A New Approach to Cross-Cultural People Management

When managing cross-culturally in a polarized world, recognizing similarities between people and establishing common ground can be key to success. This book argues that despite differences in language, political systems, income levels, and other factors, people are people.
There is no doubt that cultural differences should be understood and appreciated, not only because this is the right thing to do in a multicultural world, but because failure to understand these differences when doing business can result in costly mistakes. But when managing people, what matters most is showing respect and interest - because what motivates (and de-motivates) is the same regardless of cultural background. This book explains and illustrates eight themes in which people are very similar across cultures, including trust, fairness, integrity, and, though often overlooked in an organizational context, the reasons why people work.
Business leaders, human resource professionals, organizational consultants, and students in these fields will appreciate this fresh perspective on people management, and the mini-cases and interviews with senior executives provide inspiring real-world examples.

Professor Robert E. Grosse is Dean of the School of Business Administration at American University of Sharjah, and was 2012-2014 President of the Academy of International Business. He has taught international finance in the MBA programmes at Thunderbird, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, the Instituto de Empresa (Madrid, Spain), and in many universities in Latin America, and he lectures on executive education programmes around the world. He was founding Director of Standard Bank Group's (South Africa) executive education programme, the Global Leadership Centre, offering leadership development training to 11,000 managers and executives. He is a leading author on international business topics, and his latest book, Can Latin American Firms Compete? was published by Oxford University Press in 2007.

1 - People really are people 2 - What motivates people? 3 - What de-motivates people? 4 - Trust 5 - Respect and self-esteem 6 - Fairness 7 - How important is integrity in business? 8 - Planning, looking forward 9 - Why do people work? 10 - Conclusions 11 Index