place. By keeping a scenario hypothetical or at least anonymous, no individual feels embarrassed. This said, scenarios, like case studies, need grounding in actual situations. The difference between them rests in the degree of detail needed to make the scenario useful in instruction.

Precedent of Using Scenarios in the Field of Business Ethics

Scenarios are useful in a host of situations and may be particularly useful for intercultural business communication. in recent years, however, scenarios have found their greatest popularity in business ethics instruction, indeed, several recent empirical studies on ethics (Premeaux & Mondy, 1993; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1999) have used respondents' reactions to selected scenarios, rather than more abstract questions, as the source of their queries. Scenarios are particularly useful for intercultural business communication instruction for much the same reason they are so useful in the study of ethics: whether discussing ethics or cross-cultural behavioral differences, those who participate in a class or training seminar may lack requisite familiarity with the central issues involved. In the case of ethics, one who has not faced an ethical dilemma may well never have thought through what such dilemmas might entail; in the case of cross-cultural business communication, the behavior addressed is, by its nature, forei gn to many who participate in the training or class.

Scenarios as Tools for International Business Communication Instruction

Scenarios provide some sense of what business behavior is likely to entail in national settings unfamiliar to the trainee. In the case of private sector training, for example, few people who are themselves German or who already know Germany well take a cross-cultural training seminar about Germany. Rather, the employee facing an expatriate assignment or the manager about to enter into a German joint venture is the more likely participant. Such participants would like to have a sense of what it would be like to interact with Germans in a business setting; many students may have not only never been to Germany but never met a German. Scenarios are well suited to providing at least a partial feeling for what a business interaction with Germans might be like.

Scenarios are equally useful to intercultural business communication as a tool for fighting stereotyping. Because scenarios emphasize a process for analyzing specific behaviors with multiple interpretations, it makes it more difficult for individuals to categorize behavior as a list of norms and taboos. Returning to the example of the long document circulated in the meeting, for instance, one can list a series of relatively useless norms and taboos: don't expect second-language readers to read as quickly or with as much comprehension as first language readers; don't circulate documents that are not on the agenda in this or that country (or conversely, expect such documents to be circulated in other countries); format a business proposal in this way in this business culture. The list can go on. Yet this list is exactly the sort of practice that you would not want to employ in a scenario discussion. Instead, the scenario allows individuals to analyze the specific situation of the document in the meeting. Rathe r than a list of "do's" and "don't's," the scenario acts as a means of raising questions so that the participants reach a series of analytical judgments based on how an individual would or did likely respond in this scenario.

Conclusion

For all these reasons, many professors and trainers regularly use scenarios to instruct others in cross-cultural business communication. However, until now very few of these scenarios have received publication or been shared on a wide scale. One hopes that this situation will soon change. Indeed, to address this situation, several leading experts in the field, including Deborah Valentine, William Chapel, and Linda Beamer, are organizing a collection of such scenarios. Additionally, all of us involved in teaching or training in intercultural or international business communication should make an effort to share such useful scenarios among one another and with those new to the field.

References

Fulmer, W. E. (1992). Using cases in management development programmes. Journal of Management Development, 11, 33-37.

Goodwin, J., & Goodwin, D. (1999). Ethical judgments across cultures: A comparison between business students from Malaysia and New Zealand. Journal of Business Ethics, 18, 267-281.

Premeaux, S. R., & Mondy, R. W. (1993). Linking management behavior to ethical philosophy. Journal of Business Ethics, 12, 4.