Utilizing Videoconferencing to Develop Emotional Awareness in Cross-Cultural Communication

The current teaching methods in cross-cultural business communication have paid relatively less attention to developing students’ emotional skills in cross-cultural interactions. Prior research, however, suggests that cross-cultural interactions are inherently emotional processes, since they involve a considerable amount of uncertainty and a potential for misunderstanding. With an attempt to fill this gap, this study aimed to design an easy-to-implement teaching module that brings emotions and emotional awareness more centrally into analysis of cross-cultural business communication, and to empirically asses the effectiveness of this module based on the data collected from students who participated in the process. To this end, we have initiated a collaboration between the business schools of a Hungarian university in Budapest and an American university in Northern California, by utilizing the videoconferencing and screen-capture technologies. The results of the study suggested that the videoconferencing technology could be a viable tool to create real-time interactions between students in different countries in which they can experience, express, and observe emotions. In our video-conferencing sessions, the dynamics that emerged among the students provoked a wide-range of emotions, which helped them learn more about cross-cultural communication as reflected on why they have felt these emotions. Thus, students who participated in the teaching module not only gained a first-hand experience in cross-cultural communication, but also could build on this experience to gain knowledge by reflecting on their observations and emotions.