LEVERAGING SKILLS IN A

MULTICULTURAL WORKFORCE:

The Unrecognized

(but essential)

Role of Multicultural Individuals

Stacey FitzsimmonsUniversity of Victoria

Presentation for Northeastern University February 2016

Indra Nooyi

CEO and Chair

PepsiCo

Carlos Ghosn

CEO and President

Renault-Nissan

Muhtar Kent

CEO and Chair

Coca-Cola

Indian-

American

Brazilian-Lebanese-

French

Turkish-American

Six studies

1762 people

Interviews, Surveys, Experiments

MBA Students,

Hotel Employees,

Health Care Employees

Tip #1

Multicultural individuals are more likely to have cross-cultural skills.

Photo: Wally Gobetz

Photo: Jesse Vaughan

In-group has higher ratio of people from other cultures

In-group has higher ratio of people from one’s own cultures

Cognitive complexity Benet-Martinez, Lee & Leu, 2006; Tadmor, Tetlock & Peng, 2009

Attributional complexityLakshman 2013

More resilient to negative self-evaluations Baumeister,

Shapiro & Tice, 1985

Cultural metacognition Brannen, Garcia & Thomas, 2009

Cognitive Connectionist perspectiveLucke, Kostova & Roth, 2015 JIBS

Tip #1

Multicultural individuals are more likely to have cross-cultural skills.

Tip #1

Multicultural individuals are more likely to have cross-cultural skills.

… and these skills are largely unrecognized.

Tip #2

Cultural brokering depends on the organization’s diversity.

Multicultural

3

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

Homogeneous Dual culture Heterogeneous

Cu

ltu

re B

rokeri

ng

Organization's Cultural Diversity

Monocultural

Experiment: Brokering across people and organizations

Experiment: Brokering across people and organizations

3

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

Homogeneous Dual culture Heterogeneous

Cu

ltu

re B

rokeri

ng

Organization's Cultural Diversity

Monocultural

Multicultural

Survey: Brokering across people and organizational diversity

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

Homogeneous Average Heterogeneous

Cu

ltu

re B

rokeri

ng

Organization's Diversity = 1 - ∑(n/N)2

Monocultural

Multicultural

Survey: Brokering across people and organizational diversity

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

Homogeneous Average Heterogeneous

Cu

ltu

re B

rokeri

ng

Organization's Diversity = 1 - ∑(n/N)2

Monocultural

Multicultural

Tip #2

Cultural brokering depends on the organization’s diversity.

Tip #2

Cultural brokering depends on the organization’s diversity.

… and monoculturals can learn to broker just as much as

multiculturals

Tip #3

Don’t push anyone into a role they don’t want. Ask.

1.Skills.

2.Depends on organization.

3.Don’t push. Ask.

So What?

Social push/pull effects

Individual Agency / demand effects

Learnable skill

Culture-specific vs culture-general brokering