CULTURAL AGILITY COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK

Phuoc D. Nguyen

The issue and address the things which make us ‘lose balance’ to acquire cultural agility competency are lack of flexibility, adaptability, speed (speed is too fast or too slow), and time (do not know when to do that) in the cultural agility development. Sherehiy, Karwowski, and Layer (2007) found that “Despite the differences, all definitions of ‘‘agility’’ emphasize the speed and flexibility as the primary attributes of an agile organization.” (as cited in Gunasekaran, 1999; Sharifi and Zhang, 1999; Yusuf et al., 1999)… “As the brief overview of the agility definitions shows, this concept comprised both characteristics of adaptability and flexibility.” (p. 446). Balance loss usually occurs in the early stage of international assignments when global leaders are missing training and self-training on twelve key competencies of Caligiuri’s (2012) Cultural Agility Competency Framework including competencies affecting behavioral responses (level 2) and nine cross-cultural competencies affecting the success of culturally agile professionals (level 1). Additionally, psychological instability; motivation, and experience missing are also the main causes. The output of the cultural agility process is the success in cross-cultural tasks, jobs, and roles (level 3). Furthermore, the lack of flexibility in cultural adaptation, cultural minimization, and cultural integration process also caused balance loss.

Caligiuri’s (2012) indicates “inattention to the effect of culture will be detrimental to the outcome. Similarly, leveraging cultural adaptation at the wrong time can result in professionals’ overinterpreting behaviors on the basis of cultural expectations or nationality. And using cultural integration at the wrong time can run the risk of taking too much time to build consensus.” (p. 56). Caligiuri (2013) also indicates that T&D professionals with a high level of cultural agility know when to adapt, when to persuasively override, and when to integrate culturally diverse norms, practices, or perspectives. To avoid balance loss, we should harmonize factors of flexibility, adaptability, speed, and time; especially in cultural adaptation and throughout the level 2 process. Leaders equip their core competencies in level 1 including nine cross-cultural competencies affecting the success of culturally agile professionals; they should practice these competencies expertly, level 1 competencies are a base for level 2 competencies practice. Moreover, global leaders need to equip cultural intelligence, cultural sensitivity; competencies, capabilities, and attributes of leadership agility, organizational agility, and workforce agility; develop leadership, organizational, and workforce agility cultures to complement their cultural agility competencies and attributes.