Cross Cultural Knowledge Management

Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in international business, international management and cross-cultural management, and all concerned with the transfer of knowledge in the global economy. It will also be a valuable source of concepts and ideas to cross-cultural trainers and to various categories of practitioners within knowledge management and international human resource management. This book forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence. This perspective based on extensive research into the operations of four major international corporations, challenges traditional thinking by contending that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management. Key to this text are the four global case companies contrasting experiences, presented as insightful case studies about rarely observed aspects of firms cross-cultural communication behaviour.

Cross-cultural knowledge management, an elusive yet consequential phenomenon, is becoming an increasingly essential factor in organizational practice and policy in the era of globalization. In order to overcome culturally shaped blind spots in conducting research in different settings, this volume highlights how the structuring of roles, interests, and power among different organizational elements, such as teams, departments, and management hierarchies (each comprised of members from different intellectual and professional backgrounds), generates various paradoxes and tensions that bring into play a set of dynamics that have an impact on learning processes. In this context, such questions often arise: How is knowledge shared in the multicultural organization? What problems and issues emerge? How do different mentalities affect people’s responses to new knowledge and new ideas? How can knowledge-sharing processes be improved? Under which conditions do ideas generated by units or groups of different cultural traditions have a chance of being heard and implemented? Such questions translate into an investigation of potential managerial dilemmas that occur when different but equally valid choices create tensions in decision making. The authors draw from experiences working with a wide variety of organizations, and insights from such fields as sociology and psychology, to shed new light on the dynamics of knowledge management in the multicultural enterprise. In so doing, they help to identify both obstacles to successful communication and opportunities to inspire creativity and foster collaboration. The authors note that in order to enable organizations to transfer knowledge effectively, mechanisms for dispute settlement, mediation of cultural conflict, and enforcing agreements need to be in place.

Knowledge has become increasingly complex and important for organizations. Despite the growing recognition of the factors that enable knowledge management in organizations, our understanding about the unique cross-cultural challenges is rather limited. In particular, how cultural differences influence people’s participation in knowledge management activities still remains unclear. By conducting qualitative case studies and analytic hierarchical process (AHP) with multinational firms in Brazil and China, this book addresses the broader issue of cultural influences on knowledge management. Specific emphasis has been put on their indigenous cultural norms, including guanxi, face and jeitinho and the impacts they have on knowledge sharing. Drawing on an integrative knowledge management model, the results from AHP analysis reveal how some cultural-specific factors related to people, process and knowledge can affect the effectiveness of socialization, externalization and internalization processes in a production context. The book will be useful to both management academics and business practitioners. While academics will gain insight into the intricacies of knowledge sharing activities in production organizations, managers will find some useful conceptual tools to resolve the challenges of knowledge management in a cross-cultural context.

Knowledge, as intellectual capital in organizations, is one of the most valuable resources in the global economy; yet knowledge management research has been largely contained both within organizational boundaries and from the perspective of the West (in particular the United States). Here, the views of a diverse range of well-known academic researchers, industry leaders, and public policy experts have been brought together to show how knowledge and knowledge management perspectives vary across different cultures, in different contexts, using different processes for different purposes.

This book serves as a comprehensive, practical, and workshop-based program that facilitates change agents to help organizations and people develop cross cultural skills and global competence. It is grounded in the most rigorous and relevant theories, research, and learning methods and makes them easily accessible and fun to apply.

Academics worldwide need empirically developed, concise ideas to make their cross-cultural teams and organizations productive. This invaluable reference tool provides an essential resource for academics to develop their understanding and professional practice in working across cultural boundaries. It considers the fundamental theories and frameworks of cross-cultural management and deepens our understanding of how they can be applied to management knowledge. Managers, researchers, students, HRM practitioners, and specialists in international business and cross-cultural affairs, will find this book a valuable reference source. Chapters suggest how frameworks can be further developed and how managers and employees can put them to use so as to build cross-cultural understanding and productive cross-functional teams.

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.

ÔPrimecz, Romani, and Sackmann provide managers and educators with a powerful framework that goes beyond simple categorization of national and cultural differences in business. Their framework of negotiated meaning systems, and the rich cases that illustrate the Òin-the-momentÓ experiences of global managers as they conduct business in culturally unfamiliar milieus provide managers and educators with a powerful tool for developing global managerial skills. This is a book every global manager and cross-cultural educator should have on his or her bookshelf.Õ Ð Mark E. Mendenhall, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, US ÔThis is a unique, alternative view of culture that has both practical and theoretical significance. The creative analysis of cases from around the world moves the field beyond the sophisticated stereotyping that can result from relying solely on cultural value dimensions to decode interactions. The cases address significant cross-cultural issues, providing useful lessons and richer perspectives on culture.Õ Ð Joyce Osland, San JosŽ State University, US ÔThis book is an excellent collection of practical and useful cases in cross-cultural management, with some that are very different from what we would call ÒtraditionalÓ cases in cross-cultural management. They are excellent teaching material with an introduction and a conclusion that show students and practitioners how meanings are negotiated in diverse and complex cross-cultural situations.Õ Ð Marie-Therese Claes, Louvain School of Management, Belgium ÔA fascinating book for both the diversity of cultures that are touched upon (from Asia and Africa to Europe and America) and the cultural analyses that are made of various management situations resulting from the transfer of management techniques across countries or the encountering of those embedded in different cultures.Õ Ð Philippe dÕIribarne, CNRS, France ÔA group of multidisciplinary authors from various countries and cultures bring rich experience to this volume. The focus on real-life situations offers a fresh perspective on culture in organizations and management through in-depth case studies including both academic and pedagogical sides. It addresses multi-level cross-cultural issues of international strategic importance for globalizing workplaces. This insightful book is excellent reading for practitioners as well as scholars and students interested in applications in the field of cross-cultural management.Õ Ð Cordula Barzantny, Toulouse Business School, France ÔThis volume offers an insightful introduction to qualitative field research aiming to understand the dynamics in intercultural business interactions. Based on the findings provided in ten rich cases from Asia, Europe, North Africa, USA and Latin America, the editors also propose strategies for more effective collaboration in challenging multiple-cultures contexts. The authors and editors have succeeded in transforming the field studies into cases that are stimulating and thought provoking readings, both for practitioners and students of cross-cultural management.Õ Ð Anne-Marie S¿derberg, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Based on the view that culture is dynamic and negotiated between actors, this groundbreaking book contains a collection of ten cases on cross-cultural management in practice. The cases draw on field research revealing challenges and insights from working across nations and cultures. Each case provides recommendations for practitioners that are developed into a framework for effective intercultural interactions as well as offering illustrations and insights on how to handle actual cross-cultural issues. This enriching book covers various topics including international collaborations across and within multinational companies, organizational culture in international joint ventures and knowledge transfer. Based on empirical fieldwork and qualitative analyses, this path-breaking book will appeal to graduate and postgraduate students in international management as well as practitioners.