Building Cross-Cultural Competence: How to Create Wealth from Conflicting Values

Cross-cultural competence is a skill that has become increasingly essential for the managers in multinational companies. For other business people this kind of competence may spell the difference between surviving and perishing in the new global economy. This book focuses on the dilemmas of these managers and offers constructive advice on dealing with culture shock and turning it to business advantage. Opposing values can be understood as complementary and reconcilable say Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars. A manager who concentrates on integrating rather than polarizing values will make much better business decisions. Furthermore the authors show wealth is actually created by reconciling values-in-conflict.

Charles M. Hampden-Turner is senior research associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, Cambridge University. He is director of research and development and Fons Trompenaars is president of Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner Group, a cross-cultural consulting and training company based in Amsterdam. Hampden- Turner and Trompenaars are coauthors of The Seven Cultures of Capitalism and Riding the Waves of Culture.