On Inter-Organizational EC Collaboration - The Impact of Inter-Cultural Communication Apprehension

Inter-cultural communication apprehension is one of the major factors that may influence the processes of the interorganization collaboration in electronic commerce. It is an obstruction, prohibiting inter-organization collaboration in different ways. If we can manage the inter-cultural communication apprehension properly, we may be able to bring organizations of different cultures together for successful completion of EC collaborative works. This paper summarizes previous works on intercultural communication apprehension and identifies three potential factors that could influence inter-cultural communication apprehension: cultural climate, technology environment and communication leadership. Also, this paper proposes a research framework and several hypotheses for future testing.