Revisiting a Theory-Supported Approach to Teaching Cross-Cultural Management Skills

Cross—cultural skills are a major criterion for success in the global business environment. For American managers in multinational organizations, this means learning to manage cultural difference at three levels: self, interpersonal, and organizational. Since literature indicates that training programs based on cross—cultural and learning theories are more effective, this paper examines a training program that Serrie first reported in a 1992 issue of JTIB. The five related and synergistic activities discussed in the paper give participants experience in dealing with and solving real—world problems in cross-cultural management at all three levels. The process is reassessed in terms of recent theory, and to confirm the efficacy of this approach, a pretest—posttest experiment was conducted with a treatment group and control groups. Results show that the treatment group was the only one to show a significant (at p < 0.05) increase in intercultural expertisea measure of cross—cultural skill. Limitations and implications are discussed.