What leads to cultural intelligence?

It is often easy to seewhen someonemakes a cultural blunder. For instance, during a business meeting at the Paris location of a United States multinational company, a visiting Turkish employee used an aggressive tone in his attempt to discuss the financial status of the companywith U.S. and French executives. The company had been performing poorly over the past few months and the employee not only highlighted the problem, but also criticized the executives who werehis superiors.What he failed to recognizeduring this interaction was that he not only insulted the executives by his tone and aggressiveness, but also embarrassed himself and them. He believed that he was making a positive impression on those at the meeting via his knowledge of the company; yet, his difficulty adjusting to the cultural setting and inability to interpret the cultural cues present actually created a negative impression. The situation became uncomfortable for the other people at the meeting. What could have been a productive dialog about the financial status of the company developed into an argumentative session, which ended abruptly without resolution. In another instance, during ameeting with people from all over the world at a German institution, an individual from the United States was eating an apple and drinking a large bottle of water while loudly discussing why she believed it was unfair that Business Horizons (2008) 51, 391—399