Experience and Cultural Learning in Global Business Contexts

Globalization with increased mobility of the workforce and more frequent use of information and communication technologies means still more people must develop a deeper understanding of Cultural Others, a higher degree of cultural self-awareness and an ability to bridge across multiple cultural divides. This chapter discusses a number of issues in relation to cultural learning processes in global business contexts: various concepts of learning, different approaches to cross-cultural competence training of future global leaders, and various learning contexts in management education and training. Learners in today’s global business (school) world are more culturally diverse, and the potential of the increasing number of bi-cultural and bi-lingual students and managers as boundary-spanners must be considered. Recent empirical studies of face-to-face and virtual global collaboration show that cross-cultural encounters may not only trigger existing values and cognitive patterns, but also create motivation to find new ways to cope with challenging situations. Through storytelling the actors involved may create a deeper understanding of the specific socio-cultural context, but a teacher or coach is needed to facilitate a learning process that transforms emotionally laden experiences into learning through conceptualization, active experimentation and reflective observation.