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Training programs designed to enhance managerial effectiveness at cross‐cultural communication tend to be directed at specific target cultures. This paper argues that an etic approach, one based on universal variables that occur in every culture and that vary across cultures, comprises an important alternative. This paper reviews anthropological/sociolinguistic research on one universal variable, “politeness.” Politeness, or linguistic indirection used to show social consideration, is a crucial element of interpersonal communication in all human cultures, yet it has received little mention in the literature. Implications of politeness for managerial cross‐cultural communication are explored. The implications of a universalistic approach to cross‐cultural communication training are discussed.

Cross-cultural mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can generate the number of negative feelings and emotions among the survivors of the deal. These negative outcomes can range from lowered commitment, lack of productivity, and talent loss to the more serious work alienation. Hence, this chapter is an attempt to identify the employees’ level of commitment and their feelings of alienation in the post-M&A integration phase. Also, provided training has proven to be important in building employee commitment and mitigating the feelings of alienation, this studies the relationship of these psychological outcomes with the different kinds of training provided to them during post-M&A situations. The vast literature review studied revealed a significant relationship between employees’ perceived effectiveness of training and their level of commitment with the newly merged firm, while an inverse relationship was found with employees’ feelings of alienation. This chapter has crucial implications for researchers and practitioners.

The high failure rate for expatriate leaders is well documented. One major cause of these failures has been identified as the incongruencies in the perceptions of expatriate leaders and the host members that they manage. This article describes theory and research which suggests that a potential explanation for at least some of these perceptual incongruencies is that they are a result of culturally‐based attributional biases interacting with self‐serving and actor‐observer attributional biases. Although not all of the interactions of these biases result in incongruent perceptions, some interactions appear to be particularly prone to result in incongruent perceptions such as when leaders from highly individualistic and low context cultures interact with members from highly collectivistic and high context cultures. Suggestions for research and interventions designed to reduce incongruent attributions between leaders and members are discussed.