Il Management Interculturale: un'analisi di esperienze

The purpose of this research paper is to outline the role of intercultural management in organisations and firms by analysing the way in which they deal with cultural difference in business interactions. Intercultural management is, indeed, an issue of topical importance considering the globalisation of economy, which leads companies to have commercial relationships with foreign Countries on a daily basis and to internationalise the production by establishing branches abroad. Therefore, they all face the growing necessity to interact with different cultures.
As the success of business negotiation depends largely on the ability to recognise cultural differences and deal with them, the main point of this paper is how to manage them and how to exploit the potentialities that they can bring to the organisation itself. For this reason, studies of intercultural communication have been applied to organisation theory. The thesis being upheld is, indeed, the importance of establishing a dialogue which lets the parts promote the reciprocal expression of diversity, appreciating each other’s cultural perspectives. This particular form of intercultural communication, which is definable as “transcultural” or “cross-cultural” in that it crosses cultures, provides firms and organisations with the means to deal with diversity and to manage conflicts and misunderstandings.
In order to evaluate the awareness of this issue on the part of people working in organisations and firms, ten representatives have been interviewed. The analysis has shown that, in spite of a general awareness on their part of the importance of intercultural management from a theoretical point of view, the role of business still seems to absorb in many cases the cultural dimension of organisational internal and external interactions. Indeed, the sales activity itself and the monetary aspect connected with it are considered of pivotal importance by organisations and firms, and intercultural relations often remain on the background: this can hinder the creation of a sense of faithfulness in business meetings and make organisational adaptation to cultural diversity harder to achieve.
In spite of that, the managers interviewed appear to be conscious of the central role of concepts such as dialogue, openness, reciprocal adaptation and intercultural learning, and underline not only the growing interdependence among different cultures but also the advantages that different cultural perspectives can bring to the organisation. The management of cultural differences is nonetheless perceived to be a matter of individual responsibility, and only in a few cases is it promoted through concrete choices by the organisations themselves.