Intercultural challenges in multinational corporations

Abstract

Cultural diversity is considered a centrally important resource in multinational companies, guaranteeing increased creativity, better adaptability to global markets, improved productivity and profitability, creation of a larger talent pool, etc. But cultural diversity also has another challenging side, interculturality. This refers to different cultural standards, habits and ways of doing things, which makes it difficult to coordinate and control technical processes and routines, find ways to share information and generate knowledge, manage the culturally diverse workforce appropriately and exercise appropriate leadership. Multinational companies tend to see only the benefits of cultural diversity and ignore the challenges posed by interculturality. However, the benefits cannot be realized if the intercultural challenges are not adequately addressed by the company. This chapter sheds light on how these challenges are dealt with in the everyday work of multinational companies. For this purpose, examples are given from real everyday work in culturally diverse multinational companies. The intercultural situations are described and interpreted from the perspective of the actors involved. The intercultural situations are drawn from three ethnographic research projects conducted by the author of this chapter in multinational companies or with employees of these companies.