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Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
A Review of “Contemporary Leadership and
Intercultural Competence: Exploring the
Cross-Cultural Dynamics Within Organizations”
James L. Morrison
To cite this article: James L. Morrison (2012) A Review of “Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Exploring the Cross-Cultural Dynamics Within Organizations”, Journal of Education for Business, 87:1, 60-62, DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2010.538449
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2010.538449
Published online: 21 Nov 2011.
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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 87: 60–62, 2012 CopyrightC Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0883-2323 print / 1940-3356 online DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2010.538449
Book Review
Moodian, Michael A. (Ed.).Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Exploring the Cross-Cultural Dynamics Within Organizations. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. (2009). 299 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4129-5453-2.$53.95.
To sustain success, Michael A. Moodian, the editor of a book of readings on intercultural competence, makes the point that today’s leadership needs to build a capacity that enables organizational personnel at all levels to understand and uti-lize cultural diversity for gaining a competitive advantage. In this regard, he states that promoting a cross-cultural work-ing environment is very indicative of today’s organizations that seek to take advantage of a global marketplace for sell-ing their goods and services.Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Exploring the Cross-Cultural Dy-namics Within Organizationsfeatures the contributions of a number of fairly well-known global scholars as they delin-eate the evolving role of cultural diversity in the workplace. The book of readings brings together organizational theory and practical applications through the eyes of over 20 schol-ars from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Examples include the writings of Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and Democratic candidate for president of the United States, Sangeeta R. Gupta, a private-sector management consultant, and Linn Van Dyne, professor of management at Michigan State University.
The intent of the text is to assist the reader in learning how to engage individuals with differing values and expectations for the purpose of putting together productive working units. Because the United States is a country with a growing number of new immigrants, gaining an understanding of how to relate to an extraordinary range of cultures is more significant now than ever before. However, it also puts additional pressure on leadership for getting things accomplished. In other words, learning to work with a multitude of unfamiliar behaviors is a formidable challenge facing most, if not all, leaders in the public, private, or nonprofit sectors. This book of readings is an attempt to bring to the attention of business students the importance of reaching out to these new communities of workers and making them part of what researchers do. In this regard, Moodian suggests that such attention should pay huge dividends, not only individually but also professionally. The target audience for the text is primarily the business graduate student who is endeavoring to expand his or her knowledge about organizational behavior, international
busi-ness, and cross-cultural management. Also targeted are prac-titioners in the field, including senior executives and lower level managers, as well as consultants and trainers special-izing in organizational leadership, human resource manage-ment, and even public administration.
The basic premise of the book reflects the notion that today’s leaders are required to exhibit a high degree of cross-cultural competency for creating a coordinated workforce that is unified in purpose and action. Noted in the text is that only 10% of the countries in the world are racially or ethi-cally homogeneous. Therefore, the cultural dynamics within an organization can no longer be viewed from an ethnocentric perspective dominated by the values of the chief executive officer. Moodian also suggests that affirmative action alone is not an adequate management strategy. Thus, to create a high-performing organization, it is critical for a leader to generate a workforce that has a commitment to diversity and inclusion—from senior management to hourly labor. In this regard, Moodian has put together a group of scholars who have had considerable experience in implementing strategies for enhancing cultural diversity while building a successful organization, whether it is in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. Correspondingly, the text includes the discussion of important concepts of empowerment, negotiation, reconcil-iation, and integration that leaders need to embrace for en-hancing the cultural intelligence of today’s organization.
Overall, the text challenges the historical approach to di-versity that has generally focused on assimilating individuals into the policies, practices, and philosophy of a majority cul-ture. In the United States, that was typically the White Euro-pean culture that had practiced the use of ethnocentric leader-ship whereby the values and expectations of male leaders, in particular, dominated the work culture of their organizations. However, as alluded to previously, the challenge today is for the leader to unify a global workforce, having varied cultural norms and expectation, for a common purpose. Moodian suggests that this requires a leader who is sensitive to the differences in the way people think and act. The chapters in the readings offer not only revised definitions of leadership and cultural competence but also strategies for effectively bringing people together for the purpose of aligning personal and organizational goals. The authors themselves have had considerable experience working with employees situated in Asia, Africa, and South America, and thus bring a wealth of personal experiences into their writings.
BOOK REVIEW 61
The text is organized into five parts. In Part I of the book, Moodian presents varying perspectives analyzing cultural differences and their effects on generating a workforce that is united in purpose. Therefore, the objective of the initial three chapters is to expand the readers thinking about exactly what is culture and how may define it. In addition, Moodian introduces to the concept of multicultural envisioning as a way for addressing the complexities inherent in the world of diversity. Multicultural envisioning is described as a strategy for empowering individuals to work toward their own best interest as well as that of the organization to which they belong.
Part II focuses on how leaders may design an organiza-tional process for bringing about change in the way managers view cultural relationships. In Chapter 4, Gardenswartz and Rowe present a 7-step model for integrating cultural diversity into the decision-making process. In Chapter 5, Bennett in-troduces the concepts of religious and spiritual diversity and how leaders need to be proactive in assuring faith-friendly organizations. In Chapter 6, Tobin discusses the legal im-plications surrounding the cross-cultural workplace, espe-cially in view of varying norms and expectations of societies around the world. The caution here is that regional customs, religious values, and political realities all impact upon how organizations deal with cultural differences. For example, Tobin writes that the rule of law may be interpreted quite differently for an organization operating in the Middle East, China, or India. Finally, in Chapter 7, human resource man-agement issues such as recruiting, training, and reconciling are addressed in term of increasing global corporate effec-tiveness and cultural acceptance.
Part III presents an assortment of practices that are de-signed to enhance leadership capacity for creating an in-clusive multicultural working environment. Janet Bennett in Chapter 8 introduces the concept of transformative training that bridges global and domestic contexts. This assists the reader in developing an intercultural sensitivity by progress-ing from three ethnocentric stages featurprogress-ing denial, defense, and minimization, to three ethnorelative stages that encour-age acceptance, adaptation, and integration. In Chapter 9, Hyatt, Evans, and Haque perceive the global leader as an in-dividual that needs to be re-educated for creating new kinds of global alliances as well as for making decisions using non-nationalistic thinking. The skill sets identified for this pur-pose are multidimensional thinking, diplomacy, and adapt-ability. In addition, introduced here is the perspective that culturally sensitive leaders are a function of education, inter-cultural competence, globalization, and knowledge velocity. Schaetti, Ramsey, and Watanabe then in Chapter 10 present the concept of what is referred to as a personal leadership shift that reflects the theory that there is no one way to lead and thus no one way to develop intercultural competence. In other words, leaders are depicted as those who now must strategically immerse themselves in practicing and experi-menting with alternatives for engaging individuals with
dif-ferent backgrounds. Barna in Chapter 11 offers suggestions for dealing with the anxiety and tension that often results when working face to face with someone who is culturally different. Finally, in Chapter 12, Gupta concludes this part of the text reminding us that leaders need to develop a different kind of global mindset, a more contemporary style of cultural competency, and a new form of adaptability.
Part IV specifies the need to use specific tools for gath-ering data for the purpose of making decisions to modify present policies and practices to increase intercultural com-petence. The chapter authors in this segment tend to reinforce a mindset that places more emphasis on the reconciliation of dilemmas that emerge due to conflicting behavior that is frequently based on cultural misinterpretations. Trompe-naars and Woolliams in Chapter 13 introduce an Intercultural Competency Profiler that distinguishes four dimensions to in-tercultural competence: recognition, respect, reconciliation, and realization. Stuart in Chapter 14 illustrates a number of assessment instruments that can be adopted for deter-mining cross-cultural effectiveness among leaders. Such as-sessment tools described are the Cross-Cultural Adaptabil-ity Inventory, International Assignment Profile, and Multi-cultural Personality Questionnaire, among others. Also in-cluded are tools for developing intercultural coaching, such as the International Profiler and the Spony Profiling Model. Specifically, these instruments are designed to gather data that can be used to help an employee decide whether to ac-cept an international assignment, prepare a manager to lead a multicultural work group, or determine the intercultural competence of a leadership team. Fischer in Chapter 15 con-tinues the discussion on assessing leadership effectiveness by presenting additional instruments that may be utilized to determine the cultural competence of leaders. Examples of such tools are the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the Leadership Prac-tices Inventory. Finally, Hammer in Chapter 16 presents the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), which is a tool that may be adopted for assessing the cross-cultural dynam-ics of the overall organization. The IDI can be used to assess a group’s capability to deal with cultural differences as well as indicate areas in management where multicultural training may be desired. Also in Chapter 17, Hammer again develops an Intercultural Conflict Style Model that can be used to help individuals solve problems and resolve conflicts that arise in a multicultural environment. Van Dyne, Ang, and Koh in Chapter 18 present a four-factor model for measuring what they label as significant aspects to cultural intelligence. They are behavioral, motivational, cognitive, and metacognitive. Bhawuk and Sakuda in Chapter 19 identify benchmarks to measure intercultural sensitivity using their instrument called the Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory.
Part V concludes the text by taking a look at a process for assessing an organization’s intercultural competence. For ex-ample, Schmieder-Ramirez and Mallette introduce SPELIT methodology as a procedure for systematically analyzing the
62 BOOK REVIEW
social (S), political (P), economic (E), legal (L), intercultural (I), and technological (T) environments in an organization. This methodology is described as an intensive data-gathering process that may be used by practitioners in the field to exam-ine an entire organization in terms of its capacity to integrate cultural differences into working environments for creating a dynamic institutional structure.
The text provides an opportunity for business students to grasp the reality of how organizations can move from a monocultural framework to a transnational, multicultural operating style. The writings of these scholars generally sup-port the position that there is value in having a multicultural workplace. Therefore, it is argued generally throughout the text that leaders need to directly address a changing working environment by adopting new assessment mechanisms for gathering data for modifying existing practices to adapt to unfamiliar behaviors in the workplace. Moodian does an ex-cellent job putting together a number of scholars who present strategies for leaders to adopt to better create a productive workforce that is continually engaged in merging differences into strengths.
It would have been helpful, though, if there were one or two chapters dealing with specific transnational issues that organizational leaders must contend with as they carry out their daily operations. For example, discussing the multicul-tural influence on the way decisions are made to address
international environmental concerns or on the way ethical and corporate social responsibility is perceived would en-hance the practical side to the topic. In addition, a chapter discussing issues that impact on the multicultural working environment such as childcare, national customs, and the protection of personal or human rights would have helped. Finally, another topic of considerable importance is how a multicultural workforce impacts an organization’s ability to innovate, especially across globally dispersed locations with differing cultural traditions, institutional norms, and govern-mental regulations.
In conclusion, the insights offered throughout the text en-able the reader to devise personal strategies to work more effectively in an increasingly multicultural world. The text is recommended as a course supplemental reader and of-fers faculty an excellent opportunity to engage students in discussing important aspects to cultural diversity. The nu-merous examples in the text bring reality to the discussion of intercultural competence and help business students expand their thinking beyond that of simply applying theoretical ap-proaches for enhancing their effectiveness as an inspirational leader in today’s organization.
James L. Morrison
University of Delaware Newark, Delaware, USA
