Publication: Intercultural Management

Intercultural Success Factors
in Consulting --
Project Experiences in Saudi Arabia

Last year, the Institute for Intercultural Studies IFIS at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich celebrated its annual international conference. The 6th International Day 2008, which has become sort of an institutionalised venue over the years, was held under the topic of “Applied Interculturality – Intercultural Projects”.

All the lecturers of the event were invited to author an article on their respective presentation. This included my own talk about the topic about "Intercultural Success Factors in Consulting: Project Experiences in Saudi Arabia".

The publication is about to come out these days, and I already do hold my own copy hot off the press in hands. The volume is mostly in German; the abstracts of the respective articles, however, are also available in English.

Official Publication Announcement and Summary

For those interested, I put forward the abstract of my own article:

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Intercultural Success Factors in Consulting
Project Experiences in Saudi Arabia

Andreas Hauser

Projects in the intercultural context of the Arab World pose a particular challenge for foreign consultants and managers. Accepting the customs and practice of the Islamic host country, fulfilling the diverse interests of the clients, leading an international team of experts: all these tasks require an elevated degree of intercultural competence.

Since 2006, the author has been working as a management consultant in Saudi Arabia. In the article, he presents the essence of two strategy projects in the most conservative country of the Arab Peninsula as a practical example of applied interculturality. By means of both German experiences in Saudi Arabia and Saudi encounters in Germany, the key components for project success are distinguished: understanding of time; communication; ways of acting and thinking; religion; and personal relationship.

Based on the five identified factors that he applied successfully in the project work, the author developed a training concept for intercultural management competence. He regularly puts it into practice in the preparation of managers for project or expatriate assignments as well as in international university seminars and lectures.

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Here is an overview of the further topics treated in the publication, all of them with a high practical value in everyday intercultural business situations:

• Eckart Koch
  “What are intercultural projects? Types, Planning, Results”
• Günter Miedaner
  “ICM Pass: Evaluation and Development of Intercultural Management Competence”
• Jana Peters
  “IKProfil: An Assessment Center to Determine Intercultural Competence of Employees”
• Inga Märtens
  “Intercultural Knowledge Transfer Workshop: Elements of Knowledge Management Systems”
• Anja Bauman/Elisabetz Bichler/Tatjana von Rosenstiel
  "The Marco Polo Project: Intercultural Training for the German Army"
• Jasmin Mahadevan
  "Cross-location Engineer Work as Intercultural Project: From national-cultural Training to Cross-Site Consulting"
• Christine McCarthy
  "Developing German Leaders' Cross-Cultural Competence"
• Regine Wieder
  "Strategic Communication Management for Intercultural Projects"
• Eckard Koch
  "Speech for a 'Communication Style South': Communication in Multi-Cultural Situations"
  

Finally, here is the complete bibliographic reference of the publication, including the online link:

Eckart Koch/Sabine Speiser (Hrsg.):
Interkulturelle Projekte: Angewandte Interkulturalität
Beiträge zum Sechsten Internationalen Tag der Hochschule München
Rainer Hampp Verlag, München / Mering
ISBN 386618347X
Link to Amazon.de


Enjoy the reading!


Andreas Hauser