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Cultural IntelligenceIs Such a Capacity Credible?Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Consulting
Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Consulting Are claims to describe and measure cultural intelligence credible? Three major objections are discussed: (a) Cultures are said to be entirely relative in their values, so holding one culture to be more intelligent than another is discriminatory; (b) cultural studies are said to be a form of postmodernism, whereas to have one central definition of culture is modernistan imposition of our own dominant beliefs; and (c) attempts to categorize cultures are said to be crude stereotypes lacking subject. The answer to the first objection is the synergy hypothesis: Values are relative, but they are more or less synergistic. The answer to the second objection is the complementary hypothesis: Cultures are different, even polar opposites, yet they converge in a fuller description. The answer to the third objection is the latency hypothesis, for which every value is given face value and its latent shadow lies behind it.
Key Words: complementarity cross-cultural competence cultural intelligence learning mirror image pattern reconciliation synergy
Group & Organization Management, Vol. 31, No. 1,
56-63 (2006) |
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