Fostering productive cross-cultural learning in management courses.

AuthorSkobeleva, Julia A.
PositionReport
  1. INTRODUCTION

    Management education has always been a challenging area for both academics and practitioners. From early attempts to organize the methods and the techniques in management development (e.g. Burgoyne & Stuart, 1978) to more recent works highlighting how to develop leaders (e.g. Allen & Hartman, 2008), the area is growing with new research topics and has fueled some new unresolved and exciting problems. One such research topic is learning in cross-cultural classroom. Brewer (2008)states that "of all international businesses which depend on the effectiveness of cross-cultural knowledge flows, the provision of training and education services to international students must be one of the most evident". In today's classroom, creating knowledge across cultures constitutes a considerable pedagogical challenge.

    A cross-cultural student group is a distinguishing characteristic of universities with high proportion of international students, e.g. Webster-University. The faculty members are challenged to design a learning landscape which is to encourage each student in a group to participate actively in the learning process. How to make learning in a cross-cultural group productive? The current paper aims at providing a theoretical rationale and empirical evidence to help educators understand and facilitate knowledge creation in cross-cultural student groups.

    Cross-cultural management theory addresses issues such as how to orchestrate cultural differences in a way that brings in value. In the literature, Skobeleva (2008) has identified two main streams in cross-cultural management theory. The first one treats cultural differences as obstacles to joint venture. Works within this stream are based on the assumption that cultural differences are sources of conflict and miscommunication, hence they emphasize cultural differences as something to overcome, in order to foster interaction and positive relationships in cross-cultural teams and groups. Examples of these works, according to the same author, are those by Hofstede (1994), or by Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars (2000).The second stream of studies takes an opposite stand to the first stream. Authors writing on this second stream (e.g. Holden, 2001) argue that in the knowledge society the new building blocks are knowledge-sharing, organizational learning, and network development. In such a modern world, cultural differences should be regarded as an asset, not as an obstacle. Culture is seen as a resource, and it should be managed in a way which adds value to firms' international operations. This stream of cultural-differences-as-asset refers to the mode of intercultural learning, networking and knowledge-sharing structured by the collaborative actions of managers to derive economic benefit from cultural differences.

    In the second section of the paper authors present a theoretical model of knowledge creation in cross-cultural teams in industrial settings. This model is based on empirical findings from an earlier research. In the third section, authors describe how the theoretical model can be applied to teaching contexts.

  2. GROUNDED THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION IN CROSS-CULTURAL TEAMS

    The literature on knowledge creation in cross-cultural teams is relatively recent; however it has showed a vigorous theoretical and practical production. In a recent work, Skobeleva (2008) tried to identify the processes underlying learning and knowledge transfer in top management teams from multinational companies. The author explored what executives do when they network to create knowledge and discern business opportunities in the cross-cultural domain. Her model is shown in figure 1.

    The participants in Skobeleva's study were entrepreneurs and company owners who had been involved in the generation and implementation of innovative solutions in their companies. These were from two industries: high-precision equipment for aviation and mechanical engineering (company A), and fire-fighting and search-and-rescue vehicles (company B). Interviews were conducted in order to explore stories of cross-cultural collaboration and discussions of cross-cultural innovation experiences from which the patterns of cross-cultural knowledge creation could be elicited.

    The author presented several stories in which learning took place in an apparently unstructured format, but which in fact revealed interesting patterns of knowledge creation and sharing. In one such story, Skobeleva reports how one of the Belarusian owners of a high-precision equipment company elicited the nuances of cross-cultural mutually rewarding dialogue with a German executive of a research and design laboratory. In the course of the discourse, the partners discerned the business opportunity to make a technological introduction of the highly resistive aircraft hose into the automotive engineering, and to create a new business network. The conversations were loosely structured by questions that introduced various innovations found in the course of cross-cultural dialogue. Further, a wide range of questions was used to extract a rich and comprehensive description of the...

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