Living and working abroad, we all have at some point complained about our hosts: “Why don’t THEY get it? Why can’t THEY follow my clear instructions? Why don’t THEY tell me when THEY don’t understand?” But what if communicating effectively across cultures was a dynamic process? What if it was up to US to make it work? Twenty years ago when my husband and I decided to get married, I wasnext to the worst thing that could happen to my Taiwanese parents-in-law. For them, seein

What if you could align employee behaviour with business values, creating a core culture that enhanced engagement, performance, and customer experience? If so, how do you figure out the values that your team should live and work by? And how do you align the desired values with desired behaviours? These were the questions faced by Pendinginan Megajana, a district cooling plant provider in Cyberjaya. Megajana’s leadership understood the value of creating great company culture –

January 12, 2013 was a memorable day for Malaysians: tens of thousands of people gathered around Kuala Lumpur Merdeka Stadium to express their views on politics and other issues. For the first time, it was a legal gathering after the passing of the PAA (Peaceful Assembly Act) late last year. Although the PAA has been widely criticized, one essential point of the new law is that it is now legal for people to gather in a public assembly, thus allowing demonstrations to legally

Diversity and cross-cultural training programs are not always a priority for companies, even when employees are working in a multicultural environment. Many skeptics deny the impact of local cultures on organizational cultures, minimize the importance of national cultures in people’s interactions (“After all, we are all the same”) and believe that being exposed to people of different backgrounds is sufficient to become culturally competent. A new research conducted by Steve T