How to Educate Multicultural Managers? The Example of Luxembourg

Abstract

This paper is the result of three different studies. The purpose of this study is to determine if the Luxembourgish trilingual education system prepares tricultural managers and in particular if it really educates the multicultural managers the country needs—considering the special cultural pattern following Hofstede et al. (Cultures and organizations. Software of the mind. Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival. McGraw Hill, 2010) and Schein (Organizational culture and leadership. Wiley, 2010). First, 154 questionnaires were collected to identify Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Second, 36 interviews were conducted to determine whether the multilingual education is a success story or a failure system. Third, a total of 46 interviews were conducted among four different categories of interviewees, namely: (1) Lux.Nat. (Luxembourgers with Luxembourgish Nationality), (2) Lux.Foreigner (foreigners who reside in Luxembourg), (3) cross-borderers (people who come to work in Luxembourg every day from Germany, France, and Belgium), and (4) the rest of the world (World). The following results were found: Lux.Nat. fervently defend trilingualism, in contrast to respondents of other nationalities, who are more critical about the trilingual education system’s effectiveness. Yet, the main subjects mentioned are ‘integration not separation of the population’, ‘high failure rate’, ‘insufficient command of English’ and ‘lack of talent’. Despite the contradictory results about the transmission of culture via language, respondents are in favor of the multilingual and multicultural approach, where all three official languages find their justification: Luxembourgish, French, and German. Some interviews are reprinted; discussion, conclusion, and future research follow.