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]