APPENDIX A: FACILITATED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Following are the general questions used to interview the participants. This was not all- inclusive, however it provided a starting point. In most cases, the participants took control of the interview and guided the discussions in their respective interviews. This was done in an attempt to reduce bias during the data collection.

• What interactions do you have with other cultures in the course of your work? • Can you describe cultures you have worked with and describe them in context of the

geographic regions of the world? • How frequent are these interactions?

• Can you describe the prominence, or importance of the positions of the officials that you work with from other cultures?

• Have you noted any uniquely different aspects in military organizational intercultural interactions when comparing them with civilian interlocuters?

• How do you believe the persons from the other culture view you?

• When cultural differences are pronounced, what are the methods you use to overcome those differences? What is your coping strategy? Have you ever ran into differences that proved to be very difficult to reconcile?

• What are the indicators that someone differing from your culture has taken the time to gain a better understanding of your culture prior to meeting with you?

• Have you observed that when someone does take the time to gain more understanding of your culture, that it is helpful in making your interactions more efficient?

• Does knowledge of or attempts to use common phrases the other culture’s language “break the ice?”

• Do you recall any humorous awkward moments during interactions with other cultures. Did those moments result in better understanding between you and the other person?

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• When working with intercultural communication, have you observed problem setting occurring?

o That is – constructing the problem from the materials of problematic situations which are puzzling, troubling and uncertain…

• A contrast – what is more important, making the decision or defining the question? • How do you think identity and identification affects interactions in these environments?

(who people think they are in their context)

o Have you observed this shape what people enact and how they interpret events? • Do you find that retrospection or reflecting on past actions is helpful for people who

work in this environment?

o Given the military, NGO, corporate entities you have worked with, have you observed any with more focus than others in this area?

• Do you find the participants creating/enacting – to create structure such as taking undefined space, time and action to draw lines, establish categories and coin labels to create new features of the environment that did not exist before?

• Social – what is the value of socializing complex problems in the multicultural setting, vice keeping things at an individual level. Do you have any examples?

o Do you find building narrative accounts useful in helping you or others to understand what they think, organize their experiences and control and predict events and reduce complexity in the context of change management in

multicultural settings?

o Do you find there to be competing and complementing narratives, and discussions to sort them out occurring?

o Do these competing narratives develop into plausible stories that get preserved, retained or shared? Do you find the speakers themselves seeing these narratives to be "both individual and shared...an evolving product of conversations with them and with others".

• Ongoing… Do individuals simultaneously shape and react to the environments they face? o Do they project themselves onto this environment and observe the consequences

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o Do individuals deduce their identity from the behavior of others towards them, and also try to influence this behavior, creating a feedback mechanism? • Focused on and by extracted cues – we tend to focus on products more than process.

o Have you seen any examples where leaders in this multicultural setting observed key reference points and then were able to better adapt to evolving processes? o Have you been able to influence any of these processes?

o Have you found it useful to extract cues from the context to help you decide on what information is relevant and what explanations are acceptable? Do you observe these qualities in others?

o Do the extracted cues provide points of reference for linking ideas to broader networks of meaning and are 'simple, familiar structures that are seeds to develop a larger sense of what may be occurring."

• Do you find those you work with in the intercultural environment to favor plausibility (reasonable or probable) over accuracy (being correct or precise) in accounts of events and contexts? If so, why might this be the case? Can you give examples

• Some societies tend to operate with autonomy (as individuals) and have the expectation that others will also act in a similar manner. Other societies are much more collectivist in nature – they look for guidance from others.

o Have you seen examples where these two viewpoints collided? o How did the participants work through/resolve the issues?

o Were there any situations where individuals from the two different viewpoints could not get over the differences?

o Of the military, non-governmental, and corporate (business) leaders that you worked with, did any stand out as being more effective? If so, why?

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APPENDIX B: SELECTED MILITARY, GOVERNMENT AND NON-GOVERNMENT