crossculturalmgt.com » Cross Cultural Training

Intercultural training and steriotypes

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:46:38 +0000

The global economic variation has fascinated the people of the world to migrate to various countries where there is economic stability. This forced them to mingle with the people of various countries having different culture and language. So they wanted awareness about the different culture and languages of the world. Thus the intercultural training became very popular world wide.
The intercultural training brings information about a particular culture and religion. Demarcating them with respect to their behavior, values and action produces negative effect. Hence the rigid opinion about the intercultural training is that it stereotypes people.
Stereotyping is a negative statement about a group of people. A person’s behavior and nature cannot be taken in to consideration for making any conclusion or opinion about a group of people in that same category. This termed as stereotyping of people. Stereotyping is an incorrect perception of people on the basis of minimum experimental evidence. Because of to this, people are not only reluctant to make opinions on the basis of stereotyping, but also not prefer to make judgment about a group of people on the basis of one’s own merit.
Inter cultural training therefore provide people with some kind of standard against which they have to make reference on people. This can be done through generalization rather than stereotyping. Generalizations are entirely different and more reliable than stereotyping. Intercultural training enables the trainees to observe the people of various culture and language and to trace out their commonalities in behavior and life style. Based on these facts they can make some reliable general opinions about the observed people. This type of generalization must be long term slow process, because the general opinion arising from this is highly valuable.
Some demerits also are there in the case of the generalization. This brings the accurate picture of the country as a whole or the people as a whole. But there are various layers of people who follow different culture, language and life style in one country itself. All of them fall under the common category of their national culture and share the common peculiarities of the same. This plus point of the national culture gives some limelight to the generalization.
A salient feature of the intercultural training is that, it insists the trainees to avoid using the general views on the culture of the people of various countries. During the training they encourage their candidates to aware one another through personal interaction. The real intercultural knowledge is attained only through experience. From the training they become capable to deal the situation generally. This will be helpful to them as a safety measure, if they have to work in that particular country. The major part of the knowledge can be received only by the close association with the people of that respective country.
In general the intercultural training provides the generalization of the people rather than the stereotyping. This generalization is based on research and careful observation on the culture of the people, which is termed as the guidelines about a country and its culture. These guidelines act as an intercultural safety measure to those who have to work with the people there. Hence generalization is more helpful and reliable than stereotyping.

Intercultural lessons from the movie crash

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:45:54 +0000

After the academy awards one fine morning a sudden thought clicked on me: “What do movies do most excellent?” Do they assist us recognize the confronts others face? Do they educate us about other cultures and varied backgrounds, or do they just craft us sense fine? When all the mentioned answers are true then consider this: these movies allows us to work out our own expressive issues through the actions of the characters on panel.

The movie CRASH won the best film award since it did the work it had to do. It created a lot of uncomfortable feeling in the people and also evoked memories of discrimination experiences. But with this the work is not over. Once we watch the movie we have to take action and expand its understanding. What do we do with comatose fears and tacit chauvinisms the movie exposed? If we don’t find them, appreciate them and deal with them, we end up repeating actions that creates cross-cultural misunderstandings.
Behaviors with fear pop out when we least suspect it as we experience ageism, racism, homophob-ism wealth-ism, or several number of “isms” and can’t accept as true it’s happening to us, within of us, around us, or most horrible case that it’s actually carried out by us, even today.
Kenneth Turan, a film detractor for the LA Times, puts forward that CRASH is a “feel-good movie about racism. A film that could make you deem that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul apart from the fact that you were just getting your buttons pushed.” He used this as a motive that “liberal” Academy voters chose CRASH over BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for the Best Picture Academy Award.
The fact is that both the movies made people much uncomfortable. Many of the people asked, “What’s wrong with a little button pushing if it pushes people out of their soothe zones and into change?” now the next job which is to be performed is that we have to bridge the understandings and learning that we gathered from the movie CRASH and apply them as such to our life and our businesses or the movie’s task has been worn out and we will bear out Kenneth Turan’s cynical view to be precise.
Just bow your heads and value the things to identify that drives scrupulous behaviors. Continue this for a certain days and scribble down what you think and what makes you the most disturbed. Later think about the person who influenced you the most and what made you think so. Once you get an answer for this you can go back to the source from where the thought originated and then change it feeling and behaving. Make this an exercise for the rest of your life so that you can save your life in future from CRASHING.

Intercultral training and the iceberg model

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:45:00 +0000

We can resemble any situation or facts which we usually come across in our daily life with the pictures of simile. These pictures will be more attractive with its inner meaning than its appearance. The inner meaning of the same will be of hidden type and at the same time rays carrying the inner meaning will be reflecting from it. This is how the emblems regarding an organization or service centre can be formed. Here the intercultural training and the matter associated with it can be represented by an iceberg.
The picture of iceberg is widely and unanimously selected due to its beautiful flash lights about the inner meaning of the intercultural training. The iceberg is usually seen in the North Pole and South Pole of the world, which are commonly termed as Artic and Antarctic regions respectively. Iceberg has got a visible portion above the water layer and following it an invisible portion beneath the water. The invisible portion is considered as more dangerous because, no judgment about its dimension or occurrence under the water can be made with respect to the portion usually seen above the water layer. Crew men of the ships usually get mistaken by their false conclusions with respect to the visible portion and often run into trouble or sometimes the ship wreckage also. Thus, here the false judgment leads to a very huge loss.
Here the story of the iceberg is more or less similar to the nature of the intercultural training. Candidates undergoing intercultural training often get into trouble by their false judgments on the culture and religion of the people of a particular country. The trainees often come across with an individual or some people in a locality. The nature and habit of an individual of a country or locality will not be the culture and habit of the masses there. Hence making the judgment on the culture and religion of a group of people in a country on the basis of an individual’s habit and nature is absolutely a wrong approach. Likewise the custom and culture of people residing in a particular region of a country cannot be taken into consideration for mentioning the culture and religion of the country as a whole. These two occasions point out that, judgment on the basis of the physical state cannot be followed in the intercultural training. The culture and customs of a people in a country can be understood only by viewing the different of people residing in that particular country. This can be carried out easily by understanding their visible nature such as dress, music, dance, architecture, devotional practice, greeting nature, food, gesture and so many. Other important matters to be taken into consideration are the people’s commitments to society in which they are living. This can be performed by viewing their approach to traffic signals, spitting and throwing of waste materials and smoking in the public places.
A very detailed study, research and approach towards the people of a particular country enable the intercultural trainees to sort out the iceberg like fears as mentioned earlier. This helps them as a guide line to keep away the differences which may arise during their association and life with them.

Ten Strategies for Success Abroad

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:44:07 +0000

TO SUCCEED IN AN INTERCULTURAL ENVIRONMENT

Global economic instability persuaded the multinational business organizations to diversify their venture world wide. This provided a lot of job opportunities globally which fascinated the people of the world to migrate to those countries and accommodate themselves with these newly generated vacancies. Thus, in a multinational organization there happened to be numerous individuals belonging to various cultures. This highlighted the need to understand the culture and languages of their staff as far as multinational organizations are concerned. Multinational organizations have eventually become multicultural organizations. To succeed in the multinational competitive business field it was essential to attain the intercultural competency.
Some experts in this field have proposed certain strategies to follow which will be helpful in the multicultural business world. As per their suggestions to deal business across culture, a very good knowledge about the organization is must. This can be collected by going through the website of the organization. The particulars must be based upon the productivity, their materials, the atmosphere and the attitude prevailing there.
Ability to observe and verify a situation is very important in a multicultural business field. If a person has entered in a new work place then his mind will have a tendency to gather as much as information about the new environment. He can gather some tips about how people act, treat, dress and communicate in the fresh work place. He can consider these facts to have a faultless association with the people there.
In a multicultural business organization the people working there should show very much interested to know other people’s cultural facts and the languages. Remaining reluctant to ask details about others language and culture is going to be of no good. Showing interest on all matters related to working environment and being considerate towards colleagues will produce a kind of reputation and respect among each other.
Performing work in a cross cultural media takes too much time due to the slow communication process between the staff members. This commonly happens where there is different culture and concepts. So it is better to take more time to process information and make conclusions. Multicultural organization is a place where there belong people of different cultural behaviors. Trying to mould them to a particular culture will be dangerous and will produce negative result. In a multicultural firm the new environment will be stressful to everybody. The flexibility and capability of the people will be reduced in such a situation. The experts have suggested being humorous in nature to escape from the tedious stresses prevailing in multi cultural organizations.
People belong to certain culture may have the nature of exactness and correctness. It is so difficult to deal such people in a multicultural media. The essential qualities needed to survive this difficulty are the nature to aware himself and tolerate. In the case of business purpose traveling the employee must start early so that he can make necessary adjustments in the physical and cultural fields. In all occasions it will be useful if the employee has got some skill and knowledge to deal the intercultural differences and misunderstandings. To attain this stage the best way is to undergo theoretical and practical training on intercultural awareness.

The influence of intercultural synergy in mergers and acquisitions

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:41:01 +0000

The tremendous economic pressure affected all over the world forced the multinational companies to encourage the mergers and the acquisitions globally. According to the international statistical wing the reason for this phenomenon is poor shareholder value prevailed in the global market. This was a very sudden draw back which happened due to the instability of the economic world.
Experts in the business media has undergone investigations about the down fall occurred in the global business during the past years. They could come to the conclusions that the merges and the acquisitions occurred not only due to the economic instability but also the failure to deal the intercultural differences properly. According to them this is the strong option and the reason for the same has been considered as the lack of intercultural training. They pointed out that the intercultural unawareness led to the differences between the people and the organizations which inversely affected the productivity of the company.
This matter has highlighted the importance of cultural training in the global business. Thus, the intercultural training to the managers and HR personnel of the organization became inevitable. The same has helped to minimize the cultural differences and misunderstandings in the business media to a greater extend. At the pre merging stage of the organization, the matter of cultural differences and misunderstandings between individuals should be taken into consideration. The result of the post merging stage of the organization depends upon the manner they deal the intercultural challenges and differences between them. This process has got very high capability to influence the later performances of the organization.
It will be useful if all the staff in addition to the managers and HR personnel of a multinational organization undergo intercultural training. Such organizations will have tremendous confidence in dealing the intercultural matters very fruitfully together with the mergers and acquisitions. This will be highlighted in the performance of the organization very well. But it is very sorry to say that at least a few multinational organizations are keeping some reluctance to invest for the purpose of intercultural training to their staff. No organization is ready to consider about the positive outcome of such training in the business field. The negligence in this case will produce incomparable loss to them in the later years.
The experts in the business media have proposed some valuable suggestions to sort out such difficulties suffering by the various organizations of the world. According to them more and more companies should come forward to implement the intercultural training among their staff. This will be so worth and profitable to them with respect to the expenses to be afforded by them. Experts point out the need to organize and implement comprehensive intercultural training programs by the multinational organizations to develop a better outcome in the later years of the business world. This training will enable them to deal the intercultural differences and misunderstandings very comfortably, and thereby develop a most agreeable and satisfactory atmosphere within the organization. Hence the intercultural training is an inevitable factor as far as the mergers and acquisitions are concerned.

Cross cultural understanding

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:39:23 +0000

The global economic variations and the high desire to invade the front line of the business world, the multinational companies have started to diversify their working media to other countries. As a part of this, people of various countries have started to migrate to other areas of the world to meet their business requirements. This has forced them to associate and cooperate with the people of the respective areas, having different cultures and languages. This was not so easy because, the lack of perfect awareness about their culture and language may develop a lot of misunderstandings and defaults during their communication and association. This found to be as an obstacle as far as the business world is concerned. So the experts in the business media started thinking about this difficulty and suggested the need of specialized men in intercultural association and communication. Thus a brief study and research about this special field has started, which brought the knowledge on ‘Cross cultural understanding’.
Cross cultural understanding enables man to recognize, interpret and behave properly with the other people of different religion, culture and language, and there by encourages them in tackling the negative situations and incidents which may arise especially in the business field. The fundamental intention of this cross cultural understanding is to train the people to attain appropriate skills in dealing the same.
If the cross cultural training has done once, then the people become more perfect in dealing the cultural differences safely and understand gradually the acute appreciation of the same. This can be maintained properly by attaining considerable experience from the work place. The various categories on cross cultural understandings are knowledge, awareness, sensitivity and training. The meanings of all these words are more or less similar, but on screening them perfectly with respect to cross cultural understanding the differences hiding between them can be taken out.
The best way to understand the cross culture is to study the features of it in a descriptive way. Without learning the features of the cross culture, the knowledge about the same will not be perfect in any way. This awareness is very essential to have a general view about the characteristic features of different cultures and languages.
The knowledge about the features of cross culture may bring some considerable changes in the behaviors and attitude of the people while associating with the people of different culture and language.
The very sensitive nature of cross culture is considered as the derivative of the learning on cross culture. This is the ability to assess a situation, context and behavior involved with different types of cultures and the ability to accommodate them timely and appropriately for a positive out come. This can be attained by a thorough practice and training on various cultural features.
The cross cultural training program is the inevitable factor to know the features of the various cultures and languages. This makes them capable to deal across various cultures and cultural features. All the above knowledge on cross cultural understanding is proved to be very effective and can be applied to tackle the situation of cultural difference successfully.