Making Sense of Intercultural Collaboration

Author(s): Allan Bird and Joyce S. Osland

Source: International Studies of Management & Organization , Winter, 2005/2006, Vol.
35, No. 4, Cultural Metaphors Paradoxes, and Cross-Cultural Dimensions (Winter,
2005/2006), pp. 115-132
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40397648

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Int. Studies ofMgt. & Org., vol. 35, no. 4, Winter 2005-6, pp. 115-132.
© 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 0020-8825 / 2006 $9.50 + 0.00.

Allan Bird and Joyce S. Osland

Making Sense of
Intercultural Collaboration

Abstract: The rise of globalization is accompanied by an increase in alliances

and collaboration. While firms are gaining in expertise and cultural sensitivity,
some initiatives founder as people fail to fully consider culture's impact. We
adopt a cultural sense-making approach to intercultural collaboration, pre-
senting a framework for analyzing cultural differences - value dimensions and
communication styles rarely compiled in one location. Using these concepts,
we explain cultural barriers to trust, a key component in collaboration, and
demonstrate how cultural sense making is useful in analyzing intercultural
situations. Fourteen strategies to help managers collaborate more effectively
across cultures follow.

Some years ago, several French and German managers met to discuss a joint
venture. After spending the morning identifying key issues and concerns, they
developed an agenda to guide further discussions and adjourned for lunch.
Over lunch, a French manager commented on the beautiful weather and sug-
gested that the group take the afternoon off and head out to a local soccer

Allan Bird is on the board of directors and is a research associate of the IGB
Network Company, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan. He is a founding member of the Interna-
tional Organizations Network (ION), and the Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professor
of Japanese Studies in the College of Business Administration at the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, One University Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499 (tel.:
314-516-6286; fax: 314-516-6420; e-mail: abird@umsl.edu). Joyce S. Osland is on
the board of directors of Universidad Tomas More, Managua, Nicaragua. She is a
founding member of the International Organizations Network (ION) and professor of
management in the College of Business, San Jose State University, One Washington
Square, San Jose, CA 95192-0070 (tel.: 408-924-3583; fax: 408-924-3555; e-mail:
oslandj@cob.sjsu.edu).
115

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1 16 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

match. The Germans declined, and so the group returned to the office. The
accomplishments of the morning soon disappeared as the French managers
raised one concern after another. By the end of the day, both groups left with
serious doubts about the joint venture's prospects. In subsequent interviews, the
German managers expressed frustration with the slow rate of progress. They
could not understand why the French were being so difficult. The French said
they could not develop a good rapport with the Germans and were reluctant
to move things forward until they did. Both sides saw a problem, but neither
could identify the root cause.
Their difficulties point out the challenges of working across national cul-
tures, providing insights into the impact of national culture on collaboration.
French managers often seek to establish trust relationships through participa-
tion in "illicit" acts that serve to bind participants in a shared transgression.
The suggestion to take the afternoon off was one such offer. Called complicité,
participation signals a willingness to share a secret indiscretion, thereby ty-
ing people together. The French saw German rejection as indicating a lack
of commitment to the relationship. But the Germans were committed to the
relationship, something they signaled by going back to the office.
The need to establish trust in order to develop a stable relationship is
universal. The meaning of trust and the ways in which it is established vary
across cultures. Therefore, developing trust is an issue that has to be resolved
in any multicultural collaboration. If sources of conflicts can be identified, then
it may be possible to resolve them. Once the German and French managers
understood the problem and their differing approaches to establishing trust,
they were able to reduce frustration and establish trusting relationships. These
relationships became the foundation for negotiations and eventual establish-
ment of a joint venture.
It can be difficult to identify sources of conflict in cross-cultural interac-
tions, because beliefs, attitudes, and norms are often unconscious. Trigger
events jerk people out of routines and force them to make sense of intercultural
events they do not understand (Osland and Bird 2000). Cultural conflicts in
collaborative efforts give rise to sense-making behavior as individuals notice
events and assign meaning to what they notice. Based on the sense they make
of the situation, they then construct a response (Weick 1995). Sense making
is ordered into cognitive structures commonly referred to as "schémas," and
the behavioral responses they elicit are "scripts" (Gioia and Poole 1984).
When people perceive a situation as familiar - negotiating a business deal,
for example - they match that to past experience and call up the appropriate
schema and script. This process may operate on apparent "autopilot" as people
negotiate the normal routines of life (Weick 1995).
Over time, schémas and scripts become so deeply embedded that they may

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 1 1 7

be applied unthinkingly to situations that do not fit with past experience so

that the German managers treat their negotiations with the French as though
the French were German and vice versa. When scripts and schémas are in-
correctly applied, subsequent events may be viewed as bad and the behavior
of others as wrong, because they violate expectations and norms associated
with that script and schema (Storti 1990). However, expectations and norms
are difficult to recognize, because they are built into assumptions about "how
the world works," so that when people search for the source of the problem,
cultural assumptions often fall below their perception radar.
Previous research on trust in international settings has examined cultural in-
fluences and cultural variation (cf., Doney, Cannon, and Mullen 1998; Whitener
and Stahl 2004); however, the role and impact of intercultural sense-making
processes has not been examined. Consequently, relatively little is understood
about ways in which trust in intercultural collaboration is affected by the
sense-making behaviors of individual actors in the collaborative endeavor. Our
objective is to delineate a sense-making model that will explain the processes
through which trust can be developed in intercultural collaboration.
In the following sections, we begin by setting the context for intercultural
collaboration, present a framework of cultural dimensions and communication
styles that can be used to decode cultural behavior, explain the role of trust
in collaboration, and explicate the cultural barriers to trust. We conclude by
applying the cultural sense-making model to intercultural collaboration and
presenting strategies for practitioners.

The context of intercultural collaboration

The boundary between companies and their customers and suppliers is

becoming increasingly blurred. For instance, as companies seek to estab-
lish seamless supply chains from raw materials to end users, they find it
necessary to collaborate with suppliers and customers in ways that make
company boundaries less important and more permeable. Dictionaries offer
two definitions of collaboration that fit this new type of global work: "(1) to
work jointly with others; and (2) to cooperate with an agency or instrumen-
tality with which one is not immediately connected" (Webster's Eleventh
Collegiate Dictionary, 2005). As businesses have fewer arms-length rela-
tions with buyers, suppliers, competitors, and governments, collaborative
skills become more valuable.
Intercultural collaboration is found in a wide variety of venues: alliances
between firms, government-business partnerships, joint ventures, R&D proj-
ects, buyer-supplier relationships, distributorships, marketing partnerships,
virtual teams, and cross-cultural teams. In these instances, collaboration often

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1 18 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

takes the form of information exchange, task coordination, low-level surveil-

lance, and monitoring of operations.
Much business writing focuses on managing relationships between orga-
nizations rather than on the work itself, which is where collaboration actually
takes place. For example, how does collaboration take place when representa-
tives from U.S. software producers and Japanese consumer electronics firms try
to agree on new Linux standards for computers, cellular phones, and personal
digital assistants? We hone in on the role culture plays when people in these
situations sit down to collaborate.

Pre-sense-making

In our opening vignette, the French and Germans had different expectations about
how to collaborate. When these expectations were not met, their subsequent
attributions about the other culture were colored by their unconscious negative
emotional reaction. Storti (1990) identified a process that explains why some
people are better working through intercultural situations than others (see Figure
1). It begins with the expectation that others will be like us, but they are not - and
so a cultural incident occurs. At this point, people either withdraw, often making
a false attribution about the cause of their discomfort, or they make an effort to
put aside their emotional reaction and think about the incident - "What's going
on here?" In so doing, they become aware of their reaction and look for its cause,
which makes the reaction subside, allowing them to objectively observe the situ-
ation and develop culturally appropriate expectations.

Cultural frameworks and sophisticated stereotypes

Cultural values are usually framed as bipolar continua (e.g., Hofstede 1980;
Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961 ; Schwartz 1992; Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner 2004), as shown in Table 1 . These dimensions were developed to yield
greater cultural understanding and allow for cross-cultural comparisons. Table
1 also contains communication-style differences used to compare cultures
(Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey 1988; Hall 1976; Ting-Toomey 1999). These
values and communication styles serve as building blocks in cultural training
and are used to avoid cultural misunderstandings.
The dimensions in Table 1 are helpful tools, but they cannot explain
everything about the complex topic of culture. They provide an etic perspec-
tive - that is, an outsider view that compares different cultures on dimensions
that apply to all of them. In contrast, an ernie perspective provides an insider
view on one culture within its boundaries. Individual variance and context
also make cultural behavior less predictable.

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 119

Figure 1. The process of cultural adjustment

Source: Adapted from Storti (1990, 61-62).

When these dimensions are used to reduce complex cultures to a shorth

description applied to all people from a particular culture, we call this so
ticated stereotyping (Osland and Bird 2000). Cultural stereotypes can be h
ful provided we acknowledge their limitations. They are more beneficial,
example, in making comparisons between cultures than in understanding
wide variations of behavior within a single culture. For example, France r
high on power distance, high on uncertainty avoidance, high on individuali
and moderately low on masculinity. This contrasts with Germany, which s
moderately low on power distance, moderately high on uncertainty avoidan
high on individualism, and moderately high on masculinity. Knowledg
these differences could have helped the French and Germans anticipate p
tial problem areas before they interacted. The high power distance scores
France contrast with the moderately low scores for Germany. Consequen
it should not be surprising that the French were annoyed by the German
deliberative decision-making process (Hall and Hall 1990).
Having explored the context of intercultural collaboration, we then dis
cussed ways in which sense-making behaviors and cultural variations may h
der the development of trust in intercultural collaboration. In the next sec
we explore the concept of trust and its role in intercultural collaboration

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120 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

Table 1
Dimensions of cultural values

Environment

How individuals view and relate to the people, objects, and issues in their
sphere of influence

Control Harmony Constraint

Internal locus of External local of control
control

Trustworthy human Untrustworthy human

nature nature
Mutable human Immutable human nature
nature

Time

How individuals perceive the nature of time and its use

Single-focus Multi-focus
Fixed Fluid

Past Present Future

Space
How individuals demarcate the
Private Public

Individualism

How individuals define their identity

Individualistic Collectivism

Achievement Ascription
Universalistic Particularistic

Power

How individuals view differential power relationships

Hierarchy Equality

Competitiveness
How individuals are motivated in relat
Competitive Cooperative
Structure

How individuals approach change, risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty

Order Flexibility

Tight Loose

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 121

Action

How individuais conceptualize actions and interactions

Being Doing
Relationship Task

Thinking
How individuals conceptualize
Deductive Inductive

Linear Systemic

Communication

How individuals express themselves

High context Low context
Direct Indirect

Expressive Instrumental
Neutral Affective

Formal Informal

Self-effacement Self-enhancement

Status-oriented Person-oriented

Elaborate Exacting Succinct

The role of trust in intercultural collaboration

Trust is defined as "the confident expectation that, in a situation relevant to

the trustor, another party (the trustee) will act in the trustor's best interest, and
the willingness to rely on and be vulnerable to the trustee" (Huff and Kelly
1999; Whitener and Stahl 2004). All exchange relationships revolve around
trust (Morgan and Hunt 1994), which is a major factor in forming and imple-
menting various forms of cooperative alliances among firms (Das and Teng
1998; Zaheer, McEvily, and Perrone 1998). The creation of trust depends on
two factors: the individual's propensity to trust and the perception of the other
party's trustworthiness, which can be defined as competence, benevolence,
and integrity (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman 1995).
Cultures, as well as individuals, vary in their propensity to trust. Accord-
ing to research, U.S. managers indicated higher trust than managers from
other regions (Harnett and Cummings 1980). Furthermore, not all cultures
respond positively to the same aspects of trustworthiness in their managers
(Whitener et al. 2000).

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122 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

Numerous cultural dimensions influence the creation and perception of trust

in intercultural collaboration. One's basic view of humans as either trustworthy
or untrustworthy (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961) relates to propensity to
trust. People from cultures that view humans as basically untrustworthy take
longer to develop trust in partners. Similarly, cultures that are relationship
oriented rather than task oriented view relationship building as a necessary
precursor to trust and the first order of business. Task cultures believe that
trust is developed from observing a person's performance over time. Another
cultural difference that can affect trust is the source of truth - how a group
seeks the "right" answer (e.g., from a scientific test, law, expert, tradition, or
trial and error). People from cultures that rely on tradition may find it difficult
to trust people from cultures that find truth in scientific fact.
Collectivists are more likely to trust in-group members than out-group
members; they will be more cautious and require more time to develop trust
in out-group members. Once developed, trust on the part of collectivists
tends to be long lasting (Hof stede 1980; Triandis 1995), and the stranger is
perceived to have been converted into a member of the in-group (Huff and
Kelly 1999). Individualists are more likely to trust strangers until they prove
themselves untrustworthy (ibid.). The latter contended that collectivists rely
more on societal norms, values, and opinions as a basis for trusting, as opposed
to individualists who rely more on their own beliefs and experiences. Some
cultures believe trust is best built personally, while other cultures may use
intermediaries who lend their own reputations for trustworthiness to parties
who do not know each other.
Conflict styles also play a factor in collaboration. Individualistic cultures
tend to see conflict as normal and expect to address it directly and attempt
to resolve the issue. In contrast, collectivists view open conflict as a threat
to harmony, recognizing that the conflict can break the relationship (Ting-
Toomey 1999).
Trust building is also influenced by differences in communication styles.
Whereas people from cultures with a direct style tend to say what they mean,
those with an indirect style hide what they mean, leaving it to the other party
to decode their words. People from face-saving cultures may avoid commu-
nicating their thoughts or their reservations in favor of protecting the other
person's dignity. People from direct cultures may misinterpret this as prevari-
cation or dishonesty. Finally, the neutral style of some cultures, characterized
by the suppression of emotion, may be misinterpreted as untrustworthy (e.g.,
the "inscrutable" Asian) by people from expressive cultures who are taught
to show their emotions. In turn, people with a neutral style may misinterpret
emotional displays as a lack of self-control.
Cultural differences constitute a barrier to trust, but they are not insuper-

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 123

able. Understanding, surfacing, and respecting these differences sets the stag
Then, partners must find a way to bridge the gap between the way they prefe
to collaborate and work by adopting the collaboration scripts of one of the
partners or by creating a new agreed-upon script. According to Ting-Toome
(1999, 224), individuals can learn to be perceived as trustworthy by:

1. Understanding cultural preferences - what trust and being trustworthy

mean in the other culture

2. Learning the expectations of trust-based behavior in that culture

3. Matching those expectations in a consistent, dependable way

In the next section, we present a three-step, iterative process model of in-

tercultural sense making and examine the model's ability to surface sources
of cultural conflict, which frequently act as obstacles to creating and main-
taining trust. We also explore the moderating effects of cultural values and
cultural history.

Making sense of cultural conflicts in collaboration

Successfully collaborating with people from other cultures entails sense mak-
ing, a process of deriving meaning from situations and their outcomes (Weick
1995). The process of sense making across cultures differs little from sense
making in a purely home-culture context. Where culture does have an impact
is in how easily the process is accomplished, because situations generally
unfold in one's own culture in a familiar way, and the resulting patterns of
interaction are so well established and so well learned that little thought is
required to apply them accurately.
Effective managers mindfully work through the sense-making process on
a daily basis. The cultural sense-making model is an extension of the basic
process of sense making (Weick 1995) that humans utilize in all contexts.
The basic distinctions between domestic and global contexts are increased
business complexity and increased cultural complexity (McCall and Hollen-
beck 2002), which significantly augment the difficulty level of accurate sense
making. Increases in business and cultural complexity present managers with
a wider variety of signals and cues to attend to, greater uncertainty regarding
interpretation and attribution, and ambiguity in terms of selecting appropri-
ate behavioral scripts. In short, effective sense making in an intercultural
collaborative context is more challenging and requires a different level of
knowledge and expertise.
When interactions involve people from other cultures, disagreements about
how to work together are likely to arise. As our French and German managers
discovered, identifying, understanding, and resolving these disagreements can

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124 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

be difficult. Cultural sense making is an effective way to address the problem

(see Figure 2). Cultural sense making is an ongoing process involving an
iterative cycle of sequential events - (1) framing the situation, (2) making
attributions, and (3) selecting a script - that is undergirded by constellations
of cultural values and cultural history.

Framing the situation

Sense making begins when a person identifies a situation and consciously

notices cues that provide information about the situation. In determining what
to attend to and what to ignore, a person "frames the situation." For example,
in a meeting with a Japanese colleague working for a U.S. firm, one might
consider characteristics such as the following:

• Prior events (On his previous visit to the U.S. head office, there had been
significant disagreement over next year's sales targets for Japan.)
• Nature of the relationship with head office staff (He is ten years older
than any of his U.S. counterparts, has been with the company more
than fifteen years, is well connected with many U.S. managers outside
the sales division, and attended a more prestigious U.S. university than
others in the sales division.)
• Specific topic under discussion (There is dissatisfaction with next year's
marketing budget for the Japan subsidiary.)
• Location of the interaction (The office of the VP for World Sales at U.S.
headquarters.)

Making attributions

The next step is attribution, a process in which cues are analyzed in order to
match the context with appropriate schema. The matching process is moderated
or influenced by a person's social identity (e.g., ethnic or religious background,
gender, social class, and organizational affiliation) and a person's history (e.g.,
experiences and chronology). A senior Chinese manager who fought against
the Japanese in World War II will make different assumptions about the situ-
ation and employ different schema when he meets with a Japanese manager
than will a junior Malaysian manager whose personal experience with Japan
is limited to automobiles, electronics, and sushi.

Selecting a script

Schema are cultural scripts that entail "a pattern of social interaction that is
characteristic of a particular cultural group" (Triandis 1984, 1364). They are

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 125

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Reporting on tasks completed?

• We develop expectations about a • We make attributions about the situation» Based on the frame
situation before entering it. These and about the "other based on the frame have made, we
expectations are based on past we build and the cues we perceive. us through the situ
experiences and on what we think we • Our attributions are influenced by our • The script we se
know about the situation. self-identity: our ethnicity, religion, social repertoire develope
• Upon first coming into the situation, we class, past experiences, etc. experiences.
take in the scene, scanning for relevant • Attributions about the "other" are • The selection of a
cues that confirm that our expectations influenced by our attitudes and beliefs our ability to draw
are correct. about their identity: their ethnicity, this situation and past experiences.
• Based on that initial scan, we quickly religion, social class, etc.
establish a frame for the situation.

Figure 2. The cultural sense-making process

accepted and appropriate ways of behaving, specifying certain patterns

interaction. From personal or vicarious experience, we learn how to sele
a schema. By watching and working with bosses, for example, we devel
scripts for how to act when we take on that role ourselves. We learn appro-
priate vocabulary and gestures that then elicit a fairly predictable response
from others.

The influence of cultural values

Schemas reflect an underlying hierarchy of cultural values. Just as in a car

game where one card may trump another depending on previous play a
the particular hand, however, the individual values in force and the order o
the hierarchy may shift from one context to another. For example, Mexica
direct reports working for U.S. managers who have a relaxed and casua
style and who openly share information and provide opportunities to make
independent decisions will learn specific scripts for managing in this fashio
The configuration of values embedded in this management style consists of
informality, openness, equality, and individualism - values that are at vari-
ance with some aspects of Mexican culture. On occasion, however, the
same U.S. managers may withhold information about a sensitive personn
situation because privacy, fairness, and legal concerns trump honesty a

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126 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUAS SA)

equality in this context. This trumping action explains why the constellation
of values related to specific schema is hierarchical (Osland and Bird 2000).
It also helps to explain why cultural understanding by the Mexican direct
reports may prove challenging.

The influence of cultural history

When making sense of schema, we may also find vestiges of cultural history
and tradition. Mindsets (Fisher 1997) inherited from previous generations
explain how history is remembered. For example, perceptions about Indone-
sia's colonial era may still have an impact upon schémas, particularly those
involving interactions with Westerners, even though that country gained its
independence generations ago.
Let us analyze our opening example using the sense-making model. When
the French managers considered developing this relationship with a new part-
ner (framing the situation), they (e.g., managers making attributions) opted
for acts of complicité (selecting schema). The dominant value underlying this
schema v/asfraternité (cultural value). In this context, fraternité is manifested
as a belief that those entering into an "illicit" act are joined together and share
something in common; thus, they should rely upon and trust one another. An
additional consideration was that many French like to take a slower approach
to entering partnerships, using the additional time to develop a rapport with
their new partners (relationship) than do the Germans, who prefer to get right
to work (task). The French preference to get to know the other party may be
especially true with potential German partners given the historically competi-
tive relationship between the two countries (cultural history). The French did
not explain why they wanted to go to the soccer match (indirection) and raised
objections rather than expressing their feelings about the lack of rapport (high
context) (Hall and Hall 1990). The Germans simply framed the situation dif-
ferently, made different attributions, and selected a different script.

A taxonomy of cultural knowledge

People pay attention to different stimuli and develop different types of

knowledge (Bird et al. 1993). Understanding the control mechanisms within
a culture, for instance, requires the acquisition of attributional knowledge,
namely, the awareness of situation-specific appropriate behavior, which is in
contrast to factual and conceptual knowledge. Factual knowledge consists of
general descriptions of behaviors and attitudes. For example, it is a fact that
Costa Ricans value courtesy and warm relationships, which are called simpatía
(Triandis et al. 1984). Conceptual knowledge consists of a culture's views

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 127

and values about central concerns, such as family orientation in Costa Ric
Books on culture often focus primarily on factual and conceptual knowle
Conceptual knowledge is an organizing tool, but it is not sufficient for t
cultural understanding. Knowing that Costa Ricans value simpatía doe
explain those occasions when they are not courteous and warm. For exam
why do work colleagues serruchar el piso ("saw the floor out from beneat
coworkers in order to discredit them? Factual and conceptual knowledge ab
Costa Rican culture cannot answer that question - only attributional know
edge can. The explanation is found in Costa Rica's cultural history, w
includes patrons who provided protection and looked out for the interest
their people in return for loyalty and service. Bosses often assume a sim
role so that direct reports treat them with respect and devote time and en
to ingratiating behaviors and jockeying for the favor of bosses who can gr
help their careers. Though interactions with colleagues appear collaborati
on the surface (and are genuinely so in many cases), some colleagues
each other as competitors more than collaborators. The norms for courte
and simpatía, however, drive competition underground, where it surface
back-stabbing comments made privately to the boss.
Frequently, knowledge about different cultures stays at the factual lev
and does not move on to the conceptual or attributional levels. One re
managers do not progress in their ability to work collaboratively with th
from other cultures is that they allow their cultural learning to plateau be
achieving sufficient levels of attributional knowledge.

Prescriptions for collaborating from a sense-making approach

Acquisition of cultural knowledge takes time and energy, and there are tra
offs to developing attributional knowledge. Also, it is not reasonable to ex
collaborators who frequently work globally to master each culture. Organ
ing the knowledge they acquire as situation-specific schémas can spee
cultural learning and prevent confusion and errors. Adopting a sense-ma
approach leads managers to 14 strategies for collaborating across cult
more effectively.

Framing the situation

1. Clearly identify expectations and analyze their basis. Because past

experiences influence expectations, a conscious effort to identify the
expectations and assumptions of each party can lead collaborators to
consider ways in which the current cross-cultural situation differs from
experiences and, thus, requires different expectations.

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128 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

2. Scan for cues that challenge expectations. When people enter situations,
they scan for cues that are consistent with past experiences to confirm
their expectations. Effective collaborators in cross-cultural situations
do the opposite. They search for cues that challenge expectations. Like
Sherlock Holmes in the Hound of the Baskersville, they seek cues that call
for adjusting the frame (e.g., to think in terms of looking for "the dog that
didn't bark").
3. Build joint frames. Rather than adjusting to the other person's frame or
imposing your own, collaborators should seek a frame that accommodates
all perspectives. For instance, elicit comments from everyone before moving
on to decisions about how to structure collaborative efforts.

4. Be prepared to modify your frame. When people work together to achieve

agreement on how to understand situations, misinterpretations are reduced.
If the frame does not fit, then the response will not either.

Making attributions

5. Monitor your attitude and mood. Fear or confusion - emotions that often
surface during initial intercultural interactions - can lead to attributions
about the other person as being untrustworthy. This can result in a self-
fulfilling prophecy.
6. Consider whether sophisticated stereotypes apply. Our expectations about
how people from other cultures will behave are informed by the stereotypes
we learn. However, they should be treated as "first, best guess" hypotheses
that are easily discarded as soon as cues indicate they do not apply in a
particular context with particular people.
7. Focus on the individual. Cross-cultural collaborative efforts do not
require people to work with an entire culture, only with a few persons.
Personality also plays a large role in social interactions. Attributions about
others must take into consideration more information than what culture they
belong to. Occupational status, gender, and religion, among other factors,
exert a strong influence. For example, knowing that a woman is Malaysian
may be less important in understanding her behavior than the fact that she is
a senior software engineer.
8. Build your knowledge and experience base so that you make more
accurate attributions. When you learn about different situations and the
ways that people respond to them, you increase your attributional accuracy.
In simpler terms, if one has grown up experiencing only oak trees, it is
difficult to distinguish among varieties of pine trees, palm trees, and so
on. Broader experience with different types of "trees" increases one's
attributional accuracy about them.
9. Suspend judgment. Collaborations often derail when people incorrectly

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 129

interpret the other party's actions. Trying to remain at the level of behavioral
description, rather than interpretation, and giving the other party the benefit
of the doubt are equally crucial in collaborations.
10. Share your attributions with the "other"; seek feedback. Feedback is
particularly important in cross-cultural collaboration, where identifying
the other's assumptions is problematic. Explaining one's own attributions
can also foster a greater willingness by others to share theirs. This strategy
and the two that follow involve sense giving (Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991),
whereby you actively seek to influence the way others understand the
situation.

Selecting a script

11. Make script selection explicit Explain to fellow collaborators why you
are doing things in a particular way - that is, what is your interpretation of
the situation, and why did you choose the response you did?
12. Seek common scripts. In any situation, there is a range of appropriate
scripts. With latitude in scripts, effective sense making includes seeking
out scripts that are likely to be more appropriate in the other culture. For
example, bowing is a common custom in many Asian cultures. However,
shaking hands is also quite common in the Asian business community. In
response to confusion about whether to bow or shake hands, many Asians
adopt a merged "slight bow and soft handshake." This script fits easily, even
though it might not be the ideal.
13. Build a repertoire of scripts through exploratory activities. We
recommend approaching learning about another culture like a scientist
who holds conscious stereotypes and hypotheses in order to test them.
Active experimentation speeds learning and gives direction to what is
learned.

14. One last recommendation - seek out cultural mentors (Osland 1995),
that is, people who possess attributional knowledge about cultures. Making
sense of a culture's internal logic and analyzing cultural situations is easiest
with the aid of a willing and knowledgeable associate. This can be done
effectively within collaborative teams by paying careful attention to member
composition and including one or more members known for their prior
accomplishments in successfully navigating cross-cultural issues.

Building organizational capability

We have emphasized intercultural collaboration at the individual level,

because we believe that is where most of the hard work is accomplished.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there is also an organizational

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130 ALLAN BIRD (JAPAN/USA) AND JOYCE OSLAND (NICARAGUA/USA)

component to effective intercultural collaboration. Individual managers can

and must be supported by institutional structure and mechanisms. Compa-
nies can help managers develop their skills at working through this process
by incorporating the model into corporate training programs, utilizing it in
coaching sessions, and using it to guide self-learning to reflect on intercul-
tural experiences in intercultural collaborative efforts.
Firms can also improve their organizational capability in handling collabo-
rations by developing global competences in their international workforce.
Training programs, 360 feedback (evaluations by superiors, peers, and direct
reports), cases on collaboration best practices and failures, coaching, simula-
tions, and incentives for acquiring and using these skills would enhance the
firm's competence in this area. At an even more basic level, hiring diverse em-
ployees and fostering networks across cultures would provide the familiarity
with other cultures needed to create a global mindset (Gupta and Govindarajan
2002) and lay the groundwork for collaboration skills.

Conclusion

This paper makes the following contributions to the literature. First, to set
the stage for our application of cultural sense making, we compiled a list of
cultural dimensions and communication styles (Table 1) that can be used to
compare and contrast cultures. Drawn from different academic disciplines
(anthropology, international management, and intercultural communication),
these dimensions and styles seldom appear in the same location. Second, after
considering the cultural differences in trust and trustworthiness, we examined
cultural barriers to trust that appear elsewhere in the literature. We concluded
this section with recommendations for bridging these differences in ways that
lead to being perceived as trustworthy by members of other cultures.
While knowledge of the cultural dimensions and communication styles
equips practitioners with essential knowledge and initial hypotheses and ex-
pectations about cultural behavior, alone they are not sufficient to guide them
through the shoals of intercultural collaborations. Thus, our third contribution
is to apply the cultural sense-making model to intercultural collaboration, so
that practitioners can better analyze and respond to the situations they con-
front. Finally, we concluded with practical strategies for using the cultural
sense-making model effectively.
In a world where borders and boundaries are blurred, and where the
demands of the marketplace call for collaboration within and across orga-
nizations, the ability of individual managers to make sense of collaborative
situations and to respond appropriately has become critical. Strategies for
cultural sense making are not just useful - they are essential.

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 MAKING SENSE OF INTERCULTURAL COLLABORATION 131

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