CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: A NEW APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT TRAININGIn this era of escalating globalization, intercultural differences remain a significant challenge confronting multinational organizations. Many organizations—international firms, multinational companies and those who are now “going global”—require their managers to work across borders. Consequently, organizations increasingly need managers who have the “know-how” to quickly become culturally fluent and who can react in a way that is culturally appropriate. Specifically, global managers need to be able to work with multiple cultures and in multinational teams. However, the challenge of global management effectiveness becomes even more difficult when managers spend shorter periods in any single place and are frequently moved from one location to another. As a result, their country-specific knowledge becomes less relevant.According to authors Earley and Peterson, the traditional approach used in intercultural training is no longer effective enough for today’s global manager. They propose a model, based on the elements of cultural intelligence (CQ), to better prepare global managers to be effective in various intercultural settings. Purpose of the StudyAlthough intercultural training is important, to date there has not been a comprehensive framework of cultural adaptation presented as a training guide. The dominant approach to intercultural training in corporate settings is based on cultural-general assumptions drawn from cultural values and country-specific knowledge for the international assignment. However, this approach tends to treat all participants equally and does not make allowances for the intercultural competencies they already bring to their work.According to Earley and Peterson, one of the fundamental problems with the cultural-values-awareness approach is that it cannot substitute for direct knowledge of interpersonal interactions, because “values alone are not a strongly predictive feature of human behavior.” To address the growing need for cultural competence in the global workplace, they developed a conceptual framework that has practical applications based on CQ. How the Study Was Conducted The challenge for international organizations is how best to prepare their global managers to be effective in intercultural environments. This study closely examined past practices of international management training, with focus on intercultural training program design (e.g., assessments, cultural assimilators, role playing). Two weaknesses in the traditional approach to intercultural training were identified: 1) the “one-stop shopping” philosophy falls short of its goal because it assumes that all individuals need a similar training
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regime; and 2) most approaches to intercultural training focus on knowledge-based information regarding the target culture. Further, the combination of these approaches entirely omits the metacognitive skills needed to learn and analyze new situations and cultures to respond appropriately. Consequently, Earley and Peterson expanded on earlier research in the areas of work and social cultural competency. From their observations, they diagnosed what skills make a person culturally intelligent. The result is a model of cultural intelligence with direct practical use for international management training and multinational teams. Cultural Intelligence and Its Importance to the Global ManagerAs defined in the literature ...

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