CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

Report on Cultural Intelligence for Staff Development

[Instructor name]

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Cultural Intelligence for Staff Development2

Earley and Mosakowski on Cultural Intelligence2

Ward, Fischer, Lam and Hall on Cultural Intelligence4

Practical Implications4

Conclusions and Recommendations7

References9

Introduction

Cross-cultural management has become the need of the hour due to rapidly changing international business environment. The international business has become a reality of today with the presence of international customers and stakeholders. This has resulted due to high volumes of increasingly international trade and immigration flows. Nowadays, the companies also seek joint ventures and strategic alliances to participate in the global arena. In the United States, only 60 percent of the people entering the job markets are native whites while the rest are of different ethnicities and backgrounds. It is said that nowadays people in organisations need to increasingly work in cross-cultural settings, be they are top executives or line personnel.

As a result the regular concepts of management and teams have become outdated. It is said that teams take several years to become effective and to learn the basics of teamwork. However, today's team is even more diverse and needs to manage and take care of cross-cultural differences in a way that is conducive to its accomplishments. Indeed, this diversity and heterogeneity in employees and customers is highly valuable for the customers. Cross-cultural management is, therefore, done by nearly all organisations in the world, especially those who recruit and value highly diverse workforce (Tjosvold and Leung, 2003).

The notion of cross-cultural management is not new. It implies a system whereby the managers in the global firms need to adopt this practice in order to deal with varying cultures, practices, and preferences of global consumers and customers. The most global organisations are facing this challenge and they have to cope with it. As they become more global, they are faced with additional challenges associated with rapidly changing environments due to interaction of diverse cultures. Consequently, they are required to fill in the gaps that are created by cultural differences around the globe (Tabije, 2006).

Cultural intelligence or cultural quotient (CQ) is the way for the manager to learn continuously and engage in personal development through the constant learning of various cultural heritages, values and inherent wisdom. This way the manager is able to deal effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds. Cultural intelligence has gained new popularity in the current realm of global business. It is easy for the people to reckon certain features of different cultures, such as the art and craft, music, and behaviour. However, it is not very painless to learn about the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, values, expectations, and assumptions of people from different cultures. Consequently, the employees are confronted with the task of dealing with these differences in a proactive manner. They usually overcome these obstacles through two principal means. These include adopting a self-culture which is very diverse and by reducing the cultural barriers in cross-cultural interaction (Bibikova, and Kotelnikov, 2001).

Cultural Intelligence for Staff Development

Earley and Mosakowski on Cultural Intelligence

According to Earley and Mosakowski (2004) there are two streams ...