Cross-Cultural Management Studies II (Spring 2001)

Course Content: It would help to remember that the starting point of this course one year ago was to create a general awareness of and sensitivity towards cross-cultural issues and their interplay with strategic options in international business.
          What followed was an overview of different concepts of culture, cultural analyses, and comparisons of cultural differences. This included well known objectivist-positivist approaches to the topic (Hofstede, Mole, Trompenaars, etc.) as well as subjectivists-interpretive (Geertz, Garfinkel, Berger, Douglas) positions. Questions asked included: (1) the contribution these various approaches make to our understanding of cultural differences, (2) their applicability to real-life interactions and (3) international management from a strategic point of view, as well as the ethical dimension.
          The general aim of this course is to help students understand the implications of cultural differences, the dangers of stereotyping, the normativeness and limitations of most cultural analyses, and introduce to them various ways to compete with these challenges on both an individual and organizational level.

Methodology: To provide a training experience for students to create a presentation or …a scenario…a set of cultural clashes or issues that portray misunderstanding among people who are employed in a common objective. This process is known as intercultural training. Intercultural training has attempted to (a) help people communicate more effectively, (b) help people deal with the inevitable stresses that accompany an intercultural encounter, (c) enable people to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships with those whose backgrounds are different from their own, and (d) enable people to accomplish the various tasks they originally set out to do in a new context or setting. Of all the training approaches that have been developed, the intercultural sensitizer (ICS), also known as the culture assimilator, has been exposed to intense scrutiny and analysis and has repeatedly demonstrated positive impact on the participants.
          Through the use of short vignettes, or critical incidents, trainees read scripted accounts of situations in which individuals from different cultures interact with the intent of pursuing some common goal. Toward the end of the incident, a clash of cultures is evident and the various parties are unable to satisfactorily accomplish their task. More often than not, an unintended misinterpretation of events is at the base of the problem or a misunderstanding of the subjective meaning is given to a particular behavior. The reader is presented with a number of alternatives to explain the problem and is asked to select the one that best explains the problem from the other’s point of view.
          Researchers suggest that culture operates on two-levels-an objective level, as well as a subjective level. Objective elements of culture, on the one hand are the visible, tangible elements of culture and include such things as the artifacts people make, the food they eat, and the clothing they wear-things that are relatively easy to pick up, analyze, and touch. Subjective elements on the other hand, are the invisible, intangible elements of a group of people and include such things as values, attitudes and norms of behavior-things that are generally kept in the mind and that are much more difficult to pick up, analyze, and visualize.
          This project is a new approach to studying cultural sensitivity and responsiveness. At least one approach that Student teams can undertake creates situations of intercultural conflict, and present different alternatives (3 or 4) as to how these conflicts could be interpreted and which one they feel best describes the situation, based on their knowledge of the cultural context. Student teams will be expected to create at least one situation such that Europeans are functioning (disfunctioning) in foreign cultures. Each team will be responsible for creating 3 scenarios and presenting them via PowerPoint. The learning process will be supported by: Lectures, presentations, examinations, videos, cases, guest speakers, articles and books.   

So How is Cross-Cultural Management II different than CCM - I? The second part of the course is still following the general aim of creating sensitivity towards cross-cultural issues. After the broad overview over different concepts of culture and cultural studies in part I this course aims at closing the gap between cultural studies and the use of the results in cross-cultural management training. Case studies or personal experience from internships abroad will help to deepen the understanding for the different concepts of the comparison of cultures (either internal or external) which have been presented before. Special attention should be given to studies comparing the training.

Schedule of Activity

... Cross-Cultural Management ...

GROUP A

Schedule of Activity

... Cross-Cultural Management ...

GROUP B