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The purpose of this paper is to show how individuals perceive the quality of intercultural interactions at work in multinational subsidiaries and to address the question of what actually prevails in their accounts, i.e., “the dark side” or “the bright side.”

The authors report the findings from five subsidiaries located in Poland and interviews with 68 employees of these companies.

The “bright side” dominated the interviewees’ accounts. The phenomenon of high social identity complexity or common in-group identity can help explain the findings. The results also shed some new light on the associations between the context of subsidiaries and the perception of the quality of intercultural interactions.

The paper contributes to the literature on cultural diversity and intercultural interactions in multinational subsidiaries. As the “bright side” of interactions was emphasized in the interviews, it particularly supports positive cross-cultural scholarship studies. Yet the explorative research does not allow for a broader generalization of the results.

Managers of multinational corporations (MNCs) should do the following: shape the context of MNCs to influence the dynamics of intercultural interactions and the way they are seen by their employees; emphasize common in-group identity to help their employees to adopt more favorable attitudes toward intercultural interactions; look for individuals with multicultural identity who display more positive approaches to intercultural contacts; place emphasis on recruiting individuals fluent in the MNC’s functional language; offer language training for the staff; and recruit employees with significant needs for development who will perceive more opportunities in intercultural contacts.

The research demonstrates that the multicultural workplace of MNCs may be recognized by employees as activating the positive potential of the individuals and organizations that make up a society.

The accounts of intercultural interactions are analyzed to illuminate some significant foundations of how individuals perceive such interactions. The study provides a qualitative lens and highlights the positive approach to intercultural interactions. It may redress the imbalance in prior research and satisfy the need for positive cross-cultural scholarship.

This article aims to suggest implementing an integrated approach – named intercultural engineering – at university level. Engineering today often takes place across cultures, locations and organizations. As a result, many companies have included cross-cultural training activities into their internal human resource development program. However, current practice neglects the engineering context and might enable sophisticated stereotyping.

This article presents the case of a German bachelor study program in International Industrial Engineering and the theoretical foundations of its design.

Engineering education needs to move beyond simplistic comparative cross-cultural management theory. It needs to acknowledge cultural complexity in engineering through an integrated development of competencies for utilizing the benefits of cultural diversity.

The contribution of this article lies in providing a practical example of how to develop integrated competencies for cultural diversity in engineering, as based on latest theory.

Most intercultural frameworks assess intercultural competencies, but global businesses lack instruments to support the feedback loop, that is help project managers answer the question if an effective global team has been formed. The purpose of this paper is to develop and assess a new indicator for measuring the actual effectiveness of intercultural communication and collaboration at the individual and team level, the Mysore InterCultural Effectiveness (MICE) indicator.

Based on a needs analysis in global businesses, international projects, and review of existing literature, a low-touch self-report indicator was developed. A test run in several international companies with live data obtained from 154 employees helped to validate the indicator using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

The MICE indicator is based on two scales: first, the effectiveness in interacting and collaborating with foreign counterparts by providing an answer to the question “how I think I am with them;” and second, the satisfaction with appropriateness of communication received from foreign interlocutors and the outcome of the collaboration by answering the question “how I think they are with me.”

Empirical results indicate that the two scale/six factor model provides a good fit to the data. Using the MICE Indicator, it is now possible for project managers to effectively address shortcomings of intercultural communication skills in their international teams with the right type of intercultural training.

Asma Abdullah is a corporate trainer and specialist in intercultural management, training and education in Esso Production Malaysia Inc., Kuala Lumpur. She designs and conducts training courses in the human resource area for both national and expatriate employees. She is also a popular trainer and guest speaker on various aspects of intercultural management training in Malaysia and elsewhere. The purpose of this interview is to explore further Asma′s experiences and perspectives which have shaped her career in intercultural management training. The interview is organized into five parts dealing with Asma as a corporate trainer; her intellectual roots; the Malaysian culture; the influence of the American multinational; and cultural challenges for the intercultural management trainer.

The purpose of this paper is to develop recommendations for measures assessing intercultural training needs for international human resource management. Based on scientific as well as application‐oriented criteria the aim is to select six measures assessing general intercultural competencies and with the help of behaviour ratings in interactive intercultural exercises to evaluate the psychometric quality and practicability of the questionnaires for training purposes.

Psychometric quality including prognostic power of ICSI, FLCS, NVCCS, ISAS, TIHK, and SIB was tested by correlating subjects' questionnaires results with observations of their actual behaviour in intercultural exercises.

Satisfying psychometric quality and prognostic validity of almost all measures was found. Especially TIHK, ICSI, and FLCS score well for assessing training needs whereas the results for SIB were problematic.

The study observed student participants of the same culture. Replication studies should examine large samples of different cultural backgrounds and manager populations.

Human resource managers may benefit from gaining knowledge about which measures to use for identifying employee's weaknesses in intercultural competence in order to create tailor‐made training interventions.

The study is the first providing information about the psychometric quality, including predictive power, of six measures, that assess intercultural skills to detect intercultural training needs.

This study seeks to shed light on service providers' experiences and challenges during intercultural service encounters.

A grounded theory approach was used to explore a broad range of management issues regarding intercultural service encounters. A conceptual model was developed through interviews with current service providers.

The findings indicate that intercultural service encounters can serve as potential stressors for service providers and consequently induce negative emotions. While some service providers employ various coping techniques to address this situation, others tend to avoid international customers.

The intercultural service encounter has received little research attention despite its prevalence in daily life. The value of this paper contributes to the understanding of intercultural service encounters, particularly the challenges and stress employees could face.

Allowing for interaction with foreign cultures without the need to travel, intercultural virtual collaboration represents a potential tool to develop business students’ intercultural competence. This study aims to explore students’ perceptions towards the implementation of a research-based task sequence in a project in which undergraduate Business students from Spain collaborated virtually with undergraduate business students from The Netherlands during a semester. More specifically, this paper investigates what intercultural competence indicators were mostly developed by the sequence implemented; how much each task from the sequence in question developed different intercultural competence indicators; and how much students enjoyed participating in each task.

Data was collected through after-task reflection questionnaires. A quantitative analysis of Likert-type questions was carried out and open-ended responses were used to illustrate findings.

Results reveal that the task sequence developed different dimensions of students’ intercultural competence and, particularly, fostered a positive attitude towards intercultural relationships, increased students’ cultural knowledge and awareness and equipped students with skills to work in diverse teams. It also showed that as complexity grew along the sequence, the average students’ perception of their intercultural competence development tended to decrease. The majority of students’ very much liked participating in the different tasks.

Designing telecollaborative projects can be very challenging and understanding the learning potential of different pedagogical strategies for virtual collaborative environments can help teachers to take better-informed decisions.

Intercultural communication problems are most often argued to be caused by differences in cultural values. This exploratory paper aims to argue that attention should not only be directed at national differences. Alternatively, it aims to argue that more interest should be paid to the actual use of those differences in communication.

The paper is an ethnographic field study including 12 interviews and observations. It uses a short case on interaction between expatriates and local managers in a Chinese subsidiary of a Danish multinational corporation.

The paper illustrates how individuals and groups may essentialize cultural differences during intercultural business encounters and how this fixation of cultural traits can be used in social stratification.

Only scant extant research has focused on the active use of cultural differences in an intra‐subsidiary context.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current and potential use of virtual teams in the Indian context.

The use of virtual styles and strategies was assessed through a series of questionnaires, focusing on managerial aspects. The sample consisted of companies and individuals from Europe, who work on virtual assignments. The results were analysed, paying particular attention to the actual usage and potential future usage of virtual assignments.

It was found that a disparity between the actual and the potential use of virtual delegates exists. Furthermore, the increasing use of virtual delegates requires tailored intercultural training, which meets the specific demands of these delegates and the requirements of virtual teamwork. The paper goes on to discuss how traditional training can be adapted for the training of virtual assignees.

The findings have implications for both academics and practitioners, as they indicate that there is significant potential for further growth in the use of virtual assignments. In particular, the paper highlights the need for specific, dedicated training in virtual assignments, as this has a substantial impact on their success.

This conceptual paper aims to present a research paradigm for international business communication research, with special reference to the problems of Japanese corporations.

To develop a paradigm, international business communication first is defined, and the obstacles Japanese corporations face in international business are described, as are the methods used to deal with obstacles and foster better global management and intercultural communication. The key issue of developing training programs is emphasized. To systematize international business communication research with reference to Japanese companies, a research agenda is offered involving study of: correct usage of English, the meanings of international business terms, and the relationship of English as an international business language to its various users. The guiding theories in this research will come from semiology.

English will be the agent of globalization, and Japanese companies must accept this reality and deal with it. So far, they have not yet developed a satisfactory way of doing so. However, appropriate methodologies are available, as presented in the paper.

Japanese companies have lagged behind European and US companies in coping with the communication problems fostered by globalization. This paper sets out a methodology for developing the research needed to yield practical steps to solve the problem.

The paper offers a model of ways to systematize international business communication research so that Japanese companies can develop ways of coping with the communication problems of globalization.