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Differences and difficulties in intercultural management interaction 263

13. Differences and difficulties in intercultural
management interaction

Peter Franklin

1. Introduction

Those working in international business and management, in particular human
resource development professionals, are increasingly interested in the study of
intercultural communication for the way that it can provide (partial) solutions/
remedies for some of the problems or unsatisfactory states encountered in cross-
and multicultural cooperation. These problems and unsatisfactory states may be
found in all aspects of classical management. Decision making, project plan-
ning, conducting a meeting and giving feedback to a member of staff are
examples of universal management activities, yet they all become more chall-
enging when managers are working across corporate and/or national cultural
borders because they may be achieved in culture-specific ways. When people
encounter not just a foreign language and a different communication style but
different ways of acting and managing, this can be very burdensome. In a tourist
situation, interactional differences often result in only passing discomfort, but
in business, much more is usually at stake. The success of the company’s or
client’s business, the harmony of significant relationships, the jobs of staff and
colleagues and/or indeed one’s own, are among the things which may be endan-
gered through culturally influenced, dysfunctional management interaction.
Solutions and remedies generated by the study of intercultural communi-
cation can be made available in the form of human resources and organizational
development interventions, most frequently as intercultural training of one kind
or another (cf. Rost-Roth, this volume; Newton, this volume). Increasingly,
the study of intercultural communication is also being looked to as a source of
assistance in tapping the potentially greater creativity and/or effectiveness as-
sumed by companies, and to some extent demonstrated by research (e.g. Earley
and Gibson 2002; Earley and Mosakowski 2000; Jackson, May and Whitney
1995; Watson, Kumar and Michaelson 1993) to be present in culturally diverse
groups.
When it comes to the scientific underpinning of intercultural training in
European business, approaches have generally tended not to rely on models of
how to communicate effectively across cultures (e.g. Gudykunst 1998) or on
studies of the competences of the successful intercultural communicator, which
may explain the rarity of the term ‘intercultural communication training’ (cf.
Rost-Roth in this volume). (At the time of writing, Google gives only 11,900