Oscar van Weerdenburg
Global organisations now run on teams whose members were trained in different assumptions about authority, conflict, and time. Most of the friction in cross-border deals, integrations, and matrixed reporting lines is not strategic, it is cultural, and leaders rarely have a vocabulary for it. The cost shows up in failed M&A, stalled global rollouts, and senior hires who underperform once they cross a border.
Oscar van Weerdenburg helps multinational organisations turn cultural difference into a measurable team and leadership capability, drawing on the Intercultural Readiness Check he co-developed from 15 years of research with around 30,000 respondents.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Oscar van Weerdenburg
- He brings a published, evidence-based diagnostic. The Intercultural Readiness Check, co-developed with Ursula Brinkmann and built on a dataset of roughly 30,000 international respondents, lets leaders move from impression to assessment.
- He is part of the Trompenaars lineage. His work began with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam in 1992, and his frameworks sit inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than alongside it.
- His M&A and integration track record is operational. He has been brought into post-deal integration work at major European and global firms to handle the cultural friction that derails synergy targets.
- He teaches inside INSEAD Executive Education and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, so the same content runs in front of senior leaders before it reaches their teams.
- His delivery is Anglo-Dutch in register: direct, often dryly funny, low on jargon. Buyers report sessions that are usable on Monday morning, not just well-received in the room.
Biography highlights
- Co-author, Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), with Ursula Brinkmann.
- Co-founder and Managing Director, Intercultural Business Improvement (IBI), founded 1996.
- Co-creator of the Intercultural Readiness Check, drawn from a 15-year research programme of roughly 30,000 respondents.
- Visiting professor, INSEAD Executive Education; former lecturer at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management.
- Long-standing partner in the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network, with collaboration with Fons Trompenaars dating to 1992.
- Lecturer of the Year 2008, Chalmers Professional Education.
Biography
Most cross-border failures inside multinationals are not strategic. They are cultural. Synergy targets in M&A slip, global rollouts stall, and senior hires struggle because the assumptions people carry about hierarchy, conflict, and time were never made visible. That is the territory Oscar van Weerdenburg has worked in for more than three decades.
He began this work in 1992 with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam, the partnership that became the foundation of modern intercultural management consulting. In 1996 he co-founded Intercultural Business Improvement with the psychologist Ursula Brinkmann. Together they built the Intercultural Readiness Check, a diagnostic drawn from a fifteen-year research programme of roughly thirty thousand respondents across four continents and published as Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
The IRC is what separates his practice from consulting impressionism. It gives leaders a measurable read on four competences that predict whether their teams can actually work across cultures, and it sits inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than competing with it. He teaches the underlying material on INSEAD Executive Education programmes and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, with a client list that includes Shell, HSBC, Qantas, BASF, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs.
What buyers tend to value is the operational edge. He has been brought into post-merger integrations and global team builds where cultural friction was already costing money, and he leaves leaders with vocabulary and a diagnostic, not abstractions. Chalmers Professional Education named him Lecturer of the Year in 2008 for the same reason: the room walks out with something usable.
Key speaking topics
- Cultural intelligence as a measurable capability
- Leading multicultural and global teams
- Cultural integration in mergers and acquisitions
- International negotiation
- Strategic dilemmas in global business
- Cross-cultural leadership development
- The Intercultural Readiness Check as a leadership diagnostic
Ideal for
- CHROs and global L&D leads building intercultural capability across regions
- M&A integration leads and post-deal sponsors handling cultural fit and synergy execution
- Global team leaders, country heads, and matrixed senior managers with cross-border accountability
- Executive education and leadership programme directors at multinationals
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for the cultural assumptions that drive most cross-border friction
- Familiarity with the four intercultural competences measured by the IRC and how to apply them
- A clearer read on where their own team or deal is most exposed to cultural breakdown
- Practical moves for international negotiation, integration, and global team design they can use the following week