Australia: the egalitarian corporate culture

This post’s topic is Australia, a rich country which once was part of the British Empire and currently is a part of the commonwealth. The contents are going to be organized around two aspects; the first one is an analysis of the Australian corporate culture as it is presented by Baird, Harrison, & Reeve (June 2007) on their publication “The culture of Australian organizations and its relation with strategy”. Then the question for this module is going to be answered, which relates to the stolen generations, a very sensible historical event that even today marks the life of the australian people.

North America: Proof me who you are!

This post is about the biggest economy in the world; the United States of America. The people of this country have a long standing tradition of hard work and individualism, being internationally recognized because of this as workaholics and greedy. But this is an unfair recognition because this behavior has a clear explanation when the culture is considered.

Europe and the German co-determination model

In the diverse European context we can find different organizational practices which tend to reflect the national culture or particular needs of each country. An example of this is the German co-determination model, which is going to be the object of this post.

Map of Europe Taken from: (Central Intelligence Agency - CIA, n.d.)

This post is going to be structured as follows; in the first part I will briefly explain what is co-determination to proceed then to explain a little on how is it implemented and to show some difficulties the French businessmen have when making business in Germany, to finally end by answering the proposed question for this module.

Africa: Ubuntu a philosophy

This post is going to be different from the rest in the sense that I find more useful to answer the proposed question for this topic and then present the class contents, because it is all going to be about a philosophy: Ubuntu.

So before the post I would like to present a video taken from Pedromusicman's channel in You Tube that shows some traditional African dances which carry with them the concept o Ubuntu, feel free to just watch a few parts so you can get an idea of what this is about, I will refer to this video later on.

South Asia: Managing your international sales force.

This post is going to focus on the most successful country in the region which belongs to the so called BRIC group. Yes, it’s India and its fast growing economy.

The first part of this post is going to be the relation of the management styles and the cultural features of a country. The second part is the answer to the proposed question about India as well.

Middle East: Islamic Banking

For this class the lecturer gave us some questions to solve in order to have an extra activity in the Blog, the questions are going to be followed by their answers since they are somewhat of independent. To introduce the topic, and as a partial answer to some of the questions here is this video taken from YouTube from the saarab40 channel, which features a CNN reportage.

East Asia: the Korean and Japanese Management Styles

This week subject is East Asia is the first region we are going to review in the course, the countries that are I this region are: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan. As you may be wandering is a vast region with many study possibilities, but this blog section will focus on the Japanese and Korean Management Styles. For this purpose explaining the concepts of divergence, homogenization and convergence are of topmost importance. 

Source: Own creation, based on the class explanations

Also Check...

Before I recommend any of my class mates' blog I must explain the methodology I used; I based my recommendation on criteria such as proper quotation, order in the presentation, the use of available media and information sources, among others. This allowed me to have the most objective grading process I could come up with: a matrix of the qualities I considered to be important and and its correspondent weight. As a result of all of this I obtained a weighted average grading system, that allowed me to grade my class mates' blogs.

It must also be said that this was an interesting exercise to do because it gave me the chance to study the different class topics from my class mates; and it must be recognized that as I was progressing I got to a final pool of knowledge in the form of blogs which were all really good, but one must choose. So "read more" to find out...

China: why should you produce there?

In this section the topic is China; the fastest growing country in the world, that many consider will be the 21st century new superpower. On this post I will use the last class presentation (done by two students) in order to answer why you should produce in China, by making a comparison with Bangladesh. And after that, the concept of Guanxi will be the topic of this week question, in which we will take into account its importance in the internationalization process of the Chinese companies.

Expatriate Assignments and Overseas Experience: What is the difference?

The expatriate assignments (EA) and the overseas experience (OE) are a topic that has been growing more important in a globalized world. These two experiences are an excellent way of acquiring international expertise and knowledge, but are they the same?

Migrant workers: push and pull factors

This post is going to be dedicated to the migration and the forces driving it. The first thing to do is to define and classify the migrant workers. The second part will try to elaborate on what are the forces diving people to migrate, for this purpose I will resort to the "Migration theory" from Everett Lee.

Managing Diversity - IBM case

Diversity Management has been a central topic that some companies have intensively used to gain competitive advantages. The questions I will answer are how and when diversity is a source of competitive advantage. In order to do so I will explain a little bit of what from where competitive advantage (CA) comes, what sustained competitive advantage is, and the role of human capital.

Managing Diversity in Virtual Teams

¿Do you consider managing diversity a key success factor in the performance of virtual teams? was the question proposed by the teacher to those of us who attended the conference on Virtual Teams. The lecturer is a visiting proffesor from abroad who has experience on this topic.

Exploring Diversity

The diversity is a topic that has become increasingly important since the globalization period of the capitalist economy because the interaction of different cultures has this part of the human interaction implied. But there is much more to diversity than the mere intercultural interaction. So this section is going to be titled diversity without foreigners.

National & Corporate Culture Question: Q&A

As an important part of the course is focused on the readings and its comprehension this post will answer to the questions proposed for the subject National & Corporate Culture.

National Culture: when does it matters?

In order to understand why is culture important or unimportant, we must try to elucidate the  meaning of the word culture. Despite many experts have tried to give a single concept for culture according to the document "International Management: Cross-Cultural Dimensions" by Richard Mead (see further readings), the most accurate concept is that of Hofstede which considers culture as being:

"The collective programing of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another ... Culture, in this sense, includes systems of values; and values are among the building blocks of culture." (Mead, Richard, 2004)

Corporate Culture: a myth?

As discussed in class the Topic of Corporate Culture includes the shares values, beliefs, symbols and behaviors of the group of people that form part in an organization, therefore to understand it is a key element when relating to an organization. But the proposed reading for this topic that is titled: "Corporate Culture: more myth than reality?", says that corporate culture is "weakening or disappear(ing)"[Gregory M.J. 2007] in the new globalized world.

Ethnographic Research: Q&A

As part of the course my lecturer has asked me to "find and explain in (my) blog 2 examples of how ethnographic research can be used for international business." In order to answer this question I have chosen to present a video and a short international marketing example.

What's next?

Not so long  since I did my first meaningful entry to this blog (hope it is organized), and I wanted to say that since next week I will begin posting formally the course contents.

In order to make it simple I will post the summary and the proposed questions in the same entry, but for the first two topics in which there is a post for ethnography, a post for national culture and another one for the topic of organizational culture those are the summaries, the questions and answers will be in two separate posts one for ethnographic research and the second one for the bonus question and the question for national and organizational culture.

Ethnographic Research: become an insider, think as an outsider.

Since this is my first entry on a blog ever, I've chosen to discuss one of the topics of the course: Etnographic Research ( as indicated by the title), previous to the formal entries of the topics that this blog is going to be all about.

The objective of this entry, besides its obvious academic interest, is to start getting familiar with design and editing tools.