Intercultural Business Competencies MAR038-

6
Assignment 1: Portfolio
Section 1

Abstract

A major role is played by culture in the process of globalisation there are several factors that are
required to be considered while expanding business internationally. As in most of the business
the human resource is most crucial and they are actually responsible to meet several objectives.
The research study that will be conducted further will actually represent the cultural diversities in
team building and the importance of intercultural team building. The research will be carried out
governing the major factor while working with international teams highlighting the challenges
primarily the cultural shock challenge that impact the productivity of a business. Finally the
research will signify and illustrate the importance of cultural diversity in team building and in the
workplace and the process of taking training of cultural diversity into consideration. Also the
theories of intercultural competencies will be discussed in order to minimise the challenges that
are related with working in a team where individuals are from different cultural backgrounds.
Table of Contents
Section 1 2

Abstract 2

Introduction 4

Intercultural Business Competence 5

Cultural Shock 5
Impact on the human behaviour 6
Impact on Business 6

Working in Teams 7
Successful Team Building 7

Working Across international culture teams 8

Intercultural Theories 9

Conclusion 11

Recommendation 11

Reference 12

Section 2 13

Summary 1 13

Section 3 15

Summary 2 15
Introduction

The purpose of this research study is investigating the effect and several aspects of intercultural
competencies and its importance in the business progress. This topic is worth researching as with
this globalisation the cross cultural adaptability is increasing and it is important to discuss the
challenges related to this concept which is basically cultural schock. The report will highlight
upon the major challenge that is cultural shock in intercultural competency in business, the team
building and successful building of intercultural teams that are associated with international
business. Later the report will discuss intercultural theories and valuable recommendations
related to this domain.
Intercultural Business Competence

The basic concept of intercultural competencies has been contested, apart from its omnipresent in
various research fields. The intercultural business competences are generally polysemic as per its
nature and heavily rely on the problematic concepts for example identity and culture.
Intercultural competence is generating certain knowledge, skilld, attitude and abilities that
erncompasses acceptances and awareness of difference; understanding the dynamics that are
related to the differences, awareness related to ines cultural values as well as the abilities in
adapting the skills for fitting to the cultural context of any business partner/ a client.
In a business case scenario a manager having a global mindset that is based upon the skills and
knowledge that makes her/ him function efficiently in any business environmental conditions
where language, political, constantly cross cultures, economic and social borders creates
uncertainty and complexity in the global business. In addition to constant research and learning
curiosity, adventuresomeness are some of the important characteristics for avoiding cultural
shock situations and for the success of any business. The desired goal is increasing the
competency of business managers towards national or cultural boundaries based on two major
domains: human international relations and international environments.

Cultural Shock
An individual may have an experience of cultural shock; depression, anxiety and confusion that
is basically resulted from cultural differences when someone moves to some different culture
that is entirely different from their own culture. This includes normes when living in an
international society and dealing with international business or associated with some business
that have international branches. Those individuals who go through cultural shock experience
phases of discomfort, euforia acceptance and adjustments. Cultural shock occurs gradually in ive
stages where an individual encounters difficulties and differences in their daily routines for
example unusual food, differing customs and attitude, communication problems that are
basically not being understood and these activities start irritating an individual.
Impact on the human behaviour

The cultural shock effect may differ which impact both the individual and also the organisation
as it impacts team work and successful building of team. This varies from one individual to
another and from one business environment to another such as shifting to international business.
The impact are experienced as :
★ Illness: Individuals generally get homesick once they start working with international
teams.
★ Poor communication: As per some of the researchers related to this domain the major
problem that is related to working with chinese colleagues was communication. The
barrier of language actually creates difficulty in communication hence team work is
difficult with communication barriers.
★ Legal Problems : Sometimes various legal issues arise if an individual is unaware of the
law and the culture in a workp;lace that land them in legal trouble.
★ Isolation: Ferraro is a researcher in this domain who explained that there are basically
four cultural schock impacts, regression,isolation, anger and rejection. This results in an
individual isolating themselves into a confined circle of similar culture which actually
impacts the individual growth or success of any team.

Impact on Business

★ Productivity: The productivity of any business is directly impacted by lack of

understanding and lack of communication. The situation of cultural shock is also created
when workers are unable to understand the business culture as well as the international
business environment where they operate. Ozen in one research paper explained the
importance of ethenic diversity towards creativity of any business but it also sometimes
leads to high maintenance cost due to high conflict level within an international business
environment and low productivity.
★ Poor communication: In international business or working with an international team if
cultural barriers are not taken into consideration then it may create communication
breakdown. As communication is one of the key aspects in any business growth and lack
in communication causes low productivity and financial loss.
 ★ Less effective: Any business progress is lacked if the business culture is not
understandable Different corporate culture are observed by Hunger and wheelen while
analysing working with international teams which taken consideration the values the
ways that staff members transmits from one generation to the other generation and if it is
not taken into business consideration them it may lead to lack of business efficiency.

Working in Teams

To gain success in this global economy more and more businesses are actually relying upon the
workforce that are geographically dispersed. It is key to the success of any business; building
teams that basically offer best functional expertisation from across the world with a combination
of deep and local knowledge of the market that are most promising. Also businesses nowadays
focus upon building teams with different cultural backgrounds that bring benefit of various
international diversity with various work experiences as well as different perspectives on
organisational and strategic challenges. All this characteristic of working in a team enables
multinational companies and businesses to compete in the current organisation and business
environment. But managers who actually work with global teams face several challenges related
to cultural shock. Creating any successful work is easy enough when the team members are from
similar backgrounds but difficulties arise when the members of the team come from different
functional backgrounds or from different countries where miscommunication may generate
distrust and unsuccessful team results. The fundamental issue in working in teams is power
perception. For example if the majority of a team member are from Germany, and only two or
three members are from South Africa or US then it may occur that german members hold more
power over decision making and this imbalance actually sets a negative dynamic.

Successful Team Building

Preventing the vicious challenges that are related to working in a team and recently the concept
of global team building. But there are also several remarkable examples of teams that were
capable of producing innovation and created million dollar value for their stakeholders and
customers. A successful global team building is directly proportional to the team manager with
capability of building emotional connection between the team members.
 Advancing the mahers towards successful team building by cultural learning

➔ The loyalty as well as the performance of an individual can be improved by

encouraging different cultures and values in a team.
➔ Cultural learning helps in providing insights of an individual such that most appropriate
protocol related to the business can be employed.
➔ Organizational awareness is useful in influencing the culture of an organisation.
➔ The characterisation of the cultural characteristics are very useful for work analysis in
the merging meta industrial environments.
➔ The study related to techniques of comparative management are actually induced by
cultural insights and tools that are used by the successful manager of a team.
➔ For international business cultural competencies is of key importance.
➔ Cultural proficiency of managers are capable of facilitating any challenges that are
related to cultural shock experienced by any individual.
➔ Foreign systems of development implied by managers in managing a team helps in
provisioning overseas experience to the team members and enabling healthy
relationships.

Working Across international culture teams

A team is basically a synergy containing different mindsets & skill sets that basically collaborate
for working in a common aim or vision. It is sometimes difficult to manage a team that consists
of disparate personalities. Working across international culture actually gives an unique
experience where fundamental differences are to be considered within team members that
basically leads to frustration and conflicts but that can easily be thwarted after gaining
understanding about individual personalities of the team. Working across international culture
within a team means dealing with several people across different work ethics, traditions,
languages as well as cultures in a manner that friction is not created while achieving the business
goals or not admitting any tension in a team.
 Figure: Challenges related to intercultural competencies
Source: (Dervin, 2015)
The differences in a cross cultural team as working with international teams can actually steam
form individual frame reference and communication style. For example in some cases some of
the workers in a team are willing to work after the office hours whereas some team members will
be strictly confined to the working hours that are followed as per their counties rule. Another
example of working across international teams within cross culture is the pattern of
communication of different team members, while some of the members vociferously raise their
voice and unfiltered opinions whereas those who belong to hierarchical culture think a lot before
putting their argument forward to the team. A unified thread is required to be recognised for
tying up all the distinct personalities in a cross culture team for managing the prime concerns in
working with international teams. As per statistics the teams having cultural diversity outperform
as compared to the team consisting members from similar background by 37%. Greater
efficiency can be achieved when working with intercultural team if it is steered in the right
direction by the manager of the team

Intercultural Theories

The idea of intercultural theories is knowing the procedure for communication within different
social and cultural groups in a business process or within a team. By understanding the theories
the managers or the members of the team will be capable of understanding certain prevailing
norms in gaining compatibility with new cultures. The theories that are utilised actually gives
team members an enhanced perspective of acting in any situation, by not disrespecting within
any culture as well as these theories give new perspective to the managers or the team members
to achieve cultural adversities within a team by intercultural communication. Following are some
of the theories that could be distinguished in various strands:
❖ Cultural Convergence
As Per this theory in the emergence of two cultures together in a team the similarities in the
aspects and ideas become much prevalent as here the members of different cultures know each
other. In a social system that is closed in which there is unrestricted communication a time
convergence towards greater uniformity related to culture is to be followed.
❖ Intercultural Adaptation
➢ As per intercultural adaptation theory a person after living in a cultura for an
extended period of time is capable of developing values, rules, ideas among other
different themes that are related to that culture.
➢ This theory basically involves learnt communicative incompetence.
❖ Communication Accommodation theory
This theory basically focuses upon strategies that are linguistic in increasing or decreasing
communicative distances. This theory refers to communicative adjustments that people prefer
while communicating in social interaction in which one individual modies the way of talking for
the other individual to accommodate the other person totally into the conversation.
❖ Co Cultural Theory
➢ In co culture theory the individuals are observed based upon common interest
where an individual communicates with others of similar interest for building a
relationship for further team activities.
➢ This theory is basically concerned with the interaction between the team members
who are dominant and underrepresented . Co culture theory as explained by Mark
P. Orbe provides a framework that explains interaction of two individuals
associated in a similar teamwork based upon six factors.
Conclusion

The recent study was about intercultural Business Competencies in the business and primarily
focusing upon how cultural shock that is a challenge to intercultural business competency can be
minimised. The report also took into consideration the diversity and globalisation within the
international team workspace. This research study considered several factors that are related to
working across international workspace, team building, and intercultural theories. From this
research study it can be concluded that it is very important to train managers as well as team
members regarding cultural awareness for supporting workspace cultural diversity.

Recommendation

Following are the recommendation that can be suggested from the research study based on the
finding about intercultural competence at workplace:
➔ The risk of cultural shock can be minimised by proper training within a culturally diverse
workplace as recommended by IT.
➔ When dealing with the situation of intercultural competency special attention is required
to be given to cultural diversity.
➔ Only training the team members about cultural diversity at the workplace will not be
enough relevant training related to diverse cultural training about various backgrounds is
required.
Reference

Leung, K., Ang, S. and Tan, M.L., 2014. Intercultural competence. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol.
Organ. Behav., 1(1), pp.489-519.
Antal, A.B. and Friedman, V.J., 2008. Learning to negotiate reality: A strategy for teaching
intercultural competencies. Journal of Management Education, 32(3), pp.363-386.
Senyshyn, R.M., 2002. Cross-cultural competencies in international management curricula: A
Delphi study of faculty perspectives.
Ward, C., Bochner, S. and Furnham, A., 2020. The psychology of culture shock. Routledge.
Roskell, D., 2013. Cross-cultural transition: International teachers’ experience of ‘culture shock’.
Journal of Research in International Education, 12(2), pp.155-172.
McLean, P. and Ransom, L., 2007. Building intercultural competencies: Implications for
academic skills development. In Teaching international students (pp. 57-74). Routledge.
Euwema, M.C. and Van Emmerik, I.H., 2007. Intercultural competencies and conglomerated
conflict behaviors in intercultural conflicts. International Journal of Intercultural Relations,
31(4), pp.427-441.
Canfield, B.S., Low, L. and Hovestadt, A., 2009. Cultural immersion as a learning method for
expanding intercultural competencies. The Family Journal, 17(4), pp.318-322.
Troncoso, C.R., 2010. The effects of language materials on the development of intercultural
competence. Research for materials development in language learning: Evidence for best
practice, pp.83-102.
Hammer, M.R., 1984. The effects of an intercultural communication workshop on participants’
intercultural communication competence: An exploratory study. Communication Quarterly,
32(4), pp.252-262.
Dervin, F. and Hahl, K., 2015. Developing a portfolio of intercultural competences in teacher
education: The case of a Finnish international programme. Scandinavian Journal of Educational
Research, 59(1), pp.95-109.
Section 2

Summary 1

Irvani Janis basically described a study based on decision making within a group that depended
upon the social behaviour of humans where maintaining solidarity and group cohesiveness is
much more important than considering realistic facts.
Following definition is given by Janis for Group Think: GT is basically a thinking mode in
which people are engaged during any cohesive group discussion, when the motivation for
realistically appraising is overridden by unanimity. GT is basically resulted from the
cohesiveness of group members that was already discussed by the author Lewin in tne year 1930
& it is a very important factor that is to be considered in the process of decision making, as in
meetings, workshops, committees, conferences etc.
There are certain condition that are basically conducive in Groupthink:
➔ When it s a highly cohesive group
➔ When a directive leader basically rules the group
➔ Contrary options basically isolates the group
Following are some of the negative aspects that can be summarized from the discussion upon GT
that is highlighted by the authors:
➔ The discussion is only limited to few alternatives
➔ Everyone is encouraged for critical evaluator
➔ Subgroups division
➔ The members of the group is highly selective in gaining available information
➔ The group is basically overconfident regarding their ideas

These are some of the symptoms of GT that are highlighted by Janis:

➔ Belief in the inherent group morality
➔ Invulnerability illusion
➔ Self Censorship
➔ Collective rationalization
➔ Mindguards that are self appointed
➔ Unanimity Illusion
➔ Dissenters are directly pressured
Section 3

Summary 2

Vecchi and Brennan in their research paper aimed at explaining how and what dimensions of
diverse national culture basically influences the operation decision. This will basically help the
global firms in taking effective decisions related to management of cross culture within teams for
effective management of the globalised supply chain. The cultural dimension that is basically
suggested by Hofstede (2001), explains that cultural dimensions and national culture is a proper
valid construct in explaining the management of quality of any work. This research paper that is
presented by the authors is actually the first attempt in utilising the national culture in
explanation of the differences within quality management. The paper can be summarized as
explaining that some of the cultures are more superior and are suitable in implementing certain
quality programmes as compared to others. The management of quality is generally a vehicle for
implementing change but on the same page the national culture is very much resistant to
changes. The paper presented a rebout technique of quality state of art in quality management
through different countries. Whereas there results depicted that apart from several advantages
there are creatine limitations regarding the relationship between quality management and cultural
dimension that will be reconciled in the future times.