There are several situations in the business world in which intercultural trainings can decisively contribute to a constructive approach:

• international negotiations
• intercultural team work
• business mergers
• preparation of terms abroad
• return after a long term abroad

It has become evident by now that the process of globalization has neither lead to the predicted levelling of cultural differences (Ritzer 2000: "McDonaldization of society"), nor to a massive "clash of cultures" (Huntington 1997).

To the contrary: In order to deal with the developments of the last few decades, it is necessary to take into account and integrate local peculiarities. This has been tried for example with the creation of the word "glocalization" in the context of the globalization debate. Cultural theory describes such peculiarities with terms "cultural difference, ethnicity, cultural capital, race and gender".

There are countless examples and anecdotes from the realm of the international business world, in which business transactions or culturally misdirected product marketing were responsible for the failure of a project and thus for enormous financial losses.
Intercultural communication-problems can entail catastrophic consequences!

The transfer of a particular life-style from culture x to culture y might be assessed completely different despite superficial similarities due to the very different context it was taken from in the first place.

The consequences in terms of economical losses are often ignored and usually very much underestimated:

Systematics Information Services Inc. and Sun Microsystems have determined that specific intercultural trainings might result in savings from $ 30 000 to $ 190 000 per employee. For more information, please click here.

¹ROBERTSON, R.: Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London 1992; see: BECK, U. (HG.): Was ist Globalisierung, Frankfurt/M., 1997