Be Careful What You Wish for: Mapping Nordic Cultural Communication Practices & Values in the Management Game of Communication

Whether executives are sharing their organization’s strategy goals, financial projections, marketing initiatives, crisis management, or perhaps disseminating HRM issues, culture-with regard to differing ways of communicating-matters. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to understand Nordic managers’ cultural practices -and wished for values-within the context of delivering and receiving communication messages, not only within their organizations, but also with a keen eye to external stakeholders. Minor yet significant differences in communication norms may surface, even when representatives from similar cultures work together (Adler, 2002). As a follow on from the GLOBE project (House et al., 2004), data based on the GLOBE instrument collected on culture and communication values (Warner-Søderholm, 2012) are applied in this present study in order to explore to what degree cultural values impact how we form, deliver and receive an organization’s business communication messages within the Nordic cluster. Thus, this supports the proposition that better cross-cultural business communication practices contribute to an organization’s bottom line in the management game of communication today. Moreover, we contribute to the field with an analysis of the differences between managers’ cultural practices and wished for values.