Transcultural Competence: Navigating Cultural Differences in the Global Community

Functioning successfully within different cultures can be a struggle for many professionals and, as the world changes, it’s become clear that working within other cultures, both domestic and international, requires competence in both identifying and transcending cultural boundaries. In this highly approachable volume, the authors provide a robust framework for addressing cultural conflicts within organizations not just for practitioners in the field of consulting and organizational psychology, but for a broad spectrum of professionals, executives, and community leaders.

Drawing on case studies that illustrate commonly encountered cultural dilemmas in a variety of practice areas, the authors present applications, assessments, and intervention approaches that are prerequisites for gaining transcultural competence, whether as a consultant, organizational leader, or professional in any number of fields dealing with diversity and globalization. Four steps for identifying and managing cultural dilemmas are described: recognizing, respecting, reconciling, and realizing cultural differences. The authors ably expand on these concepts with real-world examples from their practice – from corporate struggles with native pacific islanders to functioning within the complicated traditions of Native American reservations.The concept of ‘cultural traps’ associated with often subtle ethnocentric assumptions, and how to avoid them, makes Transcultural Competence an invaluable resource.

Jerry Glover, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist who has worked in consulting, research, and education projects around the globe. He is an associate of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, consulting on client projects in transcultural competence and eLearning development.

Dr. Glover is a board member of the International Society for Change and Development and a peer review editor for the Organizational Development Journal. He has been a faculty member of the graduate program in organizational change at Hawaii Pacific University for 27 years. He earned his doctoral degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Florida in 1981.

Dr. Glover's professional career includes working as a consultant on 150 change and development initiatives, including corporations, governments, and professional applications such as education, health care, military, tourism, and economic development. He has developed initiatives for transcultural competence education and training in locations such as Fiji, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Bahamas, Europe, and North America. He has conducted extensive research on organizational culture, culture change, and cultural dilemmas in sociocultural encounters.

Harris L. Friedman, PhD, consults domestically and internationally with organizations and has built a number of mental health and health care companies. He also has worked as a clinical psychologist in diverse settings. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Georgia State University, and is certified in both organizational and business consulting psychology, as well as in clinical psychology, from the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Dr. Friedman retired as an emeritus professor of psychology at Saybrook University and research professor of psychology at University of Florida, but he continues to research and write extensively on a wide variety of topics in psychology and related fields. His writing includes numerous articles on organizational culture, cultural dilemmas, and adaptive leadership.

He is a Fellow of APA, senior editor of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, and associate editor of The Humanistic Psychologist. His most recent coedited books are The Praeger Handbook of Social Justice and Psychology, Volumes 1–3 (2014) and The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (2013).