Cross-cultural Interaction: What We Know and What We Need to Know
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Intercultural Management in Practice
ISBN: 978-1-83982-827-0, eISBN: 978-1-83982-826-3
Publication date: 16 August 2021
Abstract
Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This chapter reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this chapter outlines what we need to learn – and to unlearn – to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the consistently excellent work by scholars in this field, even when such work was not readily accepted by scholars who were considered more mainstream. We also thank the group of contemporary cross-cultural scholars who are employing all the rigor necessary for good science while addressing some of the most important and complex issues of our time.
Citation
Adler, N.J. and Aycan, Z. (2021), "Cross-cultural Interaction: What We Know and What We Need to Know
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018 Nancy J. Adler and Zeynep Aycan. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited