Herausforderungen zwischenmenschlicher Kommunikation in multinationalen Teams

Interpersonal communication in multinational teams is one of the aspects in multinational companies which is important and versatile in everyday team activities. Its negligence could lead to vital information not being adequately sent, received, or processed. This paper analyses the interpersonal communication with the aid of Schulz von Thun’s (2016a) four-sides communication model and verifies this model empirically for multinational teams. The model postulates that messages comprise of a multi-layered structure, whereby messages sent or received each have four facets. Data were collected from 385 Project Team Managers from different multinational companies. They were requested to interpret interpersonal communicative situations using verbal representations of the four-sides of a message. This research indicates that the team members regardless of gender perceive emotional information and accusations in messages more often than the mere factual information. The four-sides model was partially verified. Contrary to the commonly held assumption that a message is perceived in four independent dimensions, the project teams could not perceive certain dimensions independently of each other.