Cross Cultural Management (BFT 314/3)

This path-breaking book liberates management thinking from a century of Western subjugation. It is a comparative exposition of culture and management styles in India, Japan, China and major Western countries. There is a need to protect and sustain each country s identity and positive strengths in values while interlinking global business with cross cultural empathy. The book explores profiles of culture-management axis through secondary literature study in various languages of the East, empirical research conducted with nearly one thousand managers and 375 organizations in India. The effective management in the next millennium will be mission-based strategic integration of the team, combined with people-sensitive approach. In spite of growth of hi-tech, the emotional human issues will dominate the coming decades. Happiness and health in institutions will largely depend on successive sacrifice of greed and possessiveness in creation of wealth for human development. The meltdown in the US and its repercussions in the world are direct outcome of failure to learn these lessons. Already the world is witnessing acute consciousness of interdependence and universal linkages. This is the quintessence of Vedanta, Zen-Buddhism and Sufi order in the Eastern globe. West-dominated management technology must now synthesize with Eastern intuition and values. The book is divided into three parts: First part delves into East-West psyche; second part presents Integration-Affection Model as potential approach to effective Management. Third part shows the author s successful applications of the approach in different organizations while working as Chief Executive or Consultant.

Public Management as a Cultural Phenomenon. Revitalizing Societal Culture in International Public Management Research

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.

Managing in a multicultural setting can be very challenging. Culture strongly influences how people behave and how they understand the behavior of others, and cultures vary in the behaviors they find proper and acceptable. This report--which integrates work done by experts in the fields of anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, and international business management with CCL's perspective on how executives learn from experience--describes the cultural values, often unconsciously held, that underlie work in the U.S. and provides managers in the U.S. with a structured way of learning about the value preferences of people from other cultures. Examples drawn from workplaces around the world aid in applying the framework.

This report presents a study that compared the responses of leaders from six European Union countries and the United States about their perceptions of work-related values of effective leaders and team members. The results yield a profile of effective leadership for those working in cross-national teams in the European Union and provide a framework for thinking about how to develop effective cross-national alliances anywhere