Leadership in Intercultural Dialogue: A Discursive Approach

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The emerging scholarship on intercultural dialogue has adopted a working definition of the term as promoting “an open and respectful exchange or interaction between individuals, groups, and organizations” (Ganesh & Holmes 2011, 81). The goal of such exchange is to develop a deeper understanding of diverse practices and to increase participation in making choices and decisions. This chapter contributes to the concept of intercultural dialogue by examining the construct of leadership as central in accomplishing the goal of fostering mutual respect, advancing dialogue, including different perspectives, and avoiding unilateral decision-making. In our case study, we examine leadership as a dialogic, skill-based phenomenon grounded in intercultural competence. More specifically, we analyze leadership from the perspective of how it may resolve some of the problems associated with working in intercultural groups in diverse organizational settings (Earley & Gibson 2002; Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale 1999; Earley & Mosakoski 2000; Ravlin, Thomas, & Ilsev, 2000).