No part of this publication, including the cover design, may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by and means, whether electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, recording or photocopying, without prior permission or the publisher. Publication printed on ecological paper Illustration of front page: Detail of a replica of the monument to the ‘Combatants for Democracy and Freedom ’ during the Spanish Civil War, a metal abstraction of a fi ngerprint by artist Juanjo Novella. The original is located in Monte Artxanda, Bilbao. This photo was taken when the replica stood outside the Guggenheim Museum. © University of Deusto

Managers in a global business environment work with people who have different values, behavioral norms, and ways of perceiving reality. Team members bring their different national and professional backgrounds to the table, and suppliers and clients come from different corporate cultures. Consequently, intercultural competencies have become important for a wider range and larger number of people in business than ever before. In order to prepare students to become effective in the multiple cultural contexts they will face, business educators must clarify what constitutes intercultural competencies and how to develop them within the context of a business school classroom. In this paper we present the idea of learning to “negotiate reality ” as a core intercultural competence and we describe an approach we designed and used for developing this competence at an international business school in Europe. Zusammenfassung

Private Sector Development to carry out a survey of households and firms to assess the use of transport services, the distances, times and costs associated with such services, and the degree to which these were affected by mobility restrictions imposed in the context of closures during the intifada. Five hundred households (300 in the West Bank and 200 in the Gaza Strip) and 188 firms were surveyed in 29 different locations in the West Bank and 14 population centers in the Gaza Strip. Sample selection criteria included geographic location, poverty level, population size, and severity of closure. Individual survey respondents compared their transportation requirements for travel to public services, place of work, and shopping at the time of the survey in June 2001 relative to the period one year earlier, namely prior to the crisis when mobility restrictions were minimal. Firms compared travel times, costs, and damage to goods per shipment over the same reference period. The survey objective was to quantify the impact of transport distortions by assessing changes in the transportation costs of individuals and in the cost structures of firms. The sharp increase in the number of Israeli checkpoints and the delays at