Some issues about Intercultural Management, after my own experience:

It has become quite common to see multinational companies spread all around the globe.
Their managers then have to travel to the various subsidiaries, which often implies to settle for several months in a foreign country.
This usually helps them to understand the local way of life.
Now, a new interesting fact that occured at the end of the nineties was that the workers could also come from a third country.
For example, I remember working in Duesseldorf (Germany) for an American company (I am French).
There were lots of intercultural issues :

• Muslims needed some meeting room to pray and would just not agree when it was refused
• Latin or French people eventual anger (it was a stressing project) would just be mistaken by the Nordic or the American whose feelings are less apparent
• American engineers would not integrate and usually stayed together from the breakfast to the fast food

Hence the real need for intercultural management. Here's a list of rules concerning this issue, please, /msg mirko if you want some specific point to be added, modified or eventually removed :

1. Always have managers with the broadest possible cultural experience
2. Train your workers to the local language
3. Train the local workers to the home-company language (sometimes some collegues would speak French, Arabic and German... but not English)
4. Make the workers discover the local food. Food is good because it gathers people.
5. Switch to specific national themes in the corporate restaurant, an eventual exposition about the given theme would be a plus

But you can't:

1. Melt all the co-worker in the same cultural pot...
2. especially if it is not compliant with the local culture
3. Randomly mix nationalities in a project, especially if its deadlines are tight
4. Have a national preference and put the guy with the best negotiation skills on top of the hierarchy tree instead of just taking his technical skills into account.

I am now living in Switzerland. This 6 million people country is amazing as it gathers 3 different cultures: French, German and Italian. Most of my co-workers fluently speak any of these 3 languages, plus English. Guess why it is a good place to work ?