Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective [Paperback]

Nigel Holden (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 027364680X | ISBN-13: 978-0273646808 | Publication Date: December 10, 2001

Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in international business, international management and cross-cultural management, and all concerned with the transfer of knowledge in the global economy. It will also be a valuable source of concepts and ideas to cross-cultural trainers and to various categories of practitioners within knowledge management and international human resource management. This book forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence. This perspective based on extensive research into the operations of four major international corporations, challenges traditional thinking by contending that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management. Key to this text are the four global case companies contrasting experiences, presented as insightful case studies about rarely observed aspects of firms cross-cultural communication behaviour.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"If books are to be judged on the effect that they have on the thought processes of the reader Professor Holden's book is outstanding.  This book will provide both a valuable theoretical underpinning and many insights that will move the study of cross-cultural management and knowledge management into the age of the knowledge economy - an achievement that will pay dividends both to researchers and practitioners for many years to come."

Prof Anthony Wensley, Associate Professor of Information Systems, University of Toronto

"By positing that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management, he broadens and reinvigorates the entire subject area at a stroke.  Researchers, practitioners and consultants are supplied with an array of new concepts, models and insights and , to some extent, a new language - all of which have been long overdue.  For the foreseeable future this will be the leading book on cross-cultural management."

Prof Dr Gerhard Fink, Director of the REsearch Institute for European Affairs and Chairman of the Faculty of Business at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration

"Holden's book is a milestone in the development of cross-cultural management.  It represents a conceptual shift in the field, one that many have been waiting for, redesigning cross-cultural management as a knowledge domain.  These new concepts will become references for practitioners as well as for researchers and trainers.  In the academic world,  where cross-cultural management is more and more to the forefront, no-one can afford not to have read this book."

Marie-Therese Claes, ICHEC Brussels, Business School and Catholic University of Louvain

 

Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence.

 FEATURES and BENEFITS:         " Focuses on 'cross-cultural interdependence' rather than tradititional views of comparative differences and similarities between cultures thereby suggesting new boundaries and directions for cross-cultural management education, research and practice for students and managers for years to come.

• Key to the text are four case studies of global companies which analyse rarely observed, yet everyday issues for organisations within the global economy- cross-cultural communication behaviour.
• " Supplies models and a glossary of terms to clarify the new concepts which ally cross-cultural management with knowledge management, providing an accessible, learning-oriented student and manager resource.

Nigel Holden holds visiting professorships at the Vienna School of Economics and Business Administration, the Leiden University School of Management and the Kassel International Management School. He was formerly Professor of Cross-Cultural Management at Copenhagen Business School.  He has wide international experience as a management educator, researcher and consultant and has been a keynote speaker at academic and business conferences in the UK, various EU countries and the USA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Financal Times Management (December 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 027364680X
• ISBN-13: 978-0273646808
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,740,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Academic, boring at times, yet with insights, November 5, 2010

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Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective (Paperback)

Reading "Cross-Cultural Management" took me a long time, it is not an easy book to read. It is not that the subject is difficult, but the authors writing style is very dry and repetitive. At times, he dives into concepts and goes on and on where the point was already made in the first sentence. From that perspective, this book could be at least 1/3rd of its original size.

Cross-cultural management attempts to challenge existing ways of thinking about the management of multiple cultures and tries to define a new conceptual model. I felt the author succeeded only in part, and in part he complicated the subject unnecessary (e.g. with many analogies and introduction of new terms by overriding old words). The author tries to move away from describing cultural difference and how to manage them and towards a view of culture as an value to be exploited and benefited from.

The book consists of three parts. The first part introduces the current thinking about culture and also is the first attack on, what he calls, the Hofstedian perspective of managing cultural difference. At times, I felt the author was unreasonable in his attack of the previous work in the field and was disagreeing more from an intellectual challenge perspective than a practical one (although he argues the opposite). At times, I got the feeling that he doesn't appreciate the previous work, not even as, what he calls, general cultural knowledge. In the first part he also quickly overviews the knowledge management field as he is trying to adopt a knowledge management perspective to cultural management by looking at culture as knowledge that can be applied to a useful purpose (achieving business goals).

The second part described four case studies of companies dealing with culture: Novo Nordisk, Matsushita, Lego, and Sulver Infra. When starting to read this book, I expected this part to be the most interesting one, but in retrospect, I disliked this part most. All the studies felt very shallow and both unfocused (from the topic perspective) and focused (from the perspective that they didn't describe general events, but only one particular event). The studies are said to be the basis for the rest of the book, however I felt the author was only sparsely referring back to them and often in a shallow way.

The third part was perhaps the most interesting. In the first three chapters, the author tries to evolve his ideas about cross-cultural management from a knowledge management perspective. He takes the analogy of language (which I found unfortunate) and introduces the concepts of interactive translation and participative competence as the key skills needed in the modern multicultural workspace. Personally I felt the last chapter to be the most useful, where the author summarizes the main concepts of earlier chapters and shows how they relate and what impact they have on the field of cross-cultural management. This was the first time, for me, where I felt the author was convincing.

I disliked most of the book. Not from content perspective, but from attitude and style perspective. At times, I felt like stopping to read the book and instead read something else that was more engaging and inspiring. For most of the book, I wouldn't rate this more than 2 stars. Two because the content is not useless or wrong, just presented very dry. The last chapter made me glad that I actually finished the book and also let me change my rating to three stars, which means, this book does what is claims to do. The author wishes for a large impact on the field, though, I doubt it will have that. Yet, the author was convincing enough that makes me partly wish I'm wrong. I wouldn't recommend this book except for people who are students of the subject, and even then, I'd recommend to read, especially part 2, quickly and focus on part 3.