A Global View On Intercultural Management

Whatever their industry of origin, all companies are facing the same challenge to a greater or lesser degree: globalization. It is becoming more and more evident that companies need to plan ahead and anticipate coming developments if they are to be successful in the future. Today, it is crucial to establish a solid competitive position in the global arena. There is no doubt that a corporate culture that is open to innovation and shaped by global thinking, plays a key role in this context. A culture in which representatives of different countries und cultures can come together, anticipating and understanding the cultural challenges, creates the foundation of any international business. A global view on intercultural management will be the key to successfully doing business in diverse cultural environments.

Whatever their industry of origin, all companies are facing the same challenge to a greater or lesser degree: globalization. It is becoming more and more evident that companies need to plan ahead and anticipate coming developments if they are to be successful in the future. Today, it is crucial to establish a solid competitive position in the global arena. There is no doubt that a corporate culture that is open to innovation and shaped by global thinking, plays a key role in this context. A culture in which representatives of different countries und cultures can come together, anticipating and understanding the cultural challenges, creates the foundation of any international business. A global view on intercultural management will be the key to successfully doing business in diverse cultural environments.

All cultures appear to share the belief that they do things ‘correctly’, while others, until proven otherwise, are assumed to be ignorant or barbaric. When people from different cultures work together and cannot take shared meanings for granted, managers face serious challenges. An individual’s parsing of an experience and its meaning may vary according to several cultural scales – national, professional, industrial and local. Awareness of cultural differences and the willingness to view them as a positive are therefore crucial assets. This edited textbook sets itself apart from existing cross-cultural management texts by highlighting to the reader the need to avoid both ethnocentrism and the belief in the universality of his or her own values and ways of thinking: the success of international negotiations and intercultural management depends on such openness and acceptance of real differences. It encourages the development of ‘nomadic intelligence’ and the creative use of a culture’s resources, according to a symbolic anthropology perspective. Through the essays and case studies in the chapters, readers will become aware of the intercultural dimension of business activities and better understand how they affect work. Cross-Cultural Management will help interested parties – students of business management, international relations and other disciplines, and business managers and other professionals – develop their ability to interact, take action and give direction in an intercultural context.

This textbook explores the reasons for intercultural differences and their effects on the behavior of individuals and organizations within the context of management. The text embraces the presence of ambiguity and complexity and encourages critical thinking when it comes to intercultural relations in order to avoid ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice, as well as overly simplistic solutions. Integrating findings from management, but also the humanities and social sciences, as well as politics and popular culture, intercultural management is understood as a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary boundaries and includes questions around identity constructions, power relations, and ethics. This makes intercultural management a fascinating and rewarding subject to study. Throughout, the author encourages an analytical approach to intercultural management built upon strong methodological foundations, and draws on examples from a wide range of different contexts and cultures to help reflectively translate research and concepts into practice in a way that is lively and engaging. This textbook is essential reading for students taking university courses related to intercultural management. Lecturers can visit the companion website to access a Teaching Guide and PowerPoint slides that can be adapted and edited to suit teaching needs. Dirk Holtbrügge is Professor of International Management at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

Modern-day business leaders need to manage diverse global organisations and teams that work in international contexts. This text will assist organisations of all types to manage diversity and promote inclusion in their national and international operations and markets.

Conceived by Chris Grey as an antidote to conventional textbooks, each book in the ‘Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap’ series takes a core area of the curriculum and turns it on its head by providing a critical and sophisticated overview of the key issues and debates in an informal, conversational and often humorous way.

Any company operating across culturally different contexts has a need for intercultural management, whether the cultural differences are ""external"" (e.g. different regional cultures) or ""internal"" (e.g. differences in company culture). With the number of companies falling into this category, it is not surprising that intercultural management is an area of increasing importance to both academics and practitioners.

Modern-day business leaders need to manage diverse global organisations and teams that work in international contexts. This text will assist organisations of all types to manage diversity and promote inclusion in their national and international operations and markets.