Nowadays, when we talk about an international business manager, is generally understood in a simple way as the person who operates in a function that concerned in the decision making process or productivity inside a multinational or transnational company. But this a very flat perception of what actually means an international business manager and it different roles in main activities of the companies that negotiate between different countries and different cultural norms. " Managers perform a range of different of different roles. These include leading, acting as figurehead, communicating information, negotiating, allocating resources, handling disturbances, planning, overseeing implementation of plans, evaluating."1. and also the international business manager must be prepared with his or her own interpersonal skills or develop them to be allowed to manage a stuff of different cultural groups as their work partners and to reach succes business if he is expatriate of his or her home country.
We have seen that the international business manager can deal with many different roles in the negotiation arena, but as we mencioned before let´s talk about an expatriate business manager that must handle with a stuff of different cultural groups to reach a goal, a project or a business. The main role in this circumstances is leading with the interpersonal cross cultural managment skills. We talk about cross cultural managment as "development and application of knowledge about cultures in the practice of international managment, when the people involve have different cultural identities"2 like the stuff of different cultural groups. So, manager must be able to adapt himself to the other culture where he is negotiating or located and capable to lead his or her stuff conformed by different cultural groups, this means that as a manager you never could force a member of a different culture into your own cultural rules, because you must understand that they have a perception of their reality and also there values inside them that are not negotiables. So when going on making desicion process as an international business manager your first role is to lead and identify when it will be significant the cultural differences inside your teamwork, because each one of them can react in different ways to a similar situation.
Cross cultural managment skills reach importance when you understand that also the cultural differences gives you an advantage in a business process, because it is likely how you structure your plan or strategies and see what kind ofrelationship you want to achieve or your company wnats you to reach.
"Culture is not programmed into your
genetic structure, your learn it "
-Hofstede-
1. Mead, Richard. (2004).International managment and culture. London: Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 1, page 15.
2. Mead, Richard. (2004). International managment and culture. London: Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 1, page 16.
___________________________________________________________________
