MGE Papers

Kolab has a huge role in which she is expected to turnaround the poor attitude and lack of focus among employees. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that they provide a strong emphasis on essential concepts which define the needs of every stakeholder within the organization. It is evident that there is no understanding of the culture within the organization. Kolab is very much immersed in achieving organizational target and mission thus forgetting the basis which includes building a strong personal relationship with employees. However, she has the technical capacity to transform the company performance and create a conducive environment where employees can be motivated and enjoy helping the company achieve the intended goals (Livermore & Soon, 2015). Kolab has a vast experience in dealing with people from diverse cultural setting from her time when she was a refugee. Self-concept, in this case, provides a very strong focus on critical elements that define positive org...

: Organizational culture can be described as the smell of the place, or the way things are done in the organization, Kotter and Heskett define culture as gained knowledge, explanations, values, beliefs, communication and behaviors of a large group of people, at the same place. This difference in culture is the reason why some companies succeed where another fails within an industry. (Zenger, 2017, November 25). In this week’s case study, a new leader Kolab is appointed to lead a non profit organization called International Education Center(IEC), which provides international education and information to the citizens of midwestern state, prior to this appointment Kolab directed national programming and services for the office of Refugee Resettlement in Washington D.C, where she joined after leaving an international relief agency where she traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Africa working in the organization’s field offices, managing its daily operations, although the p...

Kolab was born in Cambodia and fled to the United States as refugees. Her experiences as a refugee motivated her to engage in international work. Kolab has been hired to work for an International Educational Center (IEC)- a non-profit making organization. Kolab has experience working for Office of the Refugee Resettlement, traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Africa. This shaped her expectations and working style. She, however, faces resistance from the employees she leads. The employees regard her as ‘impersonal’. From the look of things Kolab lacks social and emotional intelligence since she is ‘impersonal’. However, her employer regards her highly. This paper shall try and offer some solutions to the problems faced in the organization.  Kolab has a refugee background and traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Africa, (Cultural Intelligence for leaders, 2012). This has a bearing on her leadership style. Her style is task- and goal-ori...

Abdul Hadi is a muslim patient at a German hospital. He has recently had surgery and requires assistance from a nurse as he recovers. His nurse, Anna, has encountered various cultural challenges as she has tried to fulfill her responsibilities to provide care in a responsible and culturally sensitiveway. One of the main risks in this situation is that Anna tries so hard to consider all the cultural nuances and respect all cultural conventions that she ceases to prioritize Hadi’s care in favor of Hadi’s sensitivities. While it is important to provide care in a culturally sensitive way, Anna’s priority is Hadi’s care. As care provider at a hospital with other patients, Anna needs to manage her time and resources to serve many patients at once. It is therefore important for Anna to seek support from her supervisor in terms of managing patient expectations. As other nurse’s devoted to patient care, there is only so much Anna can do as a cultural interpreter before she has to move to ot...

As the world’s population grows, so does its cultural diversity. While such diversity clearly provides for a more interesting world, it can also serve to cause confusion and misunderstandings. In medical situations, those points of confusion and misunderstanding can actually be life-threatening. Healthcare providers have a moral and ethical obligation to provide the best possible care for every individual (Attum & Shamoon, 2018). In this paper, we will explore the case of a post-surgical Muslim patient in a western hospital and the cultural strategic thinking that must be utilized by hospital staff in order to provide this patient with the care and respect he needs. Background Abdul Hadi, a Muslim recovering after surgery in a hospital in Germany, where he lives. Since his female nurse, Anna, is not a Muslim and she is basically unfamiliar with the aspects of his religion that influence their interactions and his care, there is a lot of conflict between them. As presen...

In this case study, two cultures cross paths in a hospital in Germany, raising cultural and ethical issues. Anna, the nurse, struggles to accept the requests and needs of Abdul a Muslim patient, who does not fit her cultural model of the typical German patient. It is worth to note, that the same situation could have happened in reverse, with Anna being a German patient in any Islamic country, needing immediate attention from a doctor for a sudden pain, but possibly not receiving prompt care because time would be lost seeking a female doctor. The cultural issue described here is therefore applicable to any country in the world. Case Description and Major Issues Abdul Hadi is a Muslim patient in a hospital in Germany, that just underwent surgery. Because of post-surgical limitations in movements he needs special assistance to bath himself. Bathing and cleaning himself are particularly important to him since he cannot pray otherwise. Anna, the hospital nurse responsible for...

Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012) as in Thomas & Inkson (2003) state “cultural intelligence is about being skilled and flexible about understanding a culture, learning more about it from your on-going interactions with it, and gradually reshaping your thinking to be more sympathetic to the culture and your behaviors to be more skilled and appropriate when interacting with others from the culture” (p. 68). Cultural intelligence or CQ is also an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures in just the way that person’s compatriots and colleagues would, even to mirror them; it is the interloper’s capability to deal with constellation of manners, meanings, histories, and values that can confuse and cause him or her to stumble (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004). Though our skill and knowledge of different cultures can help us adjust to situations, CI enables us to have an awareness of the idiosyncrasies of culture, the peculiarities ...

Cultural intelligence is an important skill for every leader as it helps leaders understand the intricacies of multicultural interactions. It can be referred to as the act of evaluating and adapting to cultural situations. It encourages diversity, inclusion, and development. Cultural intelligence is built on certain frameworks and they are knowledge, strategic thinking, motivation, and behaviors. These frameworks can be referred to as the ABCs of cultural intelligence which is Acquire, Build, Contemplate, and Do (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Acquire knowledge:  Knowledge is an important factor for everyone when becoming culturally intelligent, this is because the information is key and creates awareness.  Acquiring knowledge is basically being able to gather the necessary information to enhance interaction and communication within multicultural settings. It involves training, learning, building and deciphering knowledge appropriately in other to recognize mu...

            Cultural intelligence can be described as an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would, (Earley and Mosakowski, 2004, October), it is also explained as someone’s ability to adapt successfully to a new cultural setting. (mind tools, n.d).             Cultural intelligence emphasizes three areas of metacognition and cognition, which represents one’s ability to think, learn and strategize, second is motivation which is the self-efficacy and confidence, the ability to be persistent and the alignment to one’s personal values, and thirdly Behavior which is about one’s ability to have repertoire of skills and the ability to adapt his behavior. (cultural intelligence for leaders, 2012).             The framework for Cultural intelligence consists of knowledge, strategic thinking, motivation, and be...

Cultural intelligence is the ability to assess the cultural elements that are relevant to inter-personal dynamics where culture may play a role in furthering or hindering understanding. As I had discussed before, the most useful way to understand a culture is as the intersection between the answers to the questions “who am I?” and “who are we?” An additional concept that is useful in this framework is the notion of cultural distance – cultural distance is a way to measure the extent of differences that exist between one culture and the other. As we all have various cultural layers that make up our identity, we are often simultaneously culturally close and culturally remote from any person with whom we interact. Of course, there are collective cultural constructs that are significantly more distant than others, but there is always some level at which we can relate with other people if we are patient enough and committed to understanding. It should be noted that there is also a metacult...

Discuss each specific element of the ABC’s (Acquire, Build, Contemplate, and Do) of Cultural Intelligence. What makes culture intelligence unique and how does it differ from emotional and social intelligence?  What makes cultural intelligence particularly valuable in terms of leadership competency in today’s global market? Cultural intelligence (CQ) incorporates other intellectual and emotional measures found in emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and cognition.  Specific steps of learning about a culture, actively engaging with people in that culture, and self-efficacy, improve CQ.  Leaders are key to CQ in an organization since they set an example, generate motivation and drive participation toward positive cultural experiences.           Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012) presents a framework for developing cultural intelligence through metacognition, cognition, motivation, and behavior. The acronym is ABC’s of cultural in...

According to the textbook Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012) "The framework for cultural intelligence consists of the following parts: knowledge, strategic thinking, motivation, and behaviors. It may be helpful to think about these as the ABCs of CI: Acquire, Build, Contemplate, and Do". To illustrate the framework, I'm going to use the portfolio activity for the second week: "How to learn a new language." Acquire is about the learning process, awareness, understanding, and proficiency of the culture. Even though cultural intelligence goes further than only knowledge, it is a crucial part and the very first step toward cultural intelligence. If I were to learn a new language, I mostly study the fundamentals of the language like grammar, verbs, pronunciation, even the phonetic. The build is the process of putting into practice what you have learned. "Build" is a live process. It requires practice and repetition to understand how it plays i...

          According to our reading text Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012), to acquire knowledge has to do with the cognition and developing the understanding of the different aspects of culture. It is important that we understand and are able to identify the cultural elements and their relations such as the channels of communication and their impact on behaviors and attitudes of the people (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012).           Metacognition comes to play when we build our strategic thinking that explores the knowledge we acquired in an unfamiliar culture. A person should be able to analyze the data collected in the previous step to detect patterns or causes. Doing this analysis helps us to understand the behaviors and attitudes of people (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012).           Because of the possibility that we may encounter difficulties while trying to become familiar with...