We are all more mobile than ever and more likely to traverse into cultures different from our own – for

reasons of studying, marketing, selling, buying, serving customers, and production of goods: literally, in

the old-fashioned way, as business travellers or as onsite assignees; virtually as ‘desk diplomats’ via

email, chat, phone, or web-based video conference in globally dispersed project teams.

Management research considers intercultural competence as an important condition for being

successful in international business relationships. Yet, the development and transmission of intercultural

competence in global teams has not been established clearly. There are environmental and contextual

impediments to the effective application of the requisite intercultural competence skills, knowledge,

and attributes often resulting in a gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing.’ My own experience working for

more than a decade with several multinational companies shows that there are specific barriers to

intercultural competence, mainly the non-availability of interculturally competent personnel within the

company and on the external recruiting market, the perceived high costs of all activities associated with

management training and coaching, and the difficulty of building an associated business case. This often

leads to a situation where the status-quo is preferred and managers are unwilling to act.

As part of my research agenda, I have developed a low-touch self-report indicator, the MICE Mysore

Intercultural Effectiveness Indicator. It helps project managers answer the question if an effective global

team has been formed.

MICE provides two scales measuring intercultural effectiveness across the boundaries defined by

cultural groups. Such boundaries – also called faultlines – split a global team into sub-teams based on

certain cultural attributes and provide an informal structure for intercultural conflict. The two MICE

scales examine how team members feel and behave when these faultlines are crossed. Or, in the words

of the American anthropologist Edward T. Hall who remarked back in 1976: “Understanding oneself and

understanding others are closely related processes. To do one, you must start with the other, and vice

versa”.

The first MICE scale helps to understand the effectiveness in interacting and collaborating with foreign

counterparts by providing an answer to the question ‘how I think I am with them.’ It is made up of four

dimensions: (1) Ability to accept cultural differences; (2) Avoidance of psychological stress; (3)

Successfulness of communication; and (4) Establishing of interpersonal relationships.

The second scale gives an indication about the satisfaction with appropriateness of communication from

the foreign counterparts, and the outcome of the collaboration. It gives an answer to the question ‘how

I think they are with me.’ It adds another two dimensions to the MICE framework: (5) Appropriateness of

communication; and (6) Results of collaboration.

A test run in several international companies with live data helped to validate the indicator using

exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The results are published in Vol. 8 / Issue 1 (2015) of the

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, an internationally ranked journal by ABDC, NSD,

and PBN. Have a look at the research journal: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJMPB-

05-2014-0044; or the implementation of MICE and its various reports: http://www.globusresearch.com/MICE-Mysore-InterCultural-Effectiveness-Indicator.aspx

Now, what does it mean for the organization and the individual caught in international assignments?

The organization benefits from acquiring insights into global team dynamics; gaining an understanding

of the strengths as well as deficiencies of its global teams; and being able to pinpoint the root cause for

possible team conflicts, misunderstandings, or performance problems. The researchers Preston G. Smith

and Emily L. Blanck confirm this in a research article in the Journal of Product Innovation Management

(2002, Vol. 19): “An effective team depends on open, effective communication, which in turn depends

on trust among members.” But measuring the intercultural effectiveness is not an end in itself. On the

one hand, an individual global worker can get a greater understanding of self and foreign counterparts

and use the results as a starting point for improving own intercultural communication skills; the

individual is better equipped to become more effective by reducing anxiety and stress stemming from

intercultural collaboration. On the other hand, an international organization can identify which training

and/or coaching measures will be effective in order to help them cope with unexpected events in

another culture.

And what does it mean for you, as an aspiring Indian MBA student? Have you travelled internationally

before? Have you worked internationally? Looking at the continuing growth of India’s export-oriented

industries like IT and BPO, you will be likely to jump into an international role right after your

graduation. As a business school, we have an obligation to prepare you for a global world, which is often

dream to be flat – but in reality full of barriers. At MYRA School of Business, we not only recruit a good

proportion of our faculty from leading institutions around the world, we also have active exchange

programs with business schools in the U.S. and in Europe. You are going to experience how different

styles of teaching, evaluation, and faculty-student interaction will open your eye for intercultural

differences – a realization of culturally driven behavior which can later be most valuable at the

workplace. And last but not least, I am also offering an elective course on International Management

where we will be talking in much more depth about the challenges highlighted in this short article.

Please see http://www.myra.ac.in/overview-m for an overview of what you can expect at MYRA School

of Business in Mysore!

Dr. Wolfgang Messner is Associate Professor of International Management at MYRA School of Business

and Director of GloBus Research in Mysore/India. Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

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