"Why Did it All Go So Horribly Wrong?": Intercultural Conflict in an NGO in New Zealand

Sample

This case study examines problematic intercultural communication in a non-governmental, not-for-profit small organization in an attempt to make sense of how and why the communication failed. Such organizations tend to employ people who have empathy for the transcultural and transnational flows of people, such as economic migrants and refugees, or those very people who have undergone such an experience themselves. Thus, they are often characterized by fairly flat organizational structures, and populated by management and employees who are socialized toward and knowledgeable about migrant intercultural communication and adaptation issues, either because employees are migrants themselves, or in the case of non-migrants, they have experience of volunteering and community work to aid settlement of mobile people. In other words, the people employed within these organizations, and their end-users, are typically intercultural and multilingual.