Combining Multicultural Management and Diversity Into One Course on Cultural Competence

There can be little debate that culture—the multiple characteristics and backgrounds that shape individ-uals ’ and organizations ’ identities, perceptions, atti-tudes, and behavior—strongly influences the suc-cess of business enterprises today. Intergroup conflict constantly threatens the ability of both do-mestic and global firms to operate efficiently, coop-eratively, and fairly. Did a merger between a Japa-nese-owned firm and an American-owned firm fail because of inferior products and inappropriate pric-ing or because themanagerswere personally incom-patible and the organizations ’ operating styles too disparate? Did a company’s efforts to advance women into management fail because the women were not up to the challenge or because the work environment undermined their performance or per-ceived performance? Business educators cannot sim-ply teach undergraduate and graduate students that cultural differences matter. They must equip stu-dents to understand how cultural differences work and thus how to turn cultural competence into a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, undergraduate and graduate courses in multicultural management (also called “cross-cultural management”) tend to fall short of this goal. We identify cultural management skills required for success in today’s business environ-ment, then examine gaps between those target competencies and current teaching in multicul-tural management, and the source of those gaps in the courses ’ conceptual foundations. We suggest improving these courses using concepts from, among other places, “domestic ” diversity manage-ment courses. In fact, we propose to improve both types of courses by merging them into a unified course designed around the border-erasing con-cept of cultural competence