Cultural intelligence as a strategic resource

7.8 million Danish kroner for research project led by Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg

Professor Anne-Maria Søderberg, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, CBS, has received 7.8 million Danish kroner from the Danish Council for Strategic Research. She will lead the interdisciplinary project, "Cultural Intelligence as a strategic resource" featuring 20 humanistic and social science researchers from CBS and Aalborg University.

Cultural differences continue to be a challenge for businesses in the global economy. Danish executives and employees experience this challenge when they are stationed in the new-growth countries or when they are working in a multinational team at a Danish hospital or educational institution. Knowledge about foreign languages, cultures, market, and social conditions is necessary, but not sufficient.

Self-reflection and intercultural commitment

- It is also important that you are aware of how your own cultural background unconsciously affects your management style and the way you co-operate with others, as well as the way you create trust and solve conflicts, Anne-Marie Søderberg points out. She further emphasises:

- When you work closely with people from other cultures, your co-operation must be characterised by a sincere interest in understanding the other party and learning from other perspectives and experiences. In a multinational team, there are people with different ideas of what characterises a good management style, a professional decision-making process, and an acceptable way of handling of conflicts. Therefore, it is necessary that you turn off your autopilot and consider how to create a joint platform even though there might be some very different opinions on what the "best practice" would be.

Cultural diversity as a resource

According to Anne-Marie Søderberg, many management and communication researchers have considered culture as a barrier and a filter that blurred communication:

- But cultural diversity can also be a resource. A multinational team can reach more creative and innovative solutions to problems if the participants are able to take advantage of their different experiences and perspectives in a cultural interdisciplinary co-operation, she says.

The Project: The three-year project on ´"Cultural intelligence as a strategic resource" will start on 1st April 2008. Together with Carlsberg, Ecco, Grundfos, Novozymes, Vestas, and Velux, the researchers at CBS will look at how to strengthen Danish executives? and employees? culture meetings in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Mexico.

At the same time, the research group will further develop the concept of "cultural intelligence" in co-operation with researchers from, for instance, Harvard and Stanford Universities, USA, Simon Fraser University, Canada, Technologica de Monterrey, Mexico, and Nanyang Business School, Singapore.