Stress and communication across cultural boundaries in a Chinese-American business

Abstract

This research used semi-structured interviews to investigate how Chinese and American workers experienced intercultural communication and stress in an American location of a Chinese company. A Chinese graduate student with 3 years experience using English in an American university was the principal investigator who interviewed 6 Chinese and 5 American workers using the first language of the participant. The research questions and interviews were organized around the workers' working life, intercultural communication experiences, thoughts and feelings about communication, preexisting cultural perspectives, and experience with stress. The findings were written as short descriptions with quotes, and integrative narrative stories illustrating stress during intercultural communication. The discussion included applications to health promotion practice in multicultural workplace settings, and a new model describing the role of stress in intercultural communication was proposed for future research.