Intercultural work communication presents challenges and opportunities that both justify and demand study by anyone wishing to achieve effectiveness at work. How people communicate at work is highly significant for individuals’ employability, career success and job satisfaction. It is equally important for organizations’ effectiveness and, in the case of businesses, profitability. Furthermore, a high and growing proportion of all work communication is with people from different cultures and demographics.

 More than half a century of cross-cultural research has firmly established that there are differences in the ways that members of different societies and societal groups behave, both in private life and at work. 

Culture is a highly important source of differences in behaviour; gender, age, social class and so on are other important sources. Communication is among the most important types of behaviour in organizations, because it is essential for cooperation and coordination. It is undisputed that there are cultural and demographic differences in how we communicate. In the fast-developing study of intercultural communication there have been several new or more thoroughly investigated approaches since the publication of the third edition of this book. Perhaps the most significant is the study of the impact of computer-mediated communication (cmc) on intercultural communication and of culture on cmc. 

This field has now begun to produce findings that require and justify including this topic here.