In the business world of today with all the importing and exporting we have become a multicultural community. With many new culturals now living and working in US that were just rare to see only a few years ago, we must become aware of them and how to communicate without being negative.

Today’s workplace has many differing cultures ranging from different religions to different beliefs in personal interaction. This must make us more aware of people around us, more now than ever before. A simple handshake or joke can now cause problems from legal to lose of business. We must try to understand or at least get information about other cultures and religions that are around us. This both helps understand and communicating in the workplace as well as personal interaction.
Many opportunities are opened by having many cultures like new technologies and medical items that America does not fully understand or train people for. This allows us to trade product with countries we have not done a lot of business with over the last few decades. This allows for increase in sales and profits for Americans companies. I think the biggest advantage is just knowing how other people think and how we can further ourselves by being open to new beliefs and interaction, even if we do not agree with them we could at least be able to deal with them.
The major challenges are no matter how good of intensions we have there well be miscommunication just because of culture. These can lead to conflicts even more then already exists, some of the main ones are the way we differ in time and space relating to work ethics from the belief in hours to work or time off for religious holidays. Fate and personal responsibility varies so much in the world of business from Japanese belief in work before all else, basically they do not leave till work done no matter what. To Muslim belief in prying multiple times a day. Nonverbal communication well be one of the biggest problems, like America belief in a handshake and way we put more power on words said then facial movement or body language (Beyond Intractability.com, 2003). In some cultures just eye contact can be taken as an insult (Claremont Eap, 2005).
In closing I would have to say we well have to deal with these problems culture brings but,it has been a problem here many times before and we got through it. So if we have little patience and if the others that are new to U.S. workplace would have some to, such as Mexican people need
to understand that citizenship is earned not given.
References
Beyond Intractability.com, 2003
(http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/cross-cultural_communication/)
Claremont Eap, 2005
(http://www.claremonteap.com/Diversity_RP_0505.pdf)
dragonmike.com
cowboym9.webs.com