Advancing Cultural Teachings in Management

“The biggest change in organizations today is the mixing of cultures at the workplace.”

Peter Sloterdijk (circa 2010)

Modern societies are characterized by multicultural conditions and relations in their communities and workplaces. While the breadth and depth of diversity in businesses have accelerated in the 21st century, mainstream management literature has largely ignored or underappreciated the importance of this change. This has impacted how leaders and managers view cultural differences and dynamics in the workplace and how organizations have developed future-ready workforces.

A 2001 report on cross-cultural training and research noted that a major gap in the landscape of management literature was the absence of cultural theory incorporated in a managerial context. Unfortunately, while the field of culture and business has developed extensively in the past years, it remains, by and large, outside the purview of mainstream management publications in 2023. As a result, many organizations need to leverage the benefits of diversity beyond coexistence.

New world-class digital tools, research, and business teachings have become freely available in recent years and can be used to develop the intercultural competency of leaders and managers. Given the lack of mainstream attention to this subject, this article provides teachers and trainers with some arguments, information, and resources to integrate cultural theory into managerial teachings. The need is high, and there is no point in waiting.

Prevailing Managerial Attitudes

A study by Dale Carnegie in 2017 and published in the article Understanding and Assessing Culture on a Coherent Theoretical Background, shows a distinction between managerial and executive leadership attitudes toward the importance of cultural training.

In the article, the following managerial attitudes and behaviors were reported:

Less than 10% of managers were willing to invest money and worker time in intercultural training
Culture is considered a soft factor in training
Culture is difficult to grasp and not easily explained

In that same article, executive leadership attitudes were opposed to managerial opinions:

94% of leaders considered cultural factors to be very important
Corporate culture and intercultural understanding were identified as equally important.

From the information above, one can surmise that divergent opinions on the purpose and importance of intercultural competence training exist. The following points define what intercultural competency entails and how it can be used by managers working with individuals and teams.

Integrating Cultural Theory in a Management Literature

Cultural competence stems from the following principles:

There is no one best way to manage people and organizations.
Culture is the context in which organizations and work exist.
Culture and cultural dynamics must be looked at holistically in organizations, people, and teams.
There can be a tendency to develop sophisticated stereotypes when working across cultures, leading to generalizations and bias.
Individual behaviors should not be used to define the characteristics of a whole cultural group.
Cultural preferences are like mirror images; what looks the same can mean the opposite.
All cultures share the same problems, but our values, attitudes, and expectations for resolving these problems differ.
You cannot see a value, but you know when it is not shared or understood.
It is possible to recognize and resolve cultural differences.
Developing the intercultural competence of ‘respect’ leads to appreciating and benefiting from cultural differences.
Cultural tensions can be resolved through a creative process of reconciliation which involves integrating different ways of working, values, and demands.

Accessing Cultural Theory and Managerial Teachings

Businesses, teachers, consultants, researchers, and students use many free and fee-based resources. Each resource listed below is considered excellent, and you are encouraged to access them.

Free Resources

Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, recognized as an international leader in management consulting, culture change, and leadership development in business, has made a range of valuable resources and development tools available.

https://www3.thtconsulting.com/culture-factory/culture-explore/

On this site, you can:

Access the world’s most extensive database on the national cultural profile.
Create your cultural profile and compare it with over 140 national profiles using a world map.
Learn about the Seven Dimensions of Culture.
Develop competencies to recognize and respect cultural differences that exist in a business context.

https://www3.thtconsulting.com/solutions/culture-change/

On this site, you can:

Examine the concept of cultural change.
Learn about the 4R model of intercultural competence.

Fee-based Resources

https://www.edumundo.com/en/edubook/culture-inter-cultural-comms

On this site, you can:

access culture for business e-learning book:

About RW3 CultureWizard | RW3 (rw-3.com)

On this site, you can:

Explore a range of services and web tools available to support cultural teachings in business and management.

Concluding Remarks

Developing new intercultural competencies can lead to increased creativity in problem-solving and innovation among highly diverse groups and individuals. The ability to work with diverse individuals and groups and produce value, which can be measured in gains in efficiency, creativity, and innovation, is an indicator of a future-ready workforce.

Traditional ways of managing and leading people are being tested for many organizations. As organizations prepare for the future of work, the ways workplaces manage diversity and cultural differences are in the spotlight. Management researchers have recognized this issue for decades. One of the main obstacles to accessing integrated cultural theory and business was the perceived complexity of the material. Some of the resources given in this article show how the material can be easily accessed and understood. The developmental value of using the material is potentially very high, especially as learners and teachers begin to realize the impact intercultural competence has on individuals, teams, and tasks.

Montgomery College is an innovator in its use, support, development, and recognition of intercultural competence in business. In addition to the many professional development programs offered internally at the college, a new program called “Culture Conscious Business” has been given a micro-credential. The micro-credential is in recognition of the value of the program and the validity of the rubric, and the course can be taken through WDCE in early summer 2023.

https://www.credly.com/org/montgomery-college/badge/culture-conscious-business