Cross-Cultural Training to Management in Organizations Research Paper

Cross-Cultural Training to Management in Organizations - Research Paper Example The need to interact with people of different cultures and understand their behaviour has become a critical aspect of international management. Let us take the example of a Hungarian employee’s encounter with an Austrian supervisor (Fink et al., 2007). The disgruntled employee complained of the â€Å"manner† in which his female Austrian supervisor delegated him work (Fink et al., 2007). According to the employee, there was absolutely no problem with the very work that was assigned; however, the supervisor failed to address her employee in an appropriate manner which offended him (Fink et al., 2007). Such, apparently trivial, instances of conflict between the manager and employee are a commonplace today. However, that does not make them insignificant. Paradoxically, such issues are not easy to understand; the cultural dimensions need to be accurately defined along a particular scale against which the behaviour can be measured. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the â€Å"cultural standard method† was introduced by Leung et al., which identifies and examines the differences in perception, understanding, thinking and judging across a multitude of cultures (Fink & Meierewert, 2001). There are, in general, three approaches to understanding the notion of cross-culturalism: cultural dimensions, personality traits and the cultural standard method (Fink et al., 2007). However, the last one is limited to Central Europe, particularly Germany and Austria (Fink et al., 2007). The differentiation within the social system lies in the discrepancy between the â€Å"normal behaviour† and that behaviour which deviates from normal behaviour.