A Relational View on Cultural Complexity

In a world shaped by cultural complexity, knowledge about, and tolerance of, cultural differences seem to be insufficient to successfully cooperate and create value across borders. In this spirit, an international and interdisciplinary Delphi study on transcultural competence was conducted with a panel of around 50 experts. This article summarizes the main findings of this Delphi study that lays the foundations for the contributions collected in this book. As a main insight and common denominator of the study, a relational view on cultural complexity could be identified as a promising step for further debate and research. Such a relational perspective includes considering individuals and organizations in their relational context and invites cross-cultural scholarship to address cultural complexity (differences, commonalities, similarities, etc.) in its relational nature. The study findings thereby highlight that while striving for similarities would end up in homogenization, a pursuit of commonalities involves connecting and building relations that allow differences to co-exist. Against this backdrop, transcultural competence could be particularly associated with the connotation of “beyond” and thus be defined as referring to a general competence of individuals or organizations to intentionally develop new commonalities in contexts of cultural complexity. It refers to the ability and willingness to engage in context-specific processes of constructing new shared meaning and action beyond existing practices by shared experience and mutual learning as a means and result of being in relation. Accordingly, the process that the Delphi group has undergone together, including the preparation of this edited book, represents a transcultural approach in the sense of shared learning stemming from shared experience, the development of new commonalities in contexts of cultural complexity as well as the formation of a community of practice.

This article reflects on the criticism of intercultural communication as being more interactive than relational—a criticism justified, it argues, only for some of the conceptual diaspora of intercultural communication found in business schools and commercial intercultural training. In its original academic home of communication theory, intercultural communication reflects the largely relational focus of other human communication studies foci (interpersonal, group, and organizational). The underlying relational concepts include Pearce’s coordinated management of meaning, Watzlawick’s axioms of human communication, Barnlund’s transactional model of communication; and contributions from anthropology such as Bateson’s cybernetics of cybernetics, and from sociology such as Goffman’s dramaturgical model of communication. Intercultural communication used these and related ideas in theorizing about Hall’s original idea that engagement with other cultures was a kind of adaptation to different ways of coordinating meaning and action. The idea of cultural comparison per se, particularly of national cultures, was largely a war-time effort by anthropologists to understand combatants’ “psychology”—an effort continued by business people, served by commercial trainers, to understand the world views of their global partners and competitors. These efforts tended to stress interaction rather than relationship, contrary to the original formulation of intercultural communication.

This chapter develops the view that the relational turn in the social sciences finds a dialogue partner in the relational ontologies of some more collectivistic cultures. Ubuntu, as such a relational ontology from some regions and traditions in Africa, considers human beings to be relationally constituted, rather than seeing relations as a secondary result of individual agency or societal systems. While cautioning against uncritical readings of Ubuntu, the chapter explores the relational approach to cultural commonalities in relation to the African value of Ubuntu. Specifically, the desire to explore and create cultural commonalities for the purpose of enhancing cooperation in contexts of diversity is discussed from a collective perspective on commonalities, viewing Ubuntu as a relational ontology with a resulting ethic.

The concept of “Transculturality”, used often in this volume, seems to carry a promise of bridging cultural differences in groups. In order to investigate whether this could be so, I want to add my thoughts on the causation of culture to the debate. I will argue in this piece that everyday interactions between people have shaped human cultures over time and are still doing so. I will also indicate briefly how this happens, by presenting basic relational drivers of individuals, elementary models of sociality across individuals and groups, and emergent patterns in groups and society. Then, I will consider the concept of transculturality from this theoretical perspective. We are cultural social animals; can we also be transcultural, what would that mean, and what would that require?

In this article, the approach of transculturality is examined from three culturally reflexive methodological meta-perspectives in order to find out how exactly the commonalities that are so significant for the relational paradigm can be developed. In doing so, it is shown that cultural reflexivity works with three different qualities of knowledge: knowledge as interpretative knowledge, knowledge as ideology permeated with power structures, and constructive nescience. It is argued that transculturality requires all three approaches to create common ground in concrete groups by using interpretative, deconstructive, and constructivist activities. The example of listening is used in each case to illustrate how to make use of these resources.

This article aims to provide a communication-theoretical starting point for a concept of transcultural competence. In dealing with concepts of intercultural competence, it is first established that such a concept basically concerns two levels. On the one hand, it can concern competencies that help the individual to deal with people of different cultures in an appropriate and effective way; on the other hand, it can address competencies that are identifiable from an observer's perspective across all cultures. While the approach via cross-culturally identifiable competencies is not suitable as a concept of transcultural competence to guide actions, the distinction between knowledge that is present-at-hand and knowledge that is ready-to-hand, elaborated in this framework and originally introduced by Heidegger, proves to be a crucial basis for such a concept, which is relational in many respects and whose core point is seen in the reflection and explication of cultural experiences.

We interpret the core agenda of this volume as the development of theories for governance practice(s) in management and leadership based on (cultural) commonality and diversity. Our contribution will explore a multi-disciplinary approach marrying concepts from relational economics and leadership research with broader analytical perspectives of anthropology. We will discuss how anthropological concepts of transculturality and transculturation transplanted into the field of relational economics could translate into change and transformation by diversity. To have a substantial impact, cultural (and biological) diversity depends on de-essentializing perceptions of rigid identities and fixed identifications, enabling a complementary or truly transcultural comprehension of relational “otherness”. Such an oscillating open-ended procedure resists dominant orderings of “otherness” as pre-conceived labeling and leads to a permanent discursive reflection of diversity and cultural difference/s. It acknowledges that identification of divergences is more often than not stereotypical. Practically, this means for us to draw our main interest to all levels of (power) hierarchies in corporations, organizations, and networks. Leadership strategies cannot prescribe top-down transcultural change, if no more than window dressing is attempted. Therefore, we suggest strengthening bottom-up approaches aimed to promote social and environmental justice through transcultural procedures. We are convinced that the transformative upsurge should not be restricted to the narrow confines of the social sphere of “human resources” but must address the devastating impact of human economic activities on nature in the “Anthropocene”. Relational economics and its underlying concept of relationality will have to extend to all ends of human/social embeddedness in natural processes and ecosystems. Taking relationality seriously means thinking (and acting) in terms of decolonizing nature from centuries of human interventions of progressively suspending ecological self-regulation. The practical aim of this contribution is geared toward substituting the once dominant habitus of tempocentrism with effective and accountable sustainability. The triple ecological crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, species extinction, and climate change needs urgent institutionalization of sustainable transformation or “timefulness”. We thus provide a critique of the long-standing norm of “time (money) matters” and argue for historicization of time (as temporal) matters in research of transculturality.

More explicitly than in most other countries, the case of Colombia reveals that for members of minoritised groups such as Afrodescendant and indigenous communities, transculturality can be both a mobilising vision of hope and resistance, and a traumatising experience of colonisation and marginalisation. Against this backdrop, our chapter focuses on self-writing as a means of exploring the historical and ethical preconditions for a jointly envisioned transculturality, which are often overlooked in neoliberal discourses of a globalised world. Based on ethnographic experiences and self-writing research from Colombia, we examine how memory, corporality and territoriality constitute avenues of transcultural imagination. We argue that transculturality needs to be rooted in a critical consciousness of historical processes of colonisation, collective trauma and persistently unequal power relations. For peoples of formerly colonised spaces, rewriting the self is a matter of urgency and agency. It is the basis for the (re)negotiation of their existence, interaction and exchange with other cultures.

The Multilogue is an approach to developing transcultural competence as we collaborate and live together in diversity. Moving beyond cultural differences, and through cultural commonalities, the Delphi project investigates what transcultural competence means in cultural complexity. At the intersections of cultural complexity, we have a choice: grow from the infusion of multiple perspectives or languish comfortably in our echo chambers. This essay weaves together some seminal concepts in the intercultural field with selected insights on culture, identity, and diversity. The tapestry of ideas provides the foundation for a cosmopolitan perspective, the Multilogue. My intention in developing the Multilogue approach is to enable co-creation of un-alienated lifespaces and workplaces. How the Multilogue was conceived and some tools to construct, grow and sustain our communities of practice are offered to the reader to experiment with. Multiloguing is like communal gardening. We, the gardeners, consciously work together to create a fertile and flourishing environment. The essence is dynamic, situational, and performative. Multiloguing is bound to the current situation, i.e., relevant to a unique group at a certain moment. The context influences how we collaborate: who is present, where and when we meet, what we are trying to do together, and why this is important to us. Fleeting and impermanent, multiloguing is performative. This means we can only develop our transcultural competence while bouncing ideas off each other, preparing the soil of innovation together and depending on each other for input, insights, and expertise. Transcultural competence is not a vaccination against ethnocentrism or fixed mindsets; we need to guard against sinking into toxicity, such as groupthink, power plays or false harmony. Nudges and queries can remind us to regularly examine the quality of our interactions. These Multilogue tools of inquiry impact how we take care of the atmosphere in our collaboration spaces, which in turn influence how richly and inclusively we can co-create.

Humans have a feeling of belonging to their fellow beings when they can say what they mean and are able to act accordingly toward others. When what we say or do does not make sense for others, we feel a diminished sense of belonging. Within this paper such situations are referred to as alienating situations. When a loss of sense of belonging threatens the relationships the challenge is to restore a shared understanding. The following questions become relevant: How does co-creation of meaning work? And how can co-creation of meaning be fostered in alienating situations?

This chapter details UNESCO Story Circles, a concrete tool for developing and practicing key intercultural competencies. UNESCO Story Circles have been used successfully around the world in a wide variety of contexts and can be foundational for intercultural dialogue and for bridging divides.

This chapter examines how we can leverage experiential learning methodology to further enhance the latest trends in relational capacity building, as discussed within the framework of this publication. We are approaching this subject matter from a practitioner perspective informed by our combined experiences of designing and facilitating learning interventions such as training programs. Our leadership training and development practice rests heavily on experiential learning methodology. Given its embeddedness in both cognitive and affective learning, experiential learning provides the perfect avenue to delve into relational leadership. To fully explore this potential, we present and discuss practical tools for developing relational competencies of empathy, embracing ambiguity, and holding complexity. Our exploration is guided by an evidence-based training design approach which enables us to position these tools vis-a-vis the theories and processes that inform them. Amongst others, the chapter is drawing upon intergroup theory, neuroscience, the subject-object theory of adult development, and the complex theory in addition to the traditional theories used in the intercultural and transcultural field. We thus embrace the multidisciplinary nature of transcultural competence by entering into a creative dialogue with neighbouring fields of neuroscience, developmental psychology, social and cultural anthropology as well as natural sciences; all in the spirit of true diversity.

In many areas of life, but also in science, the question arises of how to deal with change. In addition to technical or organisational adjustments, the question of how to deal with change is always also about processes of (organisational) cultural change. This is also accompanied by changes and developments in the understanding of central concepts such as “culture”. In this sense, the very title “Transcultural Caravan” for the present research project of the Leadership Excellence Institute of Zeppelin University (LEIZ) is an indication of a change in the scientific discussion of the phenomenon of “culture”. Opening up to members of other cultures and developing the cultural competencies required for this is therefore a task for society as a whole. Consequently, this topic is now taken into account in many relevant political departments, this explicitly includes the armed forces of Germany. In particular, the question of the didactics of (trans-)cultural competence in the armed forces is dealt with using the example of the generally known method of training boards. The method is characterised by a high degree of self-reflection and interaction, which is promoted by the small groups. Thus, for the present research context, it fulfils one of the core aspects of a relational approach. It is not just about cultural differences, but about the relationship that is created through the interaction between these people as bearers of the culture. The training board helps the armed forces in training to enable just this.

In trying to adapt to the dynamic society in the twenty-first century, individuals may struggle to develop the competences that can help them to succeed and thrive in a changing environment. Dynamic changes in ICT as well as the way individuals interact with one another is a core challenge that lacks a universal answer. We argue the most important twenty-first century skills don’t lie in technical skills, but rather the ability for individuals to meaningfully interact with others across different cultural environments. Competently communicating in intercultural contexts requires literacy cultivated through intercultural knowledge and experience. Importantly, this contemporary communication occurs in the vehicle of numerous digital tools. Access to the intercultural studies and bodies of knowledge has never been easier since the proliferation of ICT. However, this access is not equitably distributed due to the digital divide and the role of knowledge gatekeeping. This chapter examines knowledge gatekeeping within the context of individuals seeking to access intercultural studies’ knowledge and the space where knowledge is generated. To do so, terminology during the recent Delphi study on transculturality was examined as a potential mechanism for gatekeeping. The language used during panel discussions within the Delphi study conference revealed an unexpectedly high degree of jargon which may serve as a barrier for those who are not already active in this academic and scientific space. Future discourse can benefit non-intercultural experts by shifting terminology and adapting the necessary literacy for knowledge comprehension and contribution.

This chapter first outlines the major changes that have contributed to the complex business environment and the way in which they have changed our work context. This is followed by discussion of the characteristics of culturally complex work settings and their implications for leadership in such settings. When exploring existing theories of leadership, a relational approach to leadership seems to be most appropriate to make the best use of the requirements and the inherent potential of a culturally diverse workforce in such culturally complex settings while, at the same time, minimizing potential challenges. The characteristics of such a relational leadership approach are explicated from a social constructionist perspective and a comprehensive model for leading in culturally complex work settings is proposed and illustrated with a small case. The proposed relational leadership model may serve leaders as an orientation in understanding and navigating the cultural dynamics involved in culturally complex work settings and the requirements including necessary competencies for enabling positive outcomes. In addition, the model may help researchers in making informed choices regarding their research focus when studying various aspects of culturally complex work settings and leadership in such settings. The chapter closes with four questions to ponder.

To foster cross-cultural collaboration, leaders must go beyond describing cultural differences and instead create effective connections among members. We propose a dynamic balancing framework, drawing on the Chinese principle of “seeking commonality while preserving difference,” that emphasizes seeking commonality by connecting with universal human values and needs, aligning shared goals and objectives, and fostering shared identity and belonging, while at the same time preserve difference by respecting diverse cultural values, attending contextualized local needs, and validating unique strengths and identities. A case study of a business leader exemplifies this framework. This approach can enhance leadership effectiveness for successful cross-cultural collaborations.

Early attempts at inter-organizational collaboration based around EDI (electronic data interchange) were a worthy attempt to derive benefits to both parties. Although some performance and cost-saving advantages have been realized, it has taken time to recognize the origins of many of the challenges that continue to surface. Developing a relational view seeks to go much further than just the technical benefits of EDI data exchange. If the potential outcomes of full inter-organization collaboration can be realized then the opportunities are enormous. Like the “end of the rainbow”, the closer we get to work with another organization, the more it seems to move away and more and more challenges pop up. The authors have undertaken longitudinal research on published traditional frameworks and practice across organizations which, although they strive to be objective, are rarely free of cultural bias. They also conclude there are serious shortcomings in how effectively organizations recruit, develop and utilize their people. Organizations are implementing a wide range of policies and programs to identify and eliminate pay inequalities and improve their attractiveness as employers to women and other diverse people; however, a great change has not materialized. A new conceptual framework is proposed centered around Dyer and Singh’s (1998) approach to achieve relational rents whereby a synergistic exchange relationship between employees of one organization is able to communicate effectively with another can deliver a win–win for both. The authors emphasize an a priori need for employees to have a cross-cultural capability to recognize differences and respect those differences. The culture gaps give rise to a series of dilemmas that, when reconciled, deliver the relational rents. The findings are underpinned by rigorous fundamental research and consulting practice and reveal the need for employers to identify and reconcile key challenges around the way work needs to be done throughout their organization in partnership with external organizations. They describe a series of Apps they have developed as a practical toolkit for exploring this new concept.

Organizations are re-envisioning their workplaces to meet fresh challenges presented by rapid technological innovation, global health issues, geo-political disruption, and related societal shifts. Through this process, organizations are recognizing the increased opportunities that come with working with highly diverse, collaborative, Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) as a means of both remaining competitive and acquiring and retaining global talent. Remote work settings are therefore becoming spaces of significant cultural complexity. This calls for new forms of leadership and a reframing of leadership practices for a highly diverse virtual work context. This chapter investigates a current trend in leadership scholarship towards leadership as a collective and shared phenomenon and discusses its relevance in the context of culturally diverse virtual teams. It seeks to explore whether it is time for a new narrative of leadership in the context of global virtual teams and remote work settings, arguing that global virtual teams and their leadership need to be re-examined using a relational lens. The chapter discusses how leaders and workers in remote work environments are being unmade, made, and remade through dynamic relational processes mediated by technology and embedded wholly or partly in new virtual contexts. It examines whether a relational framework for leadership can meet the multi-layered and increasingly complex demands of culturally diverse GVTs and concludes that a relational view of leadership is well suited to leverage the cultural complexity, harness the potential of virtuality, and co-create shared virtual spaces of collaboration. This work outlines the far-reaching implications that this has for leadership practices in today’s virtual team environments.