{"id":721,"date":"2012-02-07T13:09:31","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T12:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/?p=721"},"modified":"2012-02-07T13:09:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T12:09:31","slug":"follow-up-on-biculturals-why-are-people-with-multiple-cultural-backgrounds-beneficial-for-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/2012\/02\/07\/follow-up-on-biculturals-why-are-people-with-multiple-cultural-backgrounds-beneficial-for-organizations\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow-up on biculturals: Why are people with multiple cultural backgrounds beneficial for organizations?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of my recent blog posts<\/a> reviewed an article by Brannen and Thomas (2010) on the topic of bicultural employees. The article gives an overview of what \u2018bicultural\u2019 is and emphasises the importance of this emerging demographics for organizations. Yet, I think the question of \u2018what is the practical contribution of bi- or multicultural employees to global organizations\u2019 needs further elaboration.<\/p>\n

The scholars Fitzsimmons and her colleagues (2011) address that question by bringing up the practical value of multicultural employees. The authors argue that multinational employees contribute to five key activities of global organizations, which I will discuss further below.<\/p>\n

First of all, Fitzsimmons et al. (2011) argue that multiculturals impact on teams, by making them more diverse. Certainly diversity in itself (within age, culture, background etc) usually implies more creativity in teamwork, however multicultural employees bring additional benefits. Being representatives of one or more cultures, such employees act as \u2018bridges across cultural faultlines\u2019 (p. 200) thus making the \u2018us versus them\u2019 thinking and division within the group based on cultural affiliation more difficult. Further, diversity is good because a multitude of different perspectives are brought to the table. However, it also takes time to arrive at a common opinion because of misunderstandings and differences in values. In contrast to monoculturals, multicultural individuals are less likely to produce such conflicts because they share cultures and values with other teammates. Finally, multiculturals are less prone to conformity and groupthink, as they \u2018bring\u00a0 more\u00a0 new\u00a0 ideas\u00a0 and\u00a0 unconventional solutions\u00a0 to\u00a0 the\u00a0 team\u00a0 than\u00a0 monoculturals\u2019 (p. 201).<\/p>\n

The second area of benefits from multiculturals involves intercultural negotiations. The authors see an advantage of having multiple cultural backgrounds in that these individuals have an ability to see things from another person\u2019s viewpoint (good perspective-taking abilities). Also, they might be more effective in communicating within a cross-cultural negotiation setting, which positively influences the negotiation partner\u2019s experience as well.<\/p>\n

Third, multiculturals impact on expatriation. Specifically, the authors state that multicultural individuals excel as expatriates mainly due to their cultural mindfulness, which is a heightened awareness of cultural cues, and an increased ability to identify with both parent and host country organizations.<\/p>\n

Next, multiculturals have an impact on ethics and leadership. Doing business globally may at times post a dilemma between universally accepted ethics and the \u2018when in Rome do as the Romans do\u2019 attitude. The authors note that multiculturals\u2019 experience seeing the world from more than one perspective helps them to reconcile such dilemmas and clarify when different is just different, or wrong.<\/p>\n

Finally, a multicultural background benefits the process of cross-border alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Multiculturals\u2019 cultural empathy and their abilities to bridge cultural gaps and take another party\u2019s perspective are useful for evaluating the cultural fit between the organizations to be merged during the due diligence stage, and also help out during the integration stage after the merger has taken place.<\/p>\n

All in all, it seems that the benefits derived from multicultural employees compared to monoculturals are based on their better understanding of cultures in general, their global consciousness and their multiple perspectives. I would argue that all these positives reflect a competence that has been called \u2018cultural intelligence\u2019. So by developing employees to be culturally intelligent organizations might derive benefits not only from multiculturals but also from originally monocultural individuals. Let me elaborate on this question in my next blog post.<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/span><\/p>\n

Brannen, M. Y., & Thomas, D. C. (2010). \u2018Bicultural individuals in organizations: Implications and opportunity\u2019. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, <\/em>10, <\/em>1, 5-16.<\/p>\n

Fitzsimmons, S. R., Miska, C., & Stahl, G. K. (2011). \u2018Multicultural employees: Global business’ untapped resource\u2019. Organizational Dynamics, <\/em>40, <\/em>3, 199-206.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the practical contribution of bi- or multicultural employees to global organizations? A recent article by Fitzsimmons et al. (2011) describes how multicultural individuals contribute to \ufb01ve key activities in global business \u2014 international teams, intercultural negotiations, international assignments, mergers and acquisitions, global leadership and ethics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18330],"tags":[18418,36568,18427,18426],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views-and-news-about-expatriates","tag-bicultural-individuals","tag-cultural-intelligence","tag-global-organizations","tag-multicultural-employees"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}