More on defining ICC and managing intercultural teams

Hello Wagner,

It goes without saying that people working together represent quite a lot more than their individual cultural backgrounds and frameworks. Regardless of the ample choice of authors focusing widely on matters of cultural identity (the Hofstedes, Trompenaars, and many more), I would suggest to approach and treat our business counterparts, simply and straightforwardly, as human beings first and foremost.

As briefly but poignantly documented by Amartya Sen (Identity and Violence, 2006), a major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion and culture, and this implicit belief in the overarching power of a singular classification can make the world thoroughly inflammable. The confining of culture into stark and separated boxes of civilizations  takes too narrow a view of cultural attributes: Cultural generalizations present astonishingly limited and bleak understandings of the characteristics of the human beings involved.

This much said, the fact remains that causes and effects in the work process are differently managed and perceived according to the contextual values and reference criteria of the stakeholders. This means that, away from theoretical frameworks, it seems indeed to be the case that culture matters.

Now, the question of how exactly it is, that culture matters, and how to manage the impact thereof, remains to be addressed.

Apart from being individuals, it is mostly competence which brings and binds us together in a team or a common project. For this reason, I would agree with David Marshall, who shows, from the example of the football team, that it matters most for the individual team members to recognize and pay deference to the degree in which each team member excells in the competence required for the team output, rather than to focus on differences in the different cultural idenity constructs of all the members of the group.

Hence, in treating the ability of an individual to value deference over difference as a competence by itself, we discern the opportunity to manage the culture shock on three different levels, viz. a knowledge level, a skill level and an attitude level.

To take attitude first, we should address the readiness of the individual to let go of illusory identity constructs and the practical limitations of their self imposed reference criteria.
Next, as a skill, we should practice in the systematic undermining of steoreotyped views commended by the narrowing borders of our all too cherished but artificial identity imperatives, and develop ways in which we discover added value, rather than limitation, in each other being diversely different.
And in order to get there, some knowledge of the (historical) narratives guiding the behaviour, conduct, perceptions and perspectives of our own identy constructs as well as those of the others, will be of valuable help.

All this should do, to attenuate the degree in which contextual (much rather than merely cultural) parameters influence the output of an intercultural team. The key is in deference vs difference, and added value vs limitation.

Lastly, I do agree with Richa Rana, when she says that organisation culture is ranked above cultural identity. However, the corporate culture of an organisation is a bottom-up process, quite irrespective of the wishful thinking of the management.
In our modern, globalised world, the joint development of what I suggest to call the deference competence will prove key to any succesful organisation culture, guaranteeing both the quantity and quality of the organisational output.

Regards,

Francis Laleman