Cultural Competence for Public Managers

Chapter 1

Why Cultural Competence Is Important

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut offfrom other lands, but a continent that joins them.

Sir Francis Bacon

Example 1.1: I’ll Do Exactly What You Ask Me to Do

Ana was the daughter of immigrant parents and was a first-generation college student. She competed for and was selected as Presidential Management Intern (PMI), which is now the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF). She went to work for the Comptroller’s Office in NASA, where she was a program analyst for the physics and astronomy missions. She and her immigrant parents came from a very family-oriented culture where the parents and all figures of ...