Cross-cultural management textbook: Lessons from the world leading experts in cross-cultural management Paperback – Student Edition, September 5, 2012

This review is written from the perspective of an international business student.I am currently writing my thesis, with the main field of interest being cross cultural management. I found this book to be a very practical solution if one wants to understand cross cultural management in a comprehensive way. It touches upon all necessary elements to understand culture in business. The book is written in an easy to understand way, and follows a very logical structure.I have not encountered a better book that manages to easily explain so many relevant cross cultural management schools of thought in one single read. It is unique in that it brings together so many cross cultural guru's and manages to combine these different thoughts in one synergized story, creating a holistic picture of the field.

Definitely an easily read and a well organized student’s course book as the editor intended, the Cross-Cultural Management Textbook presents boilerplate of both fields intercultural and management basics adequate for a semester’s initiation. It is written in traditional but less technical and more understandable terms than all too many undergrad textbooks tend to be. Further, it is fortified by numerous examples and dialogues, as well as punctuated by brief research snapshots to illustrate and substantiate points made.The contributors’ list includes both researchers and practitioners and is not strictly limited to professional interculturalists, but blends management gurus with the intercultural savants. Contributors include Meredith Belbin, Stephen Covey, Dean Foster, Charles Hampden Turner, Edgar Schein, Joerg Schmitz, Craig Storti, Juliette Tournand, Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams.Rather than the usual academic “name, academic rank, serial number” approach to presenting the contributors, the book’s appendix contains a friendly page or two on which the authors are pictured and where they define culture and cross-cultural management, as they understand it. Each biosnap contains some personal preferences and a cultural anecdote along with a list of each author’s main publications.The book itself introduces both the cultural work of management and the history of the management and intercultural fields. It draws on and concatenates the contributors’ specialties and models, largely centered on and held together by the framework of dimensional analysis.Intended for lecturers and students, the Cross-Cultural Management Textbook provides in one place the traditional “stuff” leaving the professor to design more challenging perspectives currently coming from linguistics, cognitive science, etc., if she or he so chooses. It is an information book, delving into case study activities and so-called workshops that encourage reflection and self-engagement in cultural questions. It leaves the business of simulations, serious games and experiential exercises up to the initiative of the course presenter. It is largely matter-of-fact and apolitical. Culturally-sourced ethical considerations are incidentally compared, but there is neither an explicit ethical stance nor any connection that I was able to find to the economics of culture and sustainability, or to the costs, current and past of colonialism, cultural or economic. The largely “Western” nature of cultural studies is mentioned in a cautionary way.As both intercultural fields and management practice have endless possibilities, the basics of the book are backed up by a website and online citations where useful. The website contains an overview of the content of the book and the contributors, downloadable resources in the form of dialogs and case studies as well as the opportunity to participate in research projects and both query and give feedback to the editor.Published in the USA, the book will probably sell well to programs there. Given that dichotomous thinking is a cultural feature of the USA, this penchant is comfortably supported, as the book admits, by the dimensional approach. Course presenters will have to take care to point out and explore gray areas as they use the materials. A section on reconciling differences offers some help in this regard. The book ends with brief excursions into culture and marketing and the challenges of expatriation.In the book’s dialogs you meet a lot of diverse people and are clearly confronted with conflicts or misunderstandings generated by cultural difference. Denial of one’s own cultural roots is common particularly among young US Americans so such vignettes can be quite useful for rethinking one’s own culturality. There is even graphic description of gestures and physical behavior as they occur across cultures, including a half page map on the conundrum of French kissing—no, not more columbarum, the mortal sin of lovers’ passion—but the number of bises that you bestow according to the part of the Hexagon that you come from. Nonetheless, having lived in France for some 15 years, my nose is still a dangerous intruder, as I am yet at a loss as whether to start smooching left or right… The cited website survey that created this map is currently doing a starter-cheek survey, so help may be in sight.As a textbook, it is a basic vademecum for students, and could provide a coherent overview of core concepts for teachers fresh to the field.

All the ledgends and "big beasts" of this field of reserach and application are in this one book. It does not get better than this...either for someone new to the topic of cross cultural matters or for those of us who have read much on this topic before.Well written, easy to digest and coprehensive. If you want to know about this topic either as a consultant or someone working internationally this is a great overview of all the thinking and key research on the topic. Enough detial and resarch to be credible and valid but written in an accessible and useable format.I bought the e version and read it from ipad.......really easy to navigate, well laid out, enough information on each topic and chapter to be usable and informative.I have numerous books on Cross cultural matters -- this is the best by far for the following reasons:-it is very modern and current---whilst still detailing all the relevant work doen in this field to dateIt is easy and has enough detail and examples as well as being comprehensiveIt contains shortened and updated infromation from all the giants in this fieldIf this topis is for you ---buy this bookfrom Andrew Jones

Enfin un livre qui synthétise et regroupe le savoir sur le management inter-culturel. A la fois facile d'accès et pertinent.

I probably should have read the fine print! It is a textbook for those interested in cross-cultural management and as such, it skims the surface of the key issues.