Cornelius Grove & Willa Hallowell, 1999

This document was prepared by invitation for publication in USA & Europe in Business 2000, the yearbook of the European Council of American Chambers of Commerce (ECACC), London, U.K., October 1999.  Published by Sterling Publications (London).  Following is the original, unedited typescript of this document.

During the early 1960s, when U.S. Peace Corps volunteers first entered villages abroad, most encountered major difficulties and many failed.  "Could this have been prevented?" was the question posed by officials.  From the quest for a positive response arose the intercultural field, now approaching its 40th year.

Social scientists who examined the Peace Corps's experience revealed the problem: value differences between cultures.  For example, they found that values such as "progress" and "equal opportunity," which motivated those who created the Peace Corps, were not shared by many on the receiving end of its volunteers good works.  Projecting their culture's values, Americans had imagined that poor villagers would grasp the worth of, say, irrigation systems.  Some villagers, however, had no expectation that life could or should improve economically; their polite non-cooperation frustrated and eventually defeated many volunteers.
 

Intercultural Insights for Businesses

As value differences between cultures were increasingly researched, the application of this knowledge to the world of international business became easier.  After all, business is where the values of a culture are acted out daily within the economic sphere.

The first businesses to invest in intercultural services did so because they had been embarrassed — and injured financially — by an avoidable cross-cultural catastrophe.  Businesses today are using intercultural consulting and training proactively to prevent such mishaps.  They're finding, as a bonus, that their employees are more competent, confident, and effective when abroad.

Following are both traditional and newly emerging ways in which interculturalists will work for the benefit of globalizing businesses in the year 2000 and beyond.
 

Traditional Services: Up-to-Date

This field began because expatriates in the Peace Corps clearly needed assistance.  Expatriate training continues to be interculturalists' major contribution to overseas success.

   Intercultural research has focused on determining a person's suitability for overseas assignment, yielding a way to assess candidates for expatriation.  Computer-scored instruments are commercially available, as are less expensive approaches that support a family in wisely making its own decision.

   Research consistently shows that dissatisfaction of assignees' spouses is the principal cause of premature return home and expatriate "brownout" (suboptimal performance).  All worthwhile expat coaching programs pay sustained attention to the needs of spouses, including male spouses.  Children and teenagers can also receive coaching to prepare them for the cultural transition.

   Pre-departure programs, while useful, are coming to be viewed as less cost effective than post-arrival programs conducted 3-4 weeks after the family settles into the host country.

   Repatriation coaching is gaining wider use because many former expats look back on their experience and conclude that their return home proved more troublesome than their initial transition overseas.  Businesses are taking note because of high turnover among recent returnees.

   A recent amplification of traditional services is coaching for host country supervisors and colleagues.  Alert executives know that the adjustments needed for a good working relationship are not totally the expat's to make; locals also need to adapt to the new cultural mix.

   An even newer service amplification is occurring because global businesses are recognizing that allprofessional and clerical employees, even those who never leave home, are affected by value differences.  All cross-cultural communication — including e-mail and other electronic communication — carries the risk of misunderstanding and the attendant distrust.
 

Emerging Services: Cutting Edge

Global business opportunities in the new millennium are generating new varieties of culture contact.  Interculturalists are ready to promote the attainment of business objectives whenever the differing cultures are national, organizational, or even occupational.

   Global competency development is important for expanding firms.  The cross-cultural component of competencies, identified by the Rand Corporation as "the critical new human resource requirement," is being fostered through training and other activities readily available from interculturalists.

   Global teams are working groups that are dispersed geographically and  multicultural in composition.  Researchers are studying such teams' cross-cultural and distance-communication difficulties (which have led so far to a poor track record).  The best use of an interculturalist is as an external process facilitator working side-by-side with the global team's internal manager.

   Major engineering projects are being completed within Culture A under the direction of a firm from Culture B using employees from Cultures A, B, C, D, and E.  These projects have human resource challenges that are as complicated as the engineering.  IHR consultants with solid grounding in value differences are helping to manage such projects effectively.

   Mergers and acquisitions, newsworthy of late, are well known to have an unfavorable impact on profitability.  The ingredient missing from many M&As is careful, sustained attention to the cultural features of the integration process.  Interculturalists and business anthropologists are teaming up to address culture change and cultural adaptation within international combinations.  And forward-thinking executives are engaging such teams prior to the decision to merge, asking them to contribute "cultural due diligence" investigations.

   The most cutting-edge of all intercultural services addresses the tendency of U.S. firms to transfer "workforce diversity" policies and initiatives to their operations overseas.  Intercultural theory predicts, and research confirms, that any transfer of an integrated constellation of values (such as diversity) from one culture to another will have unexpected consequences.  Specialists in the globalization of diversity can bring wisdom to the transfer process.

"Nothing is so practical as a good theory," is an apt characterization of the intercultural field in the year 2000 and beyond.