Cultural Training Based on a Theory of Relational Ideology

This article describes the development of a theory-based cross-cultural training intervention, named relational ideology training, and reports a field experiment testing its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural collaborations. The intervention was based on our Protestant relational ideology (PRI) theory and cross-cultural research derived from this theory. An experiment compared the effectiveness of this novel intervention with the well established cultural assimilator training. Results show that compared to cultural assimilator training, relational ideology training is more effective in improving managers' task performance and affective adjustment in cross-cultural ventures. Important practical and theoretical benefits can be gained from integrating theoretical advances in cultural psychology into cross-cultural training. We discuss the implications of RI training as an empirically validated intervention for Americans living locally yet working globally.