Global Impact: Cross-Cultural Management

Overview

With globalization, multiculturalism is on the rise. Managers need to lead a workforce composed of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Managers need to negotiate and cooperate with organizations from diverse cultures; they need to know about the effects that diverse cultures can have on business practices. This course introduces the fundamentals of multicultural management by describing the impact of culture on interpersonal processes in organizations, discussing how culture shapes communication, leadership, negotiation, and teamwork. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: - understand how national cultures affect managerial activities such as communication, teamwork, negotiation, and leadership, - detect cultural differences and how to prevent & solve misunderstandings, - compare the culture of two countries using an instrument labeled “The Culture Map”, - improve your cross-cultural sensitivity, and - develop skills to diagnose cross-cultural issues and to come to a compromise.

Syllabus

Course Introduction and Module 1: Communication Across Cultures

In this module, you will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course. This module also explores how cultures differ in all aspects of communication so that you know how to interpret cross-cultural behavior correctly and can solve cultural misunderstandings.

Module 2: Team Diversity

This module explores how diversity affects social processes and the work in teams and how managers can utilize the insights to form optimal teams.

Module 3: Negotiation Across Cultures

This module explores the ways cultures differ in their negotiation styles so that one can research negotiators' individual styles in the beginning of a negotiation and adjust your own negotiation behavior.