Interactions across cultures and organizations

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature Review
Analysis
References

Introduction

This report describes intelligence and its usefulness in the organization. Cultural intelligence may be defined as the general understanding about various cultures and how these cultures work. It involves understanding of one’s culture and cultures of other people. It enables individuals to have a broad knowledge about various cultural norms, values and beliefs. It is the ability to create an impact on various cultures across an organization.

Cultural intelligence will involve having broad knowledge on the similarities and differences existing between different cultures across the world. Cultural intelligence plays a key role in successful interaction across various cultures. It requires interpersonal skills and negotiation skills across various cultures. It also involves cultural mindfulness, which enables an individual to understand the various differences that exist between various cultures (Matthews et al., 2002).

Understanding of cultural differences enables workers to improve on their performance in the work place(Triandis, 2005). Cultural knowledge skills and intelligence are very vital to every enterprise as it enables workers to improve their performance. In order for people to successfully interact with each other in the organization, there is a need for them to understand cultural intelligence.

It involves suspending judgment until that time when enough information is available in order to make the correct judgment (Goleman, 2005). It also involves paying attention to details and situations. It helps an individual to identify the information, which is important in making critical judgment, and can combine this information to make the right judgment.

It requires behavioral training as well as cognitive training to individuals so that they can understand various similarities and differences across various cultures. The report describes the meaning of cultural intelligence and how it can be used to improve performance in the organization.

Literature Review

Triandis in his article identifies important things that a culturally intelligent person should do. These things include the following:

Suspending judgment

Culturally intelligent persons should suspend judge until enough information to make the right decision is available. This is because the amount of information, which is required to make the correct judgment, is usually very broad. For instance, the behavior of persons living in collective cultures is different from that of persons living in individualistic cultures (Triandis, 1995).

People in collective cultures put a lot of emphasis on the context rather than on the content. On the other hand, those on individualistic cultures put a lot of emphasis on the content more than the context. People in collective cultures give priority to group goals instead of personal goals (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999). Culturally intelligent individuals should suspend judgment until enough information beyond ethnicity of the other person is available.

This is because personality attributes, such as ethnocentrism- allocentrism requires to be considered. Culture gives a clue about the position of a sample of individuals but it gives a little information about the particular individual. The culturally intelligent individual should not make a judgment from these clues but should gather biographical information before making conclusions that the other person is likely to be idiocentric or allocentric.

Culturally intelligent person should gather a lot of information before making the final judgment in order to make the correct judgment. This because people come from various cultures with different cultural values and beliefs and the culturally intelligent individual should consider these differences before making decisions. Such a person should see behaviors exhibited by other people as being driven by external factors rather than internal factors.

Culturally intelligent person should not be individualistic because he/she has to consider the group interest before the personal interest. He suspends judgment until full information is obtained from different cultural and ethnic sources. This is highly influenced by factors such as education, leadership role, international travels or even social mobility. This enables an individual to gather more information from different people before making a decision.

Training to overcome ethnocentrism

In reality, all human beings are ethnocentric; they believe that what is normal in their culture should be normal in all other cultures (Triandis, 1990). In case people realize a difference in a set of norms in another culture, they believe that people in this culture are barbaric and immoral.

Learning to deal with this situation requires a lot of training because such individuals go against the human nature. An individual becomes ethnocentric due to believing in only one cultural system. A culturally intelligent individual should not believe in only one cultural system. He should realize that there are various cultural systems which differ from one another. He should think of a set of norms as different from one’s own.

In addition, human beings have false consensus affect because they believe that the majority of people should think the same way they are thinking (Mullen et al., 1985). A culturally intelligent person should put him/her in the shoes of people from other cultures in order to overcome the biases of ethnocentric.

Individuals should be exposed to various norms. This does not mean that such an individual is supposed to embrace all cultures that have different norms. Members of a certain culture are kept from improving their conditions by various cultural traps (Edgerton, 1992).

According to Earley and Ang (2003), a cultural intelligent should undergo cognitive and behavioral training to overcome ethnocentrism. For instance, cognitive training should include learning on how to make isomorphic attributions (Triandis, 1975). This is usually achieved through culture assimilators (Triandis, 2004). These individuals should participate in different exercises that will enable them to understand various cultures (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Pedersen, 2003).

They should be trained by being exposed to experiential training (Martin, 1996). Culturally intelligent person should also undergo behavioral modification training in order to achieve desirable behaviors and reduce the probability of undesirable behaviors (Paige & Martin, 1996).

Trainees should be exposed to various cultural beliefs and norms in order to low differences between these values. This will enable them to understand cultures practiced by different people and the reasons behind supporting these cultures. They should be exposed to experimental training, which will enable them to understand the importance of cultural intelligence. During this training, they should be allowed to interact with people from different cultures.

The training can be made effective using culture assimilators to help individuals to become culturally intelligent. The training will help individuals to improve interpersonal relations between them and other members of the group. It enables individuals to have a broad knowledge about different norms, which help them to interact with each other.

The importance of situations

The culturally intelligent individual should understand current behavior in different situations. He should understand the cultural behaviors of other persons. He should pay special attention to the other person’s behavior. According to research collectivists, situations are cooperative; however, no one is cooperative in individualistic situations (Chatman & Barsade, 1995).

The culturally intelligent person should have the ability to gather information, which is pertinent to making judgment. This will enable him/her to combine information from various sources in order to make the right decision. He should interact with other people from different cultural background in order to collect a lot of information. This will help such an individual to make the correct decision.

Critique of CQ as a functional tool

According to Earley & Ang (2003), CQ, refers to the ability of a person to effectively adapt to new cultural contexts. It is based on four components that include cognitive, meta-cognitive, and behavioral component. It involves the ability of an individual to understand specific norms and practices in a new cultural setting. It explains the differences among different individuals ability to adapt to new cultural setting (Earley and Ang, 2003).

CQ has been criticized by various international scholars in cross cultural and organizational psychology. First, the CQ has been highly criticized because it has not been tested in a sojourning sample. According to ward and colleagues, the four-factor structure should be confirmed with a sample of individuals involved in the process of cross-cultural adaptation.

According to ward and colleagues, emotional intelligence tool is similar to CQ. Emotional intelligence involves the ability to see emotional states in other people (Goleman, 2005). It also includes regulating emotions in order to achieve an effective social interaction among different cultures.

According to Mayer and Salovey (1997), a person should involve understanding emotions and emotional knowledge in order to promote emotional and intellectual growth. It helps in predicting success in a very large domain. Cultural intelligence is different from emotional intelligent, and it cannot be ranked in the category of social intelligence.

Thomas (2006) argued that although CQ shares some characteristics with emotional intelligence, it differs in that what is meaningful in one culture might not be meaningful in another culture. According to research by Ward and colleagues, there is a strong correlation between CQ and its subscale with emotional intelligence. The interrelation between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence is high statistically significant.

The correlation between CQ scores and emotional intelligence is equally high. According to research, the cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence have a very rate of shared variance. This leads to the criticism on Earley and Ang’s argument that cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence are different forms of intelligence.

CQ tool can be described as a self-reported instrument. It is a self-report measure for the evaluation of cultural knowledge in intercultural and international settings. An individual has developed it, and it faces criticism from various international scholars. It is a self-report measure, which is developed and validated by Ang, Van Dyne, Koh, and Ng (2004). It is described as the self-report measure of CQ. It is a self-report assessment of CQ in the general cultural context as described by Berry and Ward (2006).

It is a self-report format, which has raised a major concern by the various international scholars. This self-report instrument of evaluating intelligence has various limitations, which have been analyzed according to emotional intelligence. It is a self-report measure of cultural intelligence, which has various limitations. It describes the utility of self-report measures of cultural intelligence (Salovey, 2006).

Analysis

Cultural intelligence should be tested through ability testing. This is because ability testing will give better results as compared to the self-report measure of cultural intelligence. This will enable cultural intelligence to manifest intelligence. This is because ability testing is the performance based testing which is more useful in the prediction of cultural adaptation. (Nisbett, 2003) Performance based measures should be used to measure cultural intelligence instead of the self-report instrument.

This is because the performance-based measures have greater concurrent and predictive validity as compared to the self-report instrument (Matthews et al., 2002). The self-report instrument does not show incremental validity in the prediction of social competencies in relation to personality and verbal intelligence (Salovey, 2006).

Performance based measure of cultural intelligence can be able to measure the perceived social competencies, as well as the predicted real time social competence. The performance-based measure enables individuals to understand the relationship that exists between intelligence and intercultural effectiveness. The self-report instrument does not identify the relationship between intelligence and intercultural effectiveness (Goleman, 2005).

The self-report instrument undermines the application of IQ construct across various cultures. This makes individuals believe that because there is no culture free behavior, it is difficult to establish a culture free intelligence. Managers should use the performance-based measure to determine the cultural intelligence. This is because these people will be able to understand the correlation between the individual performance and the cultural intelligence (Berry & Ward, 2006).

The Global alliance manager should use the performance-based measure of cultural intelligence as it may help in improving the organization’s performance. This is because the manager negotiates a lot with other managers who come from different cultural background. The performance-based method of assessment will enable the manager to determine the importance or usefulness of the cultural intelligence on the business.

The performance based assessment and the cultural specific versions are the most fruitful methods of assessment, which can be used by managers. Cultural intelligence is important in understanding and predicting the acquisition of the appropriate cultural skills. The realization of its potential is limited by its measurement.

This method will enable managers to relate cultural intelligence with the performance of individuals in the organization. Those workers with a lot of knowledge about different cultures across the globe always perform well in the organization. This will enable managers to understand the importance of cultural intelligence as compared to the self-report instrument of evaluating the importance of cultural intelligence in the organization.

The performance-based assessment has no limitations like the one experienced by the use of self-report measurement method. At present, however, performance based assessment is the best method of testing cultural intelligence unless other sophisticated measures of assessment are available.

These methods may include observation, interview, cultural assimilators, computer simulations as well as assessment centers. All these measurement methods may be advanced than the performance based method. However, since they are only proposed at the moment, performance based method is the most appropriate measurement of the correlation between cultural intelligence and performance in the organization.

According to Geert Hofstede cultural studies, members in different countries and culture differ in various ways. For instance in Saudi Arabia people have different beliefs and values. People in this country speak different languages such as Arabic, English urdu and other Asian languages such as Farsi and Turkish. Islam is the religion, which is practiced in this country, and it governs political and economic lives of people in this country. An individual requires a Saudi to enter in this country.

Business decisions are made slowly in this country. The judgment is suspending until enough information is available. In Peru, decisions are made after gathering information from different people who are from different cultures. People in these countries differ in various issues and all these issues are considered before making the final judgment (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Pedersen, 2003). The country is divided into three major regions and people from these regions have diverse cultural beliefs.

In Israel, cultural differences between people are very important for economic and political issues. Hofsede argued that understand cultural differences is very important in all businesses. In Israel, understanding organizational cultures enables individuals to perform well in the business organization.

Hofsede stated that individuals should involve themselves in different exercises in order to understand various cultures. In Jordan, there are various cultures and workers participate in activities, which enable them to understand these cultures. People doing business in Jordan need to learn the languages spoken in this country (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Pedersen, 2003).

References

Berry, J. W., & Ward, C., 2006. Commentary on ‘‘Redefining interactions across cultures and organizations.’ Group & Organization Management.

Earley, P. C.,&Ang, S., 2003. Cultural intelligence. Stanford,CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

Goleman, D., 2005. Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books

Hofstede, G. J., Hofstede, G., & Pedersen, P., 2003. Exploring culture:Exercises, stories and synthetic cultures. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Matthews, G., Zeidner, M., & Roberts, R. D., 2002. Emotional intelligence: Science and myth. Cambridge: MIT Press

Nisbett, R., 2003. The geography of thought. New York: Free Press.

Triandis, H.C., 2006. Cultural Intelligence in Organizations. Group and Organization Management, 31, pp 20-26.

Triandis, H. C., 2004. Culture and social behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Triandis, H. C., 2005. Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Ward, C. Fischer, R. Zaid Lam, F.S., and Hall, L., 2009. The Convergent, Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of Scores on a Self-Report Measure of Cultural Intelligence, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Volume 69 (1), 85-105.

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