Cultural Agility

Book excerpt: CULTURAL AGILITY Succeeding in today’s global economy requires organizations to acquire, develop, and retain professionals who can operate effectively around the world, irrespective of country or culture. More than ever before, organizations need a pipeline of professionals who possess cultural agility—the ability to quickly, comfortably, and successfully work in cross-cultural and international environments. Filled with illustrative examples from a wide range of organizations, including the Peace Corps, the U.S. military, and many Fortune 500 companies, Cultural Agility offers business leaders and human resource professionals a step-by-step guide for creating and implementing highly effective, cutting-edge talent management practices to increase cross-cultural competence throughout their organizations. Validated through several years of her research and practice, Paula Caligiuri outlines the “Cultural Agility Competency Framework.” This framework sets the foundation for the strategic talent management practices organizations need to effectively build a pipeline of culturally agile professionals, such as how to attract, recruit, and select professionals with cultural agility or those with the greatest propensity to readily develop cultural agility. Cultural Agility also provides guidance for creating organizational cultures and HR systems to support the development of a workforce that is culturally agile. For example, international assignments are commonly enlisted as a means of developing global leaders, but these have proven to be only partially effective for building cultural agility. Caligiuri offers training and development practices that organizations can use in a learning system to continually build professionals’ cross-cultural competencies, including specific recommendations for designing truly developmental international assignments. This book is a must-have resource for human resource professionals and all business leaders who know that the key to their organizations’ success in today’s complex global economy is their culturally agile human talent.