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 inter-organization 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 inter-cultural 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.