A Comparison of the Business Correspondence of Hong Kong and Ohio Business Students

In Hong Kong, negotiations and agreements occur daily between western and Pacific Rim enterprises. Multinational companies with offices and subsidiaries in Hong Kong become settings for interactions among peoples of many nations and cultures. This paper explores some cultural differences between students in Hong Kong and U.S. business communication classes. Ohio University's College of Business Administration teaches business communication (as part of its core curriculum) both in Ohio and abroad, and the first author had the opportunity to teach in Hong Kong. We examined cBfferences between five assignments written by both Hong Kong and U.S. students, focusing on reader orientation, writing objective, organization, grammar, syntax, usage, and format We wanted to know whether Hong Kong and U.S. business students developed different business commiinication skills and how such differences mig^t be characterized. Even thou|^ students enrolled in Hong Kong had specifically chosen a U.S. program in order (at least in part) to learn U.S. business writing standards, we found distinct differences between business communication practitioners of different cultures using the same language and performing similar business communication tasks. We want to explore some of the cultural sources of such differences which m i ^ t affect communication between the two peoples.