The report aims to share and analyse the fact that cultural capabilities have become fundamental to operate the business effectively. Theories, deriverd from Mae, Cortez and Preiss, (2013) suggests, in order to do safe work and create safe spaces in the workplace; cultural self-awareness, intelligence and capability are essential part of business organisations. It is believed that managers and human resource with a capability of understanding cultural differences can function more effectively under the contemporary global business scenario. It helps the organisation to achieve efficiency with the global business deals. Although, an industry can increase its competitive advantage by developing culturally diverse and intelligent workforce, yet at first they have to make sure, if the employees are capable of creating their own safe space with the help of individual cultural intelligence within the organisation or not (Crowne, 2013). This report will further introduce some strategies to create safe spaces and with a reference of a scene from a popular television series of 90’s, ‘Friends’, it will add several dimensions to this report. Season 4 of this TV series will be discussed in the report. It is going to be an analysis of the characters in terms of cultural capabilities. The characters from the serials will help to understand the concept of cultural intelligence as well as a discussion will be presented on the ways they should improve themselves by following strategies in order to create safe spaces in the workplace (Bauer et al., 2016).
In today’s world, no business organisation misses an opportunity to make a global approach with the purpose of gaining competitive edge in the market (Fang et al., 2013). Organisations believe to have a culturally diverse workforce to crack global deals yet over last few years several researches have been conducted on certain attributes of individuals, which enable them to act effectively in a cross-cultural or a complicated communication situation (Schutte, Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2013). According to Mae, Cortez and Preiss, (2013), the concept of cultural intelligence of individuals has been introduced as quantitative practice to measure individual differences. Although, there is no such definition, which can deliver a perception of the cultural capability, yet conceptual resemblance can be found with the intercultural competency in a global scenario.
Within a culturally diverse situation if an individual is capable of adjusting, whether within the workplace or society, and perform effectively, it is considered as an example of creating safe space. This report aims to elaborate cultural intelligence based on a brief review of literatures, which deal with social understanding, cross-cultural communication and cultural intelligence (Malek & Budhwar, 2013).
The central focus of this report is to evaluate the characters from a popular American television series ‘Friends’, where in one of the episodes of season 4, one of the central characters, Racheal confronts complicated communication situation during an interview. The idea of cultural intelligence has to be developed as well as a strategic framework will be provided following which the characters presented in the video clip can improve their capability.
As mentioned before, the report is based on one of the episodes of season 4 of the American television series ‘Friends’, which used to be telecasted from the year of 1994 and continued till 2004 (www.imdb.com, 2018). A critical analysis will be performed to judge whether in that particular scene, Rachel was able to handle the complicated communication with cultural intelligence and secured her place in the workplace. The video clip shows that Rachel is confronting an interview for a designation under the fashion brand of Ralph Lauren. The interview was organised by a fashion store Bloomingdale where she used to work as an employee. Rachel’s boss was present during the interview and she did not want to lose an efficient employee like her. It has been showed that she started to interpret Rachel’s answer in a wrong way to the interviewer in order to make the following events happen in her favour. Although, the interviewer was more interested to listen from Rachel yet he could not really ignore her boss. As a result, the interview went extremely bad for Rachel and she started to yell at her boss saying she had done it deliberately (Hodgins, MacCurtain & Mannix-McNamara, 2014). Eventually, her boss admitted that as she did not want to lose an efficient employee, she behaved that way. Rachel considered that incident as an unethical practice and wanted to quit her job. However, her boss offered her a raise along with a promotion. Instead of letting her achieve a prestigious position in some other company, her boss creates a safe space in her existing office (Ibarra, Ely & Kolb, 2013). Eventually, later in ‘Friends’, Rachel got the job in Ralph Lauren based on her fashion skills and ability to adjust with uncomfortable situation based on her individual intelligence.
When Rachel first came into New York, she was dependant on his father entirely. As she ran away from her wedding and started to live with friends, she felt the need to support herself. She started with a job of waitress in coffee shop and then based on her fashion skill and confidence she secured her place in a global fashion store. From there a chance occurred to join Ralph Lauren. However, her boss’s behaviour was evident that she used to have a safe space in her office. It is needless to say, that the character of Rachel had showed high intensity of cultural intelligence by confronting sarcastic comments during the interview and at the same time secures her new job and even stronger safe place in her previous workplace. Her body language and vocal tone were confident enough which again support her capability. However, she was on the verge of losing her confident yet she dared to express herself in front of her boss and questioned her unethical behaviour.
According to the article written by (Zeng et al., 2013) and (Yitmen, 2013), cultural intelligence refers to a person’s ability to interact with people from different cultural background and it depends on individual knowledge, based on which a person takes least time to adjust under a new cultural orientation. It points out those set of behavioural aspects like language skills or broad mentality, which make the situation easier and help the person to create a safe space within a society or in workplace (Livermore, 2015). When an employee is thinking of relocation or changing a job, adopting a new set of instruction and work culture can be considered as different cultural setting. With the rapid rate of globalization business firms always consider a bigger picture. In the course of making a global approach, firms are need of expatriates who can perform efficiently in international projects (Roberson, Holmes & Perry, 2017). As far as regular interaction in society is concerned, an individual may face some difficulties to adopt cultures of new locality. Therefore, to be in a safe space, it is very important to grow cultural capability. Hence, certain parameters can be identified by which cultural capability can be measured. It does not have to involve numerical figures every time, yet it can be determined based on individual’s behaviour and personal traits.
No matter under which cultural setting an employee is working, accomplishment of the target is the ultimate sign of interacting with the organizational purpose and its culture too. Individual goals may vary from one designation to another yet this gesture is essential to create a social and professional safe space.
The idea of personal adjustment is slightly critical and depends on people’s state of mind. According to recent studies, it has been observed that if a person possesses great adjustment power then he or she can cope with any complicated situation with their skill, knowledge and will power. However, an individual who lacks these characteristics confronts with issues even within own, native cultural environment.
An elaborate knowledge of cultural differences can make an employee or an individual communicate without much difficulty. Strong interpersonal interaction enable a person to be more culturally enriched.
Therefore, as described in Kisfalvi and Oliver, (2015), cultural capability or intelligence can be defined as an art of interacting with cultural knowledge and personal skills in order to adapt aspects of cultural environment around them. In order to understand this notion distinctly, instances of critical situation and under that scenario how an individual behaves that should be considered first. In that episode of ‘Friends’, Rachel did her best by confronting sarcastic comments against her answer. Initially she was in a confusion how to handle and became uncomfortable for a moment yet she recovered quickly showed her intelligence by maintaining direct eye contact. Throughout the video clip, she tried to be as confident as possible. Her voice was firm while describing her capability. Her capability of personal adjustment is evident from here and her communication skills and use of language, choice of words as well worked in her favour. It is needless to say, that Rachel was a consistent performing employee and that is why her previous boss was so adamant to retain her as a resource. This proves her safe space within the company. Therefore, it can be stated a high level of cultural capability has been noticed as a trait of the character. The video presents such an example of complicated situation as well as handled well by effective behavioural skills followed by creating a safe space.
As far as the video is concerned, the central character Rachel proved to be in a safe space in her workplace. She was confronting a complicated situation during an interview, which was created by her previous boss. Rachel’s ability of retaining her patience, communicating with smart choice of words under such pressure were the indicators of individual intelligence (Kisfalvi & Oliver, 2015). Rachel’s knowledge about the culture of fashion industry made her aware of her boss’s indications along with that help her to raise appropriate argument for that. She was initially unhappy after the interview; however, at the end of the video, she secured a safe place both in the new company and in her own. Her boss was pleased on her in the first place, which supports Rachel’s cultural intelligence strongly. This report can be helpful as a guideline on how people should behave in order to achieve a safe place under critical circumstances both in society and in workplace.
Conclusion
After considering the aspects of ideal cultural capability of an individual, it can be concluded that it is indeed a necessary personal trait, which makes both the social and professional life easy. The entire theme of this report revolves around finding the definition and aspects that makes an individual culturally capable. As per the reference of the video is concerned, that can be considered as an instance of creating safe space under critical cultural situation as well as used as a guideline to learn the tactics of being confident.
References
Bauer, F., Schriber, S., King, D. R., & Uzelac, B. (2016). Entrepreneurial integration skills: Knowing what you acquire to integrate it. In Mergers and Acquisitions, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (pp. 1-29). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Crowne, K. A. (2013). Cultural exposure, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence: An exploratory study. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 13(1), 5-22.
Fang, Y., Wade, M., Delios, A., & Beamish, P. W. (2013). An exploration of multinational enterprise knowledge resources and foreign subsidiary performance. Journal of World Business, 48(1), 30-38.
Hodgins, M., MacCurtain, S., & Mannix-McNamara, P. (2014). Workplace bullying and incivility: a systematic review of interventions. International Journal of Workplace Health Management, 7(1), 54-72.
Ibarra, H., Ely, R., & Kolb, D. (2013). Women rising: The unseen barriers. Harvard business review, 91(9), 60-66.
Kisfalvi, V., & Oliver, D. (2015). Creating and maintaining a safe space in experiential learning. Journal of Management Education, 39(6), 713-740.
Livermore, D. (2015). Leading with cultural intelligence: The real secret to success. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Mae, B., Cortez, D., & Preiss, R. W. (2013). Safe spaces, difficult dialogues, and critical thinking. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 7(2), 5.
Malek, M. A., & Budhwar, P. (2013). Cultural intelligence as a predictor of expatriate adjustment and performance in Malaysia. Journal of world business, 48(2), 222-231.
Roberson, Q., Holmes IV, O., & Perry, J. L. (2017). Transforming research on diversity and firm performance: A dynamic capabilities perspective. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 189-216.
Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., & Thorsteinsson, E. B. (2013). Increasing emotional intelligence through training: Current status and future directions. International Journal of Emotional Education, 5(1), 56.
www.imdb.com (2018). Friends (TV Series 1994–2004). [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2018].
Yitmen, I. (2013). Organizational cultural intelligence: A competitive capability for strategic alliances in the international construction industry. Project Management Journal, 44(4), 5-25.
Zeng, Y., Shenkar, O., Lee, S. H., & Song, S. (2013). Cultural differences, MNE learning abilities, and the effect of experience on subsidiary mortality in a dissimilar culture: Evidence from Korean MNEs. Journal of International Business Studies, 44(1), 42-65.
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