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Antecedent to Cultural Competence at WorkplaceInterpersonal Cross-Cultural Contact: Exploring the Role of Cultural Encounters as

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Article

Interpersonal Cross-Cultural ContactExploring the Role of Cultural Encounters as Antecedent to Cultural Competence at Workplace

Apoorva Ghosh

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to qualitatively investigate how interpersonal cultural encounters in daily lives make individuals culturally competent at workplace. Using in-depth interviews of Indian working executives, I conducted an inquiry to arrive at my findings. The findings suggest that cultural encounters in work as well as non-work settings influence cultural competence at workplace. Especially, the role of family-based encounters was found to be significant. Contribution of this study towards the scholarship on cross-cultural management and future scope for research are discussed.

KeywordsCross-cultural contact, cultural encounters, cultural competence

Introduction

Contemporary organizational scholarship explains the dynamic consequences of cross-cultural contact at workplace. Becker and Geer (1960) offer a theoretical premise that the cultural influx or new ‘latent social identities’ in organizations could emerge from new members and alliances from outside groups. These identities may challenge or support the organization’s manifest cultures—the ones represented by the shared problems, values and identities of the organization. Latent identities may also source from within the organization internally—manifested in the form of ‘internal’ organizational politics from its members that bear various cultural identities. At the same time, these could also emanate from members that participate in many groups and acquire cultures. Such experiences link various inter and intra organizational groups through joint memberships. Thus, under the influence of various contacts, instead of viewing cultures in an organization as stable, bounded, and homogeneous, they can be best viewed as criss-crosses of multiple cultural contexts that change over time (Gregory, 1983, p. 365). The process of cross-cultural contact in organizations can be understood using the Cultural Dynamics Model of Hatch (1993) as a cycle that involves Manifestation of emerging cultural assumptions in the values of the organizational members, Realization of these values in the tangible cultural artifacts, such as rites, rituals, organizational stories, humour and various physical objects, Symbolization of artifacts as cultural

Management and Labour Studies38(1&2) 81–101

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82 Apoorva Ghosh

symbols, such as corporate logos, slogans, stories, actions and non actions, visual images and metaphors, and finally Interpretation of these symbols to reconstruct the basic assumptions in the light of both current experiences and past assumptions.

Cross-cultural contact has vast application in business studies. At inter-organization level, studies on mergers and acquisitions (example, Nahavandi and Malekzadeh, 1988; Lubatkin et al., 1998; Stahl and Voigt, 2008), joint ventures (example, Peterson and Shimada, 1978; Park and Ungson, 1997; Salk and Brannen, 2000; Luo, 2001; Li et al., 2001), intercultural negotiations (example, Brett and Okumura, 1998), entry mode choice (example, Brouthers and Brouthers, 2001), transfer of technology and practices across nations (example, Young, 1992; Kedia and Bhagat, 1988), and partnership and alliances, including foreign direct investment (example, Shenkar, 2001; Luo, 2005; Lavie and Miller, 2008) form major contributions. At the organization level, transnational or multinational nature of business (example, De La Torre and Toyne, 1978; Ahmed, 1996; Bruno, 1996), influence and representation of community and indigenous cultures in the organization (example, Andrews and Chompusri, 2001; Toh and DeNisi, 2003; King et al., 2011), and influence of cultural diversity on business performance (example, Kyung, 1996; Thomas and Bendixen, 2000) and supply chain relationships (example, Griffith, 2000) are the main subjects of studies. Group level studies focus on effects of cultural diversity on group behaviours and communication (example, Cox et al., 1991; Tse et al., 1994; George et al., 1998; Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999; Mollica et al., 2003) and influence of national cultures on teamwork metaphors (example, Gibson and Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001) and group performance (example, Teagarden et al., 1995; Easterby-Smith and Malina, 1999). Finally, at the interpersonal level, we come across studies on intercultural training using courses, guidelines and cross-cultural experiences (Black and Mendenhall, 1990; Becker, 1996), expat challenges and adjustments (example, Shaw, 1990; Becker, 1996; Sunkyu, 2001; Bhaskar-Srinivas et al., 2005, Molinsky, 2007, Ramalu et al., 2010), and influence of cultural diversity on interpersonal work relations (example, Kraut, 1975; Francis, 1991, Pornpitakpan, 1999).

In this article, I will focus on cultural encounters as interpersonal cross-cultural contact mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between cultural encounters of individuals in their daily lives and their cultural competence at workplace. For this, I will review the concepts of ‘cultural encounter’ and ‘cultural competence’ in the next sections. Then I will review the literature on cross-cultural management to argue why I want to do this study for the business environment. After explaining my methods and findings, I will then explain how my study contributes towards the existing scholarship on cultural competence and interpersonal cultural encounters.

Cultural Encounters as Interpersonal Cross-Cultural Contact Mechanisms

Organizational scholarship has come heavily on simplistic and confining metaphors like borderless firms, imperfect markets, and globalization, which mute the distinctiveness of local cultures, observe the cultural variation between people as a measure of how much they have strayed from the core culture of the multinational firms, and downplay the importance of local cultures resulting in the demise of the very resources that organizations want to exploit by going global. Instead of confining metaphors, enriching metaphors like ‘organization as culture’ and ‘friction’ can appreciate the complexity, dynamics and dialectical nature of cross-cultural contact in organizations by offering credence to the belief that

Interpersonal Cross-Cultural Contact 83


individual behaviours and attitudes could be culture specific, and not deviations from any ‘ideal type’ (Shenkar et al., 2008). Using Kiersey temperament Sorter, a variant of the MBTI indicator, Keating and Abramson (2009) found that the Australian, Thai and Japanese workforce represent four types of temperaments—artisans (sensing-perceiving), guardians (sensing-judging), idealists (intuiting-feeling), and rationalists (intuiting-thinking). They concluded that during cross-cultural contacts, Australians, who have significant guardian component in their personalities, may predict the negotiating style of their Thai counterparts, who have a very strong guardian component. But Australians, who also have significant rational component, may find difficulty with the Thais when their guardian logical orientation may be counteracting with the rational strategic orientation of Australians. Similarly, Australians’ temperament of placing importance on deadlines during negotiations as a result of being guardians may be counterproductive with Japanese’ consensus-based decision making style.

Cultural differences have the potential of creating both synergy and disruption (Shenkar, 2001). We study them because they could be sources of learning during cross-cultural contacts (Gertsen and Soderberg, 2010). The process of directly engaging in cross-cultural interactions with individuals from culturally diverse background is termed as Cultural Encounter (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). Though a few studies have pointed out that because of organizational factors (like institutional ethnocentrism) and individual level factors (like cultural distance) (Johnson et al., 2006), people who have worked in cross-cultural work environment (a) have experienced lower levels of general work and interaction adjustments (Van Vianen et al., 2004), (b) have focused more on intercultural differences, (c) have reinforced their stereotypes about the other groups, and (d) have reaffirmed their identity more closely to their native cultural groups compared to those who have lived in mono-cultural environments (Kosmitzki, 1996), some scholars argue that interacting with culturally diverse individuals can refine or modify ones’ beliefs about those cultures and prevent popular stereotyping (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). A possible perspective for understanding this contradiction can be found from the study conducted by Brief et al. (2005). They found that though high racial diversity at workplace can result in poorer work relationships between Whites and African-Americans, this relationship was moderated by the proximity of Whites and African- Americans in the communities where they lived. That is, with an increase in the proximity in community, work relationships became stronger.

Psychologists in recent times have agreed that a large part of human behaviour is conditioned by nurture, and thus individuals’ behaviours and attitudes are malleable to the culture they are born and live in (see Keating and Abramson, 2009). Hence, De La Torre and Toyne (1978) argue that organiza-tions which screen applicants for managerial positions in their foreign subsidiaries would select incumbents who are already conditioned or willing to condition their attitudes to match the foreign subsidiary’s organizational climate. In their review, they find that as a result of prolonged workplace socialization, managerial attitudes get conditioned by the prevailing socio-cultural and contextual environments. Especially, expatriate managers experience significant modifications in their attitudes as a result of foreign exposures. For example, a study in their review concludes that the U.S. expatriate managers’ attitudes were modified from participatory to more autocratic due to lengthy exposure to developing country environments. Such exposures could be mainly in the form of long term residencies overseas, working in foreign subsidiaries, and frequent overseas trips. Another study (Lee and Larwood, 1983) that corroborates this argument finds that the American expatriates in multinational firms operat-ing in Korea develop their work related attitudes and correlates of job satisfaction closer to those of


84 Apoorva Ghosh

Koreans than that of American managers in the United States. Culturally sensitive employees in service industries have been found higher in service attentiveness, interpersonal skills, revenue contribution and social satisfaction than their counterparts when they engage in cultural encounters (Sizoo et al. 2005; Sizoo, 2006; Sizoo, 2007). The quality of cross-cultural interaction is found to be a function of partici-pants’ understanding of each other’s cultural context and underlying assumptions that are associated with the interaction (Bruno, 1996). As a result, cross-cultural trainings are seen as essential for expatriates to successfully execute their jobs during cultural encounters in their host countries (Tung, 1987; Black and Mendenhall, 1990; Becker, 1996).

Cultural Competence at Workplace

Workforce diversity scholars have stressed upon building competencies in organizational members that can help in creating inclusive spaces for culturally diverse individuals. At the interpersonal level, Turnbull et al. (2010) talk about two types of diversity competencies- interacting with difference and valuing difference. ‘Interacting with Difference’ measures competencies such as active listening to others’ frames of references without being judgmental about them, being flexible in adopting different styles when working with culturally diverse people, treating others the way they want to be treated, and showing readiness towards accommodating diverse needs. ‘Valuing Differences’ measures encouraging innovation and creativity at workplace, embracing diversity as a resource to benefit the organization and its members, treating diversity as an asset, supporting systems, proce- dures and practices that promote diversity at workplace, and finally, leveraging the benefits that differences can add.

To sum up all the characteristics that indicate individual and organizational abilities to leverage workforce diversity, Cultural Competence is the widely used construct. Cultural Competence at workplace can be defined as ‘a set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations’ (Cross et al., 1989). We understand culture as an extension to this definition offered by Cross et al. (1989) as an ‘integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious, or social group’. Hence, in this study, we view cultural identities and cultural diversity as a broad umbrella that takes into accounts various identities based on ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation etc. (Ely and Thomas, 2001).

Cultural competence is understood as a combination of knowledge, attitudes and skills that are largely learnt, but are also influenced by disposition (such as personality traits). A culturally competent individual is expected to possess strong personal identity, have knowledge and compatibility with the beliefs and values of other cultures, show sensitivity towards the affective processes of cultures, communicate in the language of the target groups as far as possible, adhere to sanctioned behaviours where applicable, maintain active social relations with cultural groups, and negotiate institutional structures of the target culture. While cross-cultural knowledge, understanding and awareness are important, an important dimension of cultural competence is to have the motivation for stepping beyond one’s comfort zones of values and beliefs ‘to make the strange familiar and familiar strange’ by using that knowledge and awareness (review by Johnson et al., 2006, p. 529).



Cultural Competence and Cultural Encounters

Mere knowledge and awareness of cross-cultural differences offers no guarantee for mitigating one’s deep-seated stereotypic representations of other cultural groups until cultural encounters take place and potential conflicts are made visible (Chapel, 1996). Hence, previous experiences with culturally diverse individuals in work and non-work environment are seen as significant influencers in the process of developing managerial attitudes towards cross-cultural differences (De La Torre and Toyne, 1978) and expatriate adjustments in the host organization (Takeuchi et al., 2005). In non-work settings, community factors such as living in proximity with racially different individuals are found to enhance quality of work relationships in a racially diverse workplace (Brief et al., 2005). The role of family based cultural encounters is also listed. Expatriate’s family atmosphere is found to influence the process of adapting to new work cultures (Tung, 1987). Anthropological studies suggest that genealogical history can result in cultural differences in the values of second and third generation expatriates compared to the indigenous co-workers (Kelley and Reeser, 1973; review by De La Torre and Toyne, 1978, p. 468). Cultural encounters during intercultural training exercises for expatriates, such as field experiences or exposure to mini cultures within their own country, are accepted as practical approaches towards reducing cultural shocks in the host countries. Such individuals were found to develop a more cosmopolitan outlook than individuals who did not receive such trainings (Earley, 1987).

Gertsen and Soderberg’s (2010) narrative discourse of critical incidents of expatriates explains that cultural encounters in their host organizations were largely responsible for refining their established understanding of the host nationals, stimulating a unique cultural learning process, and enhancing expa-triates’ cultural intelligence in their new setups. Such encounters also help in forming network ties in the host organization, not only to obtain informational support, but also to obtain emotional support and adjustment facilitating support (Farh et al., 2010). Cultural encounters are found to result in cooperative behaviours more when the organization is collectivist in orientation (Chatman and Spataro, 2005).

Based on my review, I think that cultural encounters in work and non-work settings act as important influencers towards making individuals culturally competent at the workplace. Though literature on nursing has theoretically and empirically argued for the relationship between environmental factors, specifically cultural encounters, and cultural competence (for example, Campinha-Bacote, 2002; Harper, 2008; Suh, 2004), I think that an empirical study in the workplace domain on this relationship is required. While healthcare and nursing domains primarily work on expert-subject (doctor-patient, nurse-patient) dyads, workplace settings are centred on peer group relationships. Hence, while an empirical investigation would inform us on how cultural encounters influence cultural competence at workplace, it would also be interesting to see how similarly and differently this happens in these two domains.

Methods

Methodology

Narrative approach has been accepted as a way to understand how cultural encounters are constructed and experienced as a social reality (Gertsen and Soderberg, 2010). In consistence with the purpose of this study, I employed an interpretative approach to explore how cultural encounters in work and non-work


86 Apoorva Ghosh

settings influences the process of making individuals culturally competent at workplace. I adopted in-depth interviews as the method to receive first hand information to answer my research questions.

Sample

I recruited my participants for this study through purposive and snowball sampling. I first contacted, through my professional networks, individuals employed in organizations spread across a range of industries. I knew most of these individuals as my colleagues who had joined various programmes in a premiere business school. They came with a good number of years of work experiences, and the school they enrolled with carefully screens its participants to let only the most qualified individuals enter in their programmes. Hence, I expected them to have good knowledge of business environment. At the same time, because of my interactions with them, I could also assess whether these individuals are friendly to workplace diversity. I interviewed those who agreed. At the same time, I also requested them to convey my recruitment message to people whom they thought would satisfy our recruitment criterion. In addition, I also contacted a couple of faculty members teaching in business school(s) who had work experiences in the corporate or had administrative experiences in their respective schools. Twenty-five participants were contacted—11 through direct contact and rest through snowballing. Out of these, 17 agreed to be interviewed. I audio recorded all the interviews and transcribed them. I was also coding the transcripts simultaneously. As the coding patterns appeared well developed after the tenth interview, finally 15 respondents were interviewed for the study. Out of these, 10 came from direct contacts and rest through snowballing. My sample had only Indian nationals. I tried to make it as representative as possible in terms of gender, industry and number of years of work experience. The sample characteristics are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Sample Details

Respondent names (fictitious)

Gender m/f Industry Occupation

Total Work Experience (years)

Monika f Publication Senior Management 17Renu f Beverages HR Leader 15Harsh m Telecom HR Leader 8Sudeep m Print media Journalist 15Sushmita f Telecommunication

products and technologiesHR Leader 12

Dhiraj m Print media Journalist 8Jayant m Armed forces Armed Forces Officer 9Kuldeep m Armed forces Armed Forces Officer 28Neeraj m FMCG Middle Management 18Ayesha f IT IT Consultant 10Jiten m Non banking financial company Senior Management 20Niti f Consulting HR leader 17Prof. Sen m Academia Professori 30Saurav m Publication HR Leader 7Prof. Rai m Academia Professor 20

Source: Author’s own.Note: iEarlier, HR leader of a large private sector firm.



I took informed consent from my respondents either on email or on phone. I described them the purpose of my study and informed that their participation is voluntary. I also informed that this study is of minimal risk as the data I would gather from their interviews would be accessed only by me to protect their privacy, and their names and affiliations would also be concealed to retain their confidentiality. However, I wanted to give names to our participants while discussing my findings. Hence, I have used fictitious names for all my participants in this paper. I sought prior appointments for the interviews which were conducted either face to face, or telephonically.

Data Collection and Analysis

The interviews were semi-structured and were aimed at asking open questions on how the respondents observed diversity at their workplace, and recording their responses by way of narrating the critical incidents they experienced in their work and non-work settings, and the opinions they had towards workforce diversity. The interview schedule contained questions like, have you come across cases when diverse employees had specific needs and expectations? Have you come across cases when employees had some needs based on their social identity? What were the issues? How these were addressed/not addressed? Any incident, which you felt went out of hand? Did you come across people who were left out at some point in their workplace? Who were these people? Why do you think it was happening? How did people around them make sense of this—colleagues, human resource managers, bosses, etc.? What was done to reduce this? During interviews, as and when I thought that the respondents were aware of their successes and failures, questions were probed to know their experiences with culturally diverse people in their work and non-work settings to see how those experiences helped in making or not making them culturally competent at workplace.

All the interviews were digitally recorded for accuracy. The duration of the interviews ranged from 45–90 minutes. All the interview transcripts were transcribed and coded. I adopted the coding practices described by Saldana (2006) and Charmaz (2006). As per their prescriptions, I coded my data in two cycles—the first cycle was done through line by line, process and in-vivo coding. I refined these codes in the second cycle using focused and axial coding. Using axial coding I interlinked the various codes to form the themes. These codes were clustered and sometimes reallocated to enhance the power and purpose (Babbie, 2006) of the respective themes. Five themes emerged out of the analysis—Community Based Encounters, Societal Influences, Family, Personal Experiences and Professional Exposures.

Findings

My respondents gave vivid descriptions of the various accounts they observed closely or experienced as a first or second party. My aim for this study was to trace the various influences that they received towards developing or hindering their cultural competence at the workplace, and to focus particularly on cultural encounters. Following are the broad themes that emerged as the main variants of such cultural encounters.


88 Apoorva Ghosh

Community Based Encounters

While community based encounters may develop better competencies towards dealing with cross-cultural individuals, community can also influence the compatibility of individuals with certain cultural groups, drawing a boundary between those who are preferred and those who are not. Hence, preference to work with individuals from certain genders, religions, nationality, and ethnicity, develops in the process of community encounters. Sushmita talked about the gender preferences of employees for their superiors driven by cultural contexts:

If you probe and force into things, then there may be a few [male employees] who may want, who may be more comfortable with a male boss. The comfort factor may be higher, nothing else. There’s a bonding with a male boss, but if you have a female boss, you may not be able to have drinks with her in the evening, you may not meet her at a call. So there are these social structures women may not be very conducive to, right? It may be difficult in that sense to have chemistry with woman boss. In that sense, with men they’d be more comfortable.

It was interesting to find that community based encounters can also mute one’s cross-cultural sensitivity. Neeraj informed us that he, along with his peers, used to frequently target a Sikh team member in his workplace with Santa-Banta jokes. This used to disturb him and as a result he confined himself into his own shell where his interaction with peers was limited and only work-based. While Neeraj probed into it and ultimately discovered the reason for his confinement and finally remedied the whole matter, I was curious to know further why his cross-cultural sensitivity was low in this case. Past experiences in his community answered my question:

The point I am saying is in my community, for example, in my college, I used to be made fun of all the time because of my community, because we had some idiosyncrasies and all that. Sambar (a South Indian curry) and this and that, whatever! And I really didn’t take offence. So I was generalizing on that. But I found this really is not the case all the time. You really have to be sensitive about aspects.

The value systems of the communities and the resulting experiences may also affect the tolerance towards injustice, discrimination and abuse of the vulnerable population. The extent of culturally competent practices depends on the background officers come from, Kuldeep observed. During his expat assignment in a UN Peacekeeping Operation in Africa, he informed me that there was a section that checked social abuses from its troops towards the children and women in the local community. He found that the officers from African origins were more tolerant to their people being subjected to inhuman treatment by the peacekeepers, whereas the Europeans had a stringent code of conduct. They were sharp in pointing out any deviation from the rules, putting it down in writing, and conducting inquiry against the accused. On the other hand, their African counterparts were more tolerant towards issues like misbehaving with local girls, and overlooked them as minor aberrations. Kuldeep got an impression that for Africans, these things were not taken very badly. Making a contrast with European countries, he believed that since there is so much poverty in the African countries, such things do happen over there and are tolerated.



Societal Encounters

My respondents narrated various accounts that explained the role of non-workplace settings on the cross-cultural behaviours and understanding of cultural diversity at workplace. Sudeep talked specifically about the Dalit issue in this regard. He passionately explained that though this section has received protection in public employment because of constitutional provisions, private employers simply refrain from talking about this issue because of the politicization that goes with it, because such issues are aligned with many vested political interests, and talking on this issue in interpersonal and organizational spaces leads to highly divisive tendencies. Personnel in private organizations have always tried to avoid it and have remained indecisive in this regard. While the fear of handling complexities is one factor, the prejudice that societal environment offers is another reason why individuals cannot show cultural intelligence in the workplace when working with diverse peers. Corroborating on societal influences, Neeraj narrated the attitude of certain peers towards their Muslim colleagues in the light of ongoing incidents during those times:

Especially around time when we had blasts and all that, I’ve seen some Muslim colleagues having some trouble …The problem was, one, in fact couple of them started behaving strangely. They [Muslim colleagues] were really never religious but they suddenly started doing namaz and one of them was growing beard, really long and all that stuff. So that’s ok. The problem was they started doing all of a sudden and people around were like ... what’s going on. So I could see little bit of tension. This I am talking about post 9/11 we had some challenges; we had Mumbai blasts and all that, right?.... I don’t know whether you know the context, for example, couple of incidents down south, where Engineers in [XXX] and [YYY] and all that were arrested on the charges that they were abating terrorism. I don’t know if you know that ... So there were little undercurrents going on.

I think that this narrative signifies the role of societal encounters in two ways. First, it shows the ignorance of non-Muslim colleagues of the Islamic practices followed during certain times of the year. Here, I recall the finding of Brief et al. (2005) that staying in proximity with culturally diverse individuals lets others know their cultural practices that improves cross-cultural work relations as well. And second, the vibes that media and society offers through its ongoing discourses involving cultural identities creates prejudices and stereotypes about them in the minds of people.

Family

Akin to previous studies which consider family as an important influence in developing cross-cultural sensitivity (example, De La Torre and Toyne, 1978; Kelley and Reeser, 1973; Tung, 1987), this study finds family as the largest and most developed theme towards influencing cultural competence at workplace. Sudeep argued that there are many traditional family-run organizations in the Indian corporate and this characteristic is reflected on the benevolence of employer-employee relationships in such organizations. Hence, adjusting with new forms of diversity is not a major issue for the leaders of such organizations.

While family influences can facilitate understanding diversity at workplace, and hence the cultural competence, its role as a negative moderator towards embracing new cultures, as observed in few studies


90 Apoorva Ghosh

(example, Tung, 1987) is found in my findings as well. Sushmita, a newly married woman and a corporate diversity manager, was not able to take up her role in Shanghai as family duties for women are still considered more substantial than that for men in traditional families:

So there is data to go that women who have great home life can’t have a great career. They have to at some point of time choose either.... If there’s a data [like this], I can’t ignore and I do believe that such choice comes at woman’s life. So if you ask me choose between my home and career, I’d choose my home. I won’t choose career. … It was offered to me to go to Shanghai. I decided I’d not go to Shanghai … Had I gone to shanghai, (pauses).. I could do the same assignment based in India, but imagine if I’d be based in shanghai, I would be hobnobbing, meeting with the leaders everyday, right? Now my interaction is only with my boss and people on phone. Phone has its limitation. The relation, the equation, the rapport which I can make based out of shanghai is far more. From Shanghai I can straight away go to Paris, let’s say. So the difference in exposure is huge, means. Like that, it’s a choice you make…. There comes a time when you are opportune, and there are some women who choose to balance. But I doubt there’d be woman who say damn the family, I’d go and build a career, no, no.

Sushmita believes that if she were a man, taking expat assignments would have been easier for her. She cites an example of the male colleague who took a role in Shanghai at the same time when she was offered. His wife doesn’t work and they have a small child. It was easier for him to go, and so he went.

While gender equations in traditional families are tilted towards the men, she says that the way working women typically marry working men who cannot be expected to change their base and go with their ladies, the same applies for men as well. Hence, even in situations where gender disparity is not a product of family influences, dual career couples emerging in the urban middle class families produce new dynamics which moderate the decision of individuals to face cross-cultural situations and developing those competencies.

Women on the work, they typically marry guys, right? They work. You can’t expect guys to change their base and go with you. And today my husband is a businessman. I can’t ask him abandon his business and to join me to shanghai, right? Wheraeas, if I go to shanghai, do the assignment for an year and come back. But staying one year away, these are costs, you know, you bear. Lots of women do that. They move out with their husbands, go for an year and a half, and come back. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong in it. That’s far more flexible than to move your way. So if man has a working wife, it would be tough for him, right? I know a lot of men, so it’s a dual career that’s an issue, not a woman moving or a man. It’s dual career that’s complicating the situation.

Sushmita believed that compared to traditional families, dual couple families are far more liberal in their outlook. She found among her colleagues that women sometimes earned more than their male counterpart. Especially, when they went to their schools together, women might get jobs that pay more than that of their husbands. She cited the example of her colleague who is a lawyer and earns around eight times more than her DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) husband. She believed that the woman in her family is the main breadwinner, but the couple hardly discusses it. She observed that there were many urban households where women earned more than men. The men were comfortable with that and the situation was hardly discussed.

Neeraj believed that the competence to work in cross-cultural environment develops partly due to personality and partly due to exposures to various kinds of environments—family being a very important



influence. Being raised in a family that had many women, Neeraj developed a cross-cultural sensitivity towards women:

I have four sisters. So I always had to work with girls in my family. So you evolve a certain way, how you’re able to connect with them. I think that’s a part of your personality. I have seen people who have no idea how to, in a totally new setting, or in a setting where there are some stakes involved [workplace and family] ... friends, college etc are different, There are no stakes involved. They are all equals in this and that. Family is different- family there is a certain hierarchy and relationship aspect involved. Same way at work also, you have to look at them differently. I’ve seen people who have no clue and they would go and ask the same questions to both. All I am saying is one should be aware of how this would affect the other person. If you ask the same question, for example, I can call somebody, say it’s a male, what are you doing?... But if I say to a woman, I have to look how it’d impact her. So I’d say, ʻIn this situation, I believe there has been an error from your side, let’s discuss how it can be avoided and move forwardʼ.

Dhiraj attributed the difference of his outlook vis-à-vis his male peers towards working with a female boss to the kind of family background he has grown in. He believed that the aversion of his male peers towards working with a female superior could be attributed to the gender inequality in their families. He gave the credit of working in such situations with ease to the gender equality in his family, where both his parents were equally talented and took the responsibility of raising the family in an egalitarian way. Hence, due to the absence of such gender prejudices that normally develop in a male dominated atmosphere, he recognized the leadership quality of his female superior and showed willingness to learn from her.

Corroborating further, Sushmita recalled from her experience of conducting sensitization training at her workplace that the gap in one’s understanding of diversity, especially gender diversity, traced back to their family. She observed that many participants were unaware that gender diversity was important. She made an analogy with home, saying that having one girl and one boy in the family is a healthier mix, compared to having two boys or two girls. Having such a healthy mix leads to the recognition that women and men both have different skills, so putting them together, an ideal family is formed. Likewise, in the workplace too, men and women together can do a great job by learning from each other.

My respondents were, indeed, very passionate talking about their families when I tried to trace the antecedent of doing cross-culturally well at their workplace. Monika talked about how her children inspired her to be benevolent towards her employees:

But once people are in your company then I think that’s an HR manager’s responsibility. Like you have children that could be very different but they are your own, right? My two kids are chalk and cheese but I love them equally. I’d treat them with equal respect and give them the same rights. Similarly an HR manager should treat his men and women equally. It should not happen that he treats his women in much better manner than male colleagues. Even that could be a problem.

Besides, having known Monika personally, I could see the influence of two aging parents at her home towards the aging employees at her workplace too.

If you take an example of age, you have to understand that, you know, say at recruitment level, an HR manager should not say that... O my God!, ye to buddha aa gaya (this is an old man) and why I should be hiring him. The minute you see somebody you should not create an impression, you should look at the skill set, you should look


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at the resume. About two years ago I hired somebody as an editor who was 58 years old. He just retired from a company, but had beautifully done in the word test. And I asked him, you know, would you mind working with the young editors and all this. And he said no no, I won’t mind. So we took him on and I took him in my department on a one year contract. He wanted to come on a short term basis and now he is working for us as a freelancer from home.

Family support also comes from the fact that the family can advise on cross-cultural sensitivities at workplace. It was interesting to find that Niti, who went to the United States on an expat assignment post 9/11, was careful not to wear her most usual attire-Salwar Kameez at her new workplace. Though she didn’t like wearing western suits, she was advised highly against wearing her preferred attire, given the sensitivity to what was happening that time. She candidly admitted that this suggestion was not offered by her colleagues. It came as a ‘sane advice coming from well wishers to a nuisance child’. These well wishers were her U.S. based Masi (maternal aunt) and relatives who stayed around.

Personal Experiences

Cultural competence at workplace could also come from various cross-cultural experiences in personal life. Monika was particularly sensitive to the needs of expecting women at workplace because she herself was discriminated against, by her male co-workers when she was expecting her first child.

After observing a number of culturally relativist attitudes in Prof. Rai, such as positive attitude towards diversity, appreciating different ways of living, understanding varied perspectives etc, I probed further to find out what factors led towards these attitudes. Prof. Rai immediately took a map of India and started showing all the places he had lived and travelled so far:

This is where I started (shows a map) and this is where I returned. This is [XXX], where I was born. This is where I did my schooling, in [YYY]. Then I came back and completed my boarding school there. Then I went to a college there. Then I started at [ZZZ]. Did my [Doctorate] at [WWW], worked at [AAA], worked at [BBB], worked at [CCC], went back to [DDD], came to [EEE]. And that’s it. I don’t know where I am going. And there-fore I said, baut hi hard life hai (it is a hard life), though I’ve been a rock, the pieces are strewn all over.

The influence of his travel to culturally diverse places showed in his attitude. He was asked by people, whether he liked [EEE] or [AAA]. When the answer to both was yes, he was asked why he shifted. Prof. Rai candidly replied that one does not shift just because s/he likes or dislikes a place. It is about trying and exploring new places, and new things, as small and mundane as a pickle.

People who say ok, that brand of pickle is good. I keep on saying try this, but they say no, this is good. But then, why not try this. So therefore, the thing of trying, I guess, is one indication of [being open to new cultures] [sic].

Niti believed that going places and venturing into new territories evolves a person and prepares him or her for the next round of travel and for learning new cultures. Hence, it is more of a cyclic process of gaining cultural experiences and learning from them. First an expatriate in U.K. and then in U.S.-Canada, she believes that her U.K. experience helped a lot in transitioning during her U.S.-Canada assignment.



There were certain times I felt it gave me strength in UK to prepare me for the next round in the U.S., and there were stupid things I would have challenged during transitioning. For example, they drive on the other side of the road. It sounds funny, but it still poses challenge a lot. I felt my ability to adapt through the transitioning was much faster in US, as it was second time round.

Talking further about her transitioning experience at workplace (U.S.-Canada), she took lessons from her U.K. experiences and made sure that she didn’t feel ‘claustrophobic’ in her new environment. For this, she travelled during the weekends to reach out to her relatives in New York and spent time with them. With no personal support system in the U.K. she had already learnt to create one of those things, and had realized that neglecting such ‘trivial stuffs’ could actually cut play during the transitioning experience.

Professional Exposures

Business leaders often display their cultural competence by adopting best practices and standards that they come to know through cross-organizational contacts or through media communication. Termed as mimetic isomorphism, this practice of ‘emulating apparently successful forms’ (Brint and Karabel, 1991, p. 343) is embraced by many organizational leaders. Sudeep believed that practices on diversity too could be sourced from the same:

Some companies are multinationals, who know that there are international standards they have to apply and they just apply them and they are willing to be proactive. [These] companies who really don’t have any issue about talking on diversity issues, who are quite happy to integrate it and there are managers who are very proactive and are willing to do it.

Cross-cultural experiences at work, especially during foreign assignments can help in expatriate work adjustments too. Niti learnt facilitation skills during her U.K. experience. She candidly admitted that in her own workplace in India, this was simply not the culture she came across, where the superiors had an upper hand and had the onus towards making decisions. Though she admitted that in the U.S., this role was usually taken by a functional expert, the facilitation skills that she learnt had high relevance in her job in the U.S. which helped her in adjusting with the work culture more easily than in the UK.

Managers are also influenced by global standards through their exposures in organizations abroad. Kuldeep took lessons on diversity sensitivity from his U.N. peacekeeping experiences. During his management education, he was far more sensitive towards using racially correct language compared to his peers who did not have such exposures. On a more serious front, such encounters help the managers appreciate that many practices that are global in nature cannot be contained in their home countries. Sudeep argued that even heterosexuals human resource managers have enough understanding of lesbian and gay issues in the workplace by virtue of their previous roles in the developed countries. They are smart enough to know that as multinationals, they are operating in countries that have diversity policies as requirements, and they just cannot adopt different practices in their Indian establishments.


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Ayesha understood that in the Software firm where she was working, many practices percolated through their work and interactions with the clients abroad:

Now we are in a zone, where we are comfortable on talking about a planned leave. Earlier people used to find it taboo to talk about long leave, apart from a person is getting married, or say lady going on maternity leave or the person is really not keeping well and he has a doctor’s certificate for 4-5 weeks of rest to be taken up. In India also, people go on leisure leave for 4-5 weeks of time or whatever the parameters are. Different organizations there [U.S.] might have different criteria for leave allocation. But they are really not hesitant talking about it. And it may not be even to the higher management, the communication also needs to be within your peer groups. And when I say groups, there might be various stakeholders. You might be working on your team, but your team might be working with various other teams for various other coordination purposes. So a good communication about these kinds of leave or vacation is very much important and people are realizing about it. They are oblivious to the fact. I’d say people [have become] more matured in such kinds of communication to the extent I’ve seen.

Professional exposures can moderate one’s cross-cultural behaviours and practices. Kuldeep observed that in a masculine organization like military, substantial experience in the system helps female officers to function in teams that have gendered compositions. In comparison, newly recruited female officers may find themselves in odd situations in such teams and may not find the male dominance very conducive. Sushmita believed that women who ‘experiment’ with traditionally male dominant roles and prove their mettle further take up roles in future that cut across the gender barrier. She passionately talked about a colleague who took sales job:

[she volunteered for the male dominated sales role because] she was already doing sales. She’s gone by those difficulties. She’s done it and she moves, there’s nothing difficult in sales role. It’s just the mindset women have, they have to travel a lot, and lots of like that. If she did not volunteer, she was more a living example of having done it. ... She had a lot of positive response. She’s a young girl, vibrant profile, if I can do it, anybody can do it, right? She volunteered, she fought with the managers, she wanted sales, she fought her way, she got it and she did very well. So much that the customers ask for her at her previous organization. I think she did that by experimenting, being clear on what she wants, going out and getting it.

Similar situations could go with men as well. Dhiraj realized that his previous experiences of working with female colleagues could help him in inducting a female team member and helping her improve her performance.

Cultural encounters in one’s parent organization can affect the cross-cultural attitudes and behaviours in new assignments as well. After narrating the community based variants in the cultural encounters during his U.N. peacekeeping assignment, Kuldeep also explained the organizational variants in the same context by making specific comparison of his organization- the [Armed Forces 1] with the [Armed Forced 2]. As he headed a troop comprising of both incumbents, he realized the difference between these two organizations. Compared to the small knitted team of the [Armed Forces 1] that comprised of educated and qualified technicians whose movement could be fully controlled, the job of [Armed Forces 2] personnel required moving and patrolling. Controlling was not that easy and they had a history of committing social abuses. Thus, to have checks on their cross-cultural sensitivities and on various social abuses committed by this mixed troop towards the local community was very difficult as the members came from different organizational experiences.



Discussion

The variants of cultural encounters that influence the cultural competence of individuals at workplace emerged in the form of five themes that I discussed in the last section. I would now focus on the contribution that my findings make towards existing scholarship. I will discuss this under two broad headings. First, I will show how my findings contribute towards the literature on interpersonal cross-cultural contact at workplace. Second, I explained how the influence of cultural encounters on cultural competence at workplace is similar or different from that in the healthcare sector—an area where this relationship is already explored.

Contribution to the Scholarship on Interpersonal Cross-Cultural Contact

The scholarship on Interpersonal Cross-Cultural Contact in Business Management has significant focus on cross-cultural training that the expatriates receive in their parent and host organizations to adjust with the general and work related challenges in their new workplaces. While these short and intensive courses offer useful cognitive trainings that guide them on the behaviour in each country, culture or region, expa-triates still report stress due to travel and separation from their families (Becker, 1996). Hence, ‘experi-ence as an itinerant international executive’ is considered an effective way to train the global managers (Becker, 1996). Though Bhaskar-Srinivas et al. (2005) report that the experiences obtained in previous expat assignments has meagre influence on expatriate adjustments, namely, cultural interaction and work adjustments, the finding seems more appropriate in situations where the novelty of modelled behaviours in the new settings relative to what is learned in the past is high (Black and Mendenhall, 1990). Ramalu et al. (2010) conclude in their study that greater interaction adjustment in expatriates was found with prior experience. My findings suggest that if cultural similarities cut across the regions expatriates are assigned to at various points of time, previous experiences do help a lot. I would like to mention here that Kraut (1975) has suggested grouping various business units or country organi zations into international combines based on geographic proximity (example, Baltic countries) and/ or cultural similarities (example, Anglo-Saxon Countries) for better understanding of ‘combine specific’ cultural behaviours.

Previous studies (example, Francis, 1991) suggest that moderate levels of adaptation to the host culture improves interpersonal cultural attraction. Molinsky (2007, p. 624) conceptualized this phenomenon as cross-cultural code switching defined as ‘an act of purposefully modifying one’s behaviour in an interaction in a foreign setting in order to accommodate different cultural norms for appropriate behaviour’. However, beyond an optimal point, an attempt to adapt to the styles and norms of a foreign culture may be seen as dysfunctional as those may be meant specifically for native people (review by Pornpitakpan, 1991). My findings corroborate this discourse and suggest that individuals do adapt to change their preferred styles (such as attire) to suit the cultural sensitivities of the new settings. However, when it comes to the deep-rooted cultural elements, such as making a choice between following their own collectivist practices or embracing the individualist ones of the host cultures, individuals do go back to their collectivist roots by bonding with similar others. In addition, the expatriate narrative in my study concurs with the implications of Sunkyu et al. (2001), and encourages employing ‘problem-focused coping strategies’ (Ibid., p. 375) like integrating mechanisms, finding one’s personal support


96 Apoorva Ghosh

system, and finding new solutions towards adapting to new cultures over ‘symptom-focused coping strategies’ (Ibid., p. 375) that are adopted as reactions to psychological withdrawal, or in the words of our respondent, ‘feeling claustrophobic’.

Cultural heterogeneity within the organization is another aspect I would like to discuss. Shaw (1990) has argued that organizations with very heterogeneous cultures will have broader constraint value ranges than those which are seen as largely homogeneous. In my study, Kuldeep’s narration of his experiences of U.N. Peacekeeping Operations had national, cultural and organization variants. In the heterogeneous group of European and African officers, he found that the tolerance towards social abuses had a broad range. Similarly, because of the different organization cultures of [Armed Forces 1] and the [Armed Forces 2], when they work together, he found that their range of attitude towards the local community was broad.

Information gathering and processing is another area that defines some of the purposes of interpersonal cross-cultural contact. Shaw (1990) has argued that individuals often seek as much information as possible about culturally diverse individuals in order to categorize those persons and arriving at their own interpretations about them. Individuals may seek information to reinforce their different perceptions for individuals from their own cultural group vis-à-vis from other groups. I inferred from my interview with Sudeep, a gay executive, that his bias towards normalizing was more towards lesbian and gay individuals compared to transgenders. While he admitted that lesbians and gays do complain about discrimination at workplace, he actively sought information to emphasize that most of the times such incidents portrayed ‘disguised’ discrimination in the garb of some other ‘real’ reasons. On the other hand, he believed, based on his third party accounts, that transgender discrimination is rampant in organizations.

I think that an important contribution of this study in the cross-cultural management literature is that I have adopted the view of organization as a microcosm of various cultural identity groups and organization groups (Alderfer and Smith, 1982). Hence, I have followed the umbrella definition of cultural identity (Ely and Thomas, 2001) and have incorporated, besides nationality, which is a largely represented cultural identity in the current cross-cultural management literature, other cultural identities as well, like gender, religion, caste, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, and organization identity, that are not significantly represented in current cross-cultural management scholarship.

Cultural Encounters- Cultural Competence Relationship at Workplace versus the Healthcare Services

While business management scholarship provides evidence to conceptualize the relationship between cultural encounters and cultural competence, healthcare literature, and especially the nursing literature (for example, Campinha-Bacote, 2002; Suh, 2004) has explicitly modelled it. I conducted this study as the peer group networks at workplace are different from expert-subject dyads at healthcare between the doctor/nurse and their patients. While the first focuses on working as a team and collaborating the second is about offering expert services and treatments. Hence, I was curious to study whether this relationship empirically existed at the workplace as well. And, if yes, how similarly or differently cultural encounters could be the antecedent of cultural competence in these two spaces.



I conclude that this relationship exists at the workplace too. But I find a difference. While the nursing literature considers cultural encounters as interaction, including linguistics, with the diverse others, these are centered on the interaction between the healthcare provider and the patient. I reviewed Harper’s study (2008) on the antecedents of cultural competence in healthcare. This study is based on Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model that incorporates five antecedents of cultural competence-cultural skill, cultural knowledge, cultural encounters, cultural desire and cultural awareness. The Delphi findings of the study give us a list of items considered as elements of cultural encounters. A few of these include, language used by the healthcare provider with their patients, body language and eye contact with the patients, use of greetings, acceptable use of the patient’s name or title, etc. In my study, I found that cultural encounters in the non-work settings largely affect the cultural competence at work-place. Societal influences, community based encounters, personal experiences, and family play major role in making individuals culturally competent or incompetent at their workplace. While I do not reject the possibility that encounters in the non-work settings could also influence the cultural competence of healthcare practitioners, healthcare scholarship is largely silent on this.

It is interesting to note in my study that out of the five themes that emerged, four are based on non-work settings. Influence of family in making individuals culturally competent at workplace is a significant theme in my study. I am not sure to what extent family based encounters would play a role in cultural competence at healthcare. I think that the issue lies in the conceptualization of ‘cultural identity’ in the healthcare, where it mainly talks about ethnically diverse patients (Campinha-Bacote, 2002; Harper, 2008). On the other hand, in my study, this includes a broad umbrella group of various identities. For example, the gender influences in family were found to affect the gender based cultural encounters at workplace. Also, there could be certain elements that cannot be compared across these two areas. For example, spouse adjustment in a new host culture significantly affects the expatriate adjustments at workplace, which leads to desirable cross-cultural behaviours and practices (Bhaskar-Srinivas et al., 2005). However, I am not sure how this would translate for a healthcare practitioner who treats ethnically diverse patients.

I hope that these aspects in my study would help in understanding certain elements of cultural encounters and cultural competence at workplace which were unexplored so far.

Limitations and Future Scope for Research

I recruited only Indian nationals in my sample. I am aware and I do agree that my findings are more representative of the cultural dimensions of India, such as high collectivism and high power distance. I suspect that I found ‘family’ as a strong theme because of high influence of family on work-related behaviours in India (see Roland, 1988; Gannon et al., 2005). I hope that future studies could examine this relationship in a multinational context to arrive at culturally broader conclusions.

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Apoorva Ghosh, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, India. E-mail: [email protected]

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81 - University of California, Irvinesites.uci.edu/ghosh/files/2015/09/pdf2.pdf · Management and Labour Studies, 38, 1&2 (2013): 81–101 82 Apoorva Ghosh symbols, such as corporate