Multiculturalism from a cognitive perspective: Patterns and implications

Multiculturalism, the internal representation of multiple cultural meaning systems, has critical implications for global managers and multinational corporations (MNCs). Understanding multiculturalism is becoming increasingly important, given that the locations within which MNC activity resides, and the composition of the workforce even within a given location, are more diverse. Building on the connectionism perspective, we offer a novel cognitive conceptualization of multiculturalism that incorporates the individual’s multicultural cognitive content and structure. Based on that, we explain how specific sociocultural experiences interact with existing individual cognitions to form different patterns of multiculturalism. Specifically, we propose five stylized patterns – compartmentalization, integration, inclusion, convergence, and generalization – and explain how they are developed through specific sociocultural experiences. We discuss how different patterns of multiculturalism influence specific capabilities of multicultural MNC managers and their effectiveness in a variety of critical MNC tasks. We believe the cognitive connectionist perspective, which has not been brought before into international business discussions of culture and cultural capabilities, holds great promise for better understanding global managers’ capabilities and development.