Cultural Intelligence

Regardless of what country a person lives in or what organization the individual belongs to, it may be hard to find a professional setting where cultural differences among colleagues and within organizations do not matter. Wherever people work these days, they will at some point be interacting with others from another culture in the broadest sense of the word.

For the purpose of this entry, culture is defined not only in the traditional national context but also as relating to a wide variety of contexts, including ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, class, organization, vocational aptitude, and physical ability, to name just a few. Hence, working across cultures has become the norm in today’s for-profit and not-for-profit businesses, academia, and even politics. More and more, cultural intelligence ...