Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures

Drawing on research from 30,000 individuals and their practical experience as intercultural management consultants, the authors provide insights into the broader landscape of intercultural management through their exploration of 4 competencies: Intercultural Sensitivity, Intercultural Communication, Building Commitment and Managing Uncertainty.

Ursula Brinkmann, Ph.D., and Oscar van Weerdenburg are Managing Directors of the international consulting firm Intercultural Business Improvement. Together they developed the Intercultural Readiness Check, one of the world’s leading cultural assessment tools, which is licensed by companies, HR professionals and universities around the world.

Ursula Brinkmann worked with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen before co-founding Intercultural Business Improvement. She combines her work as intercultural coach and cross-cultural psychologist to ensure that the Intercultural Readiness Check keeps bringing value to clients.

As an intercultural consultant for executive and management intercultural programmes, Oscar van Weerdenburg works with private, corporate and company clients of Intercultural Business Improvement, and with the company’s licensees in five continents. He has held over a 1,000 workshops and presentations multinational organisations on successfully managing cultural differences, and is one of the most frequently invited guest speakers on cultural issues at international corporate conferences.