Culture in a global economy is a critical factor in international business. While many business transactions make economic sense, the ability to successfully fulfill profitable relationships often depends on being able to reconcile international differences arising from separate cultures. Understanding cultural differences is an initial step, but managers also need to engage in learning processes to develop international cultural competence. Cross-cultural training enables managers to acquire both knowledge and skills to fulfill the role of cultural agents. Advancing cultural intelligence and international cultural competence is critical to the future success of managers and leaders working in a global context.

Culture, as defined in Kroeber and Kluckhohn's classic, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, is the "patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential...