Enhancing Competitiveness by Multi-cultural Competencies

- Comparison of Corporate and Academic Approaches

Prof. Stanislaw Strzelczak

Abstract：The importance of multicultural competence in business activities has become widely accepted in recent years. The leading business schools attempt to enhance their multicultural outlook by a range of initiatives. This trend is supported by some international ventures, e.g. by the EU programs resulting from the Declaration of Bologna. Similar topics were added to the portfolio of many consulting companies. However, majority of attempts towards multicultural business education apply rather limited understanding of multicultural competence. First, they distinguish only national cultures. Secondly, they apply very simplified patterns of analysis of the cultures, typically reduced to several factors, mostly of behavioral nature. This paper aims at a wider and deeper understanding of multicultural business competence. At the beginning, common existing practices of graduate business schools, consulting companies and corporate HRD activities are reviewed. Later, possible different meanings and perspectives of organizational and business cultures are considered, especially with reference to the Asian and Western cultures. Finally, the issues of leveraging cultures and hard organizational systems, to support improved business performance and competitiveness, are discussed. The author advocates for a need to develop relevant models and tools, which could enable satisfactory analysis of business cultures, including their interactions and trade offs with hard organizational systems, as well as accompanying assessment metrics and methodologies.