What instruments and practices for the management of a multicultural staff? (Helena Karjalainen)

Nowadays, faced with the internationalisation and the reapproaching of different cultures in the working place, a new challenge seems to force itself upon the management of businesses and the direction of human resources to understand what are the strategies and management solutions suited to a multicultural environment - How to connect the interactions among cultures, cooperation and performance? What management instruments to get the maximum efficacy from staff made of different cultures? What role must be played first by the manager and then by the management of human resources in this process? This contribution tries to examine what management practices must be used for multicultural staff. To do this, we must offer the example of Prometheus, an international business present in around a hundred countries, representing 123 nationalities that has been able to solve the problem of the management of staff made of different cultures with policy and practices suited to the business environment. First of all, the article will touch on the conceptual and theoretical groundwork of the study of the case as well as on the methods that allowed the collection of the empiric data. It will show after that, the results of the research : the management practices of Prometheus that are located at various levels in the business and concern the organisation of the work of the staff, the management of the multicultural staff and the construction of a common business culture. Thirdly, the article will study in deep, the application field and the conditions of success of these practices, showing the two strong points of this management policy, to get to know British management flexibility and the role of business culture. This contribution will end at last, with the teachings of the Prometheus model. The example of the Prometheus management shows that the management success of multicultural staff is not due to case, but it is, rather, due to the degree of intervention of the direction of human resources. Various factors seem to contribute to management success, like structural layout ( almost ‘the adhocracy’) as also management aptitudes, that are strongly connected with the personality of the manager in question. Keywords: Direction of human resources, multicultural management, cultural differences, management practices, British management.