Culture

According to Holden (2002), participative competency is an ability to be involved in and be a part

of interaction – even in a nonnative language. Along the same line, Fantini (2000) includes the

ability to communicate effectively and appropriately without changing the significance of the

message as a cross-cultural competency. Koehn and Rosenau‘s (2002) transnational listening

requires that native speakers understand non-native speakers, even when they do not use the

language in a correct manner. Sercu (2004) believes that the ability to find new things and to

interact and to acquire and manage information, skills and attitudes in real-time communications is

a central cross-cultural competency.

Holden‘s (2002) interactive translation, namely the ability to negotiate the meanings can be

compared to Friedman & Antal‘s (2005) negotiating reality. Negotiating reality is a strategy, which

tries to bring to light tacit knowledge and hypotheses. Nonaka (1994) describes that acquisition of

tacit knowledge includes observation, imitation and training. Friedman and Antal‘s cross-cultural

competency includes the ability to examine silent assumptions and the openness to test a range of

thoughts and practices.

The ability to operate in networks, collaborative cross-cultural learning and knowledge transfer are

closely linked. As Holden (2002) sees the ability to operate in networks as a core cross-cultural

competency, Koehn and Rosenau (2002) similarly refer to people acting in networks. They

associate networks with knowledge sharing, in which participants are givers and recipients.

Networks are critically important for the success of international business operations. According to

Koehn and Rosenau (2002), people build networks in the expectation of mutual learning. At the

individual level the use of metacognitive strategies, for example, awareness of one‘s own learning

promotes learning