An Intervention Strategy to Managing Diversity: Discerning Conventions

Abstract

The article presents a strategy to minimize disadvantages and maximize advantages of diversity in multinational groups. Members of multinational groups require the skill to recognize cultural differences between group members if they want to deal with intercultural misunderstandings and realize high quality and originality in work. They must discern differences in behavioural standards which may cause mis- and non-understandings during group discussions, and they must determine different ways of defining problems and solving them. Different theoretical assumptions are made concerning the conceptualization of cultural differences as conventions. In multinational groups communication and task conventions can be distinguished. The different communication conventions cause interpersonal misunderstandings. Participants of a training programme learn to use an algorithm for discerning cultural differences. It includes detecting mis- and non-understandings, making conventions explicit, and negotiating conventions. The aim of making task conventions explicit is to obtain a larger number of alternatives to interpret a problem, to solve it, and to evaluate it. The algorithm of discerning conventions is learned with the technique of leading questions Fisher, 1980; Vygotsky, 1978, which is demonstrated to a group of participants which work together on a real task.