Determination of intercultural manager characteristics at international chain hotels in Turkey

11 ABSTRACT Within the rapidly changing external environments by globalization process, organizations have taken places in international market on a large scale. International managers who are assigned in companies operating in cross-border confront different environmental factors as legal, cultural, economical, technological and physical that are unfamiliar to them. It is seen that among those factors cultural one is the strongest power effecting the success of any organization. The performance of international manager is important not only in managing different environmental conditions but also in managing multicultural workforce. It's known that several managers in international context leave their duty before they complete it because of not being able to adjust to foreign environment, to foreign job context, to foreign people. This early return means high costs for organizations. To avoid those costs, the managers assigned in a different culture of their own should have managerial characteristics like cultural sensitivity, flexibility, openness, international experience, effective communication and interpersonal skills. For having these characteristics or developing these characteristics, international managers need to attend to training programs. This study aims to present the aspects of diversity management, and managerial characteristics and skills of intercultural managers assigned in international chain hotels in Turkey regarding their training, selection and adjustment processes. Due to this aim, the data provided by questionnare form which are filled by expatriates/international managers at international chain hotels in Turkey were analized by using the descrbtive statistics. The results/findings show that host country managers (Turkish managers) are commonly assigned instead of foreign managers. Moreover, they see as social and- interpersonal attributes more important than techinical attributes. Beside this, international experience, second language studies, travel, international management studies, cultural diversity workshops, foreign country overviews and increasing international workforce training activities are considered more important. However, nearly one-third of those managers received training before their assignments.