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<<< click here to get back to the BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (B.B.A.)
MGT 206 Cross Cultural Management
This course deals with two interconnected and important issues for the management of contemporary organizations. The first issue derives from the globalization of business and the correspondingly increased frequency of inter-cultural exposure. This means that managers in the global economy have to seriously reflect upon their own cultural assumptions and interpret the actions and intentions of others who may come from an entirely different cultural mindset - that is to say, they need to be able to think 'outside' their own worldview. Managing Culture therefore introduces students of management tot he effects of national cultural influences in shaping managerial priorities and practices, and organizational behavior more generally, and alerts students to the potential pitfalls brought about by what might be implicit incompatibilities between different cultures. One further aim is to suggest not only that cultures which are conventionally seen as very different may generate tensions when juxtaposed in organizational settings (for example, those of the West - the 'Occident' - and the East - the 'Orient'), but also that those which we tend to see as relatively similar (for example, the UK and the US) may produce the same sorts of conflicts.
The second half of the course deals with the internal management of culture, at the level of the organization. Clearly one important challenge for managers is to deal with the tensions and conflicts which may result from members of different national cultures working together within one organization, but wider questions flow from this, such as whether it is possible to 'manage' culture at all and, if so, how it might be possible to do so. In this section of the course the aim is to counterbalance the managerialist perspective, which often underpins discussions of organizational culture with a more anthropological/sociological view of culture. Here we will also examine different types of organizational culture as well as looking at the relationships between organizational culture and other factors such as strategy and structure.
Learning Outcomes: This course aims to illuminate the nature of national cultural influence on human and more specifically management and organizational behavior, to provide frameworks for understanding national cultural differences, to alert students to the potential pitfalls of cultural misunderstandings, to fully explore the question of whether or not culture can be 'managed' and to examine ways in which this might be achieved, to examined different types of organizational culture, and to develop an understanding of the relationships between culture and other aspects of organizations, such as strategy and structure.
At the end of the course students should be able to demonstrate an increased awareness of national cultural differences and their consequences, to display diagnostic skills for analyzing national cultural differences, to suggest how to avoid national cultural misunderstandings, to discuss the nature of organizational culture and the issues surrounding its management, to identify various different types of organizational culture and to make relevant connections between culture and other aspects of organizations.
Recommended Text(s)
Hofstede, G., Cultural dimensions in people management: The socialization perspective. In Pucik et al. (eds.), LATEST EDITION.
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