In Japanese cultures, for example, it is ritualistic to exchange gifts, so gift exchange is important if you wish to participate in their cultural practice. Professor Ting-Toomey has provided a construct for understanding Asian business practices and communication style differences in order to develop other constructs for theoretical and research ideas. More multi-cultural team research efforts are needed. We should pay more attention to indigenous cultures, and look at their attitudes toward business practices and communication style differences. We need to identify core constructs with which we are unfamiliar, and are in danger of overlooking.
Increased sensitivity is important because of global economic changes.
In training people to go overseas, it is critical to teach about low versus high context cultures as part of their applied skills. Listening skills are important in high context cultures. When collectivistic people come to individualistic cultures, they should learn to share more information, to self-disclose, to seek information more openly, and to seek to reduce uncertainty more than they normally would. Spontaneity is part of practicing facework, you adjust and you adapt. Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre .