The editors see the first volume of “Cross-Cultural Management” as a theoretical introduction citing Kurt Lewin “there’s nothing as practical as a good theory”, and the present volume as “providing perspectives on the challenges of managing in a … global environment”. Like the first volume, it is a compendium of articles and chapters from other books selected, inevitably, by excluding hundreds of other pieces, a difficult process as the editors observe and, equally inevitably, subject to their idiosyncrasies. As in the first volume hardly any of the 44 chapters were published since 2000 but the reader is more conscious of this than in the first volume perhaps because there is less pure theory. This and the tendency to be repetitive in some sections are the main criticisms I would direct at the book. There is also inevitably a range of different degrees of accessibility from clear and simple to dense and opaque.
The format of the originals is kept and thus varies between chapters and in places the types is painfully small. The book runs to 740 pages, similar to the first volume. It is organized in seven sections as follows: globalization and the global manager, managing global organizations, managing cultural diversity, negotiating across cultures, international JV’s and alliances, expatriate adaptation, and ethics.
The first chapter starts by citing the prediction that inter-country trade will exceed intracountry by 2015 hence the need for more globally experienced executives: Jack Welch is quoted to this effect. The chapter reports how Fortune 500 global executives and HR managers identified key characteristics for global leaders over and above issues such as financial and IT resources, favourable local conditions and government support. They found “unbridled inquisitiveness, character and integrity, ability to deal with uncertainty and something called “business savvy” were key factors. To develop these they suggest a
“really hard blow to the head” is needed to gain a global mindset; selection is crucial, as is experience in diverse teams, overseas assignments and careful management of repatriation.
Nothing revolutionary there.
The second chapter is very much in the same vein and the citations even older. To develop a global mindset requires international knowledge and acculturation and leadership skills, quoting the previous chapter, as well as the familiar model of Perlmutter distinguishing ethno-, poly- and geo-centrism and quotes Baird’s (1994) model of the defender (internally focused) the explorer (seeking though not well informed), the controller, who goes aggressively into international markets but with financial and strategic control and the integrator, who has a multi-cultural, win-win globally networked perspective. Toyota, Fiat and Philips had developed this approach at the time of writing (1999).
Chapter 3 is a brief summing up of conference proceedings on global competition that concludes that there is a force-field of tensions between evolutionary and revolutionary forces for change and reactionary forces. Competitors and their relationships, stakeholder

pressures and ability to respond to change are key factors. Fairly general comments within a familiar framework.
Chapter 4 argues that what distinguishes the expatriate from global manager is change in cognitive processes involved in framing business problems. The themes are familiar since all the sources are 1992 or earlier. We are by now well aware that global managers need global perspective with local responsiveness, synergistic learning abilities, cross-cultural adaptability and foreign experience and that lack of these, together with family and commitment issues and lack of HR support from the HQ are key to success or as the authors focus it, avoiding failure. The reference list is irritatingly minute in print size.
The fifth chapter offers the familiar figure of Hofstede reminding us that management studies are marked by the national background of the observer, which is hardly a novelty, whilst the sixth trots out once again the hackneyed dimensions of Hofstede and
Trompenaars. This is material that is so familiar one wonders why it is included in such a collection.
The second section starts with a landmark 1993 piece from Ghoshal and Nohria. With the
Stopford and Wells 1972 strategy/organization model as a starting point the authors used their 41-company research to demonstrate the thesis that fit between structure and environment is key in improving MNC performance. Forces for global integration and local responsiveness produce the classic quadrants international, multinational, transnational and global. Integration is seen as the ratio of intra-firm to inter-firm trade, following Kobrin.
The structure classification is based on three relationships: centralization, formalization and normative integration, which are contrasted with differentiated fit. This in turn produces four pattern structures on the axes integration and differentiation. The four types produced are structural uniformity (little variance in subsidiary management), differentiated fit
(differing governance modes), integrated variety (dominant integration overlaying differentiation) and ad hoc variation (neither approach is clearly imposed). The key hypothesis is that the best fit is structural uniformity in global environments, differentiated fit in multinational, integrated variety in transnational and ad hoc variety in international environments and this is borne out by the fit with results in their research companies.
The next chapter deals with practical HR policies for managing the global workforce. Three major challenges are identified: deployment of skills, knowledge transfer and identification of talent. To meet these challenges four strategies are proposed: “aspatial” careers - managers who are not geographically bounded and who develop global understanding, awareness building through assignments to broaden cultural perspectives, SWAT teams for short term interventions without much focus on cultural issues, and virtual solutions, then
(1998) less developed than today. They mention distance learning which has probably not in fact grown as much as expected.
Nancy Adler on women managing across borders (1994) recalls the well-known paradox that in spite of the proven success of women on international assignments companies are highly ambiguous in their attitudes: the greatest shortcoming is in support from their own companies. Nonetheless she points out the demonstration effect of Western companies, who are more prepared to hire than Japanese and other cultures. She presents two basic

approaches: women as equal to men and judged and rewarded on the same basis and women as different and complementary in skills and strengths. Women’s perception is often that being a woman is an advantage partly because they are assumed to be above average to have been posted in powerful positions. The gaijin syndrome in which foreign women have a different role from domestic women is important: foreign first and women second.
In chapter 10 Rosabeth Moss Kanter and T.D Dretler use the experience of Gillette
Singapore to revisit the need for integration across divisions, change management, respect for local cultures and simultaneously recognition of the role of corporate culture, which can be more important than national cultures in a global corporation.
The next chapter is the story of Sanyo in the US and underlines the importance of both cultural and competitive dynamics at the inter-face. In some Japanese firms established in the US, values such as quality circles, job rotation, teamwork, JIT or lean production are not transferred. The authors emphasize that the analysis of any case is unique and multiple and that at the time of the arrival of Sanyo there were strong anti-Japanese protective attitudes finally rationalized in the Orderly Marketing Agreement. Sanyo failed to implement a continuous improvement culture in contrast to NUMMI, the GM - Toyota operation, possibly because of a failure to eliminate status differences among American staff. Worker participation may be frustrated by perception of unfairness of pressures to increase participation. The investing firm needs to take account of local conditions; in the case of Sanyo the price of not doing so was a history of labour unrest and strikes.
Chapter 12, a 1995 piece on cultural influence on measurement of corporate success, proposes that reporting of results differs in terms of optimism/conservatism - the ratio of
“adjusted” to disclosed results, and transparency/secretiveness – the ratio of potential to actual information disclosure. The finding is that Anglo-American and Nordic systems are transparent and optimistic with UK highest, whereas Latin, Germanic and Asian systems are more secretive and conservative.
Chapter 13 has a KM focus and proposed “centres of excellence” to group key people with knowledge required for specific projects. The approach addresses the problem of capturing tacit knowledge in individual heads but also more broadly on a virtual (and thus explicit) basis. These issues have been extensively documented in more recent work.
Cultural sensitivity is not an area in which marketing managers are normally thought to excel as evidenced by failures in international assignments and the next chapter aims to
“narrow this gap”. Pragmatic par excellence, marketing researchers need “manageable complexity, reasonable cost of data collection and ... applicability…”. Cultural research models are categorized in quadrants of “few to many features” and “positive to interpretative” with Hofstede in the South East and Geertz is in the NW. The positive/interpretative axis parallels the emic/etic dichotomy quite neatly. The authors see few variables as desirable but balanced by admitting some complexity and consideration of interpretative approaches. They appeal to the cultural standards approach of Alexander
Thomas, which attempts to cut across the emic/etic contrast by experiential learning from cross-cultural incidents. This methodology is closely related to the cultural assimilator, is a

practical application of etic value dimensions in pairs of cultures and perhaps understandably attractive to marketing departments.
Chapter 15 discusses the impact of IT on competitiveness in virtual organizations, revisiting Bartlett and Ghoshal. They review tools available and conclude that virtual contexts are here to stay (which has certainly been confirmed since their 1998 dateline) and affect staff training and orientation. They recommend adopting language translation software, which has not advanced as much as they expected, and fail to deal with the cultural aspects on which IT depends in effective KM systems. In short a rather dated contribution.
The last chapter in this section deals with success in virtual teams and foreshadows a lot of more recent work. The VT is seen as a prescription for success where we would tend to see it as an inevitable development largely driven by financial and operational considerations.
Key issues identified are team communication, the effect of cultural diversity, technological difficulties (sending e-mails was then seen as frequently challenging) and project management skills in the virtual environment, none of which we would have any issue with.
The third part of the book, managing cultural diversity, starts with Distefano and
Maznevski’s classic MBI model based on Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s dimensions of basic societal choices. MBI means mapping, bridging and integrating and is a model for understanding the diversity of resources brought to the table by a team, enabling perspective taking and synergistic integration through managing participation, dealing with conflict and building on ideas. It is an attempt to use cultural dimensions to map team members instead of the more traditional team role or psychometric measures and has now been transformed into an on-line instrument based in IMD, Lausanne. The idea of the destructor, equalizer and creator team was a major insight in the literature on teamwork.
The following chapter, dating from 1991, deals with diversity from a gender and ethnic minority perspective and puts forward ideas which are only too familiar to us today: the projections into the future are for the 90’s. They point out the advantages of flexible timetables, the recognition of the potentially enriching features of diversity, and the use of cultural audit to detect how minority group values fit with organizational objectives and values such as corporate aggressiveness. The considerable areas of resistance to such impartial and objective oriented assessment of human resources and the whole history of affirmative action is not hinted at and its subsequent discrediting are absent from their account.
Chapter 19, on employee intercultural effectiveness, deals with the socio-biological and psychological background of people in multi-cultural environments. The cultural closeness concept (Gudykunst) predicting higher attributional confidence and lower anxiety between members of more similar cultures, a cognitive dimension (awareness of other cultures), need for appropriate social behaviours and attitudes, foreign experience and organizational support are all key. Ethnicity is neatly presented as the set of factors of group self recognition both inherited and acquired and by extension what is noticed and felt about other ethnicities in particular situations. Similar arguments apply to religion, gender,

educational level and other influences. This affects intercultural effectiveness through the mechanisms of stereotyping, ethnocentricity and prejudice seen here as a continuum from low to high impact on effectiveness. The author outlines Gudykunst’s uncertainty reduction theory and contact theory as a means to reduce this interference on the assumption through more accurate knowledge at least in favourable conditions. Strategies ranging from passive through reactive to proactive can be chosen implying suitable self-monitoring.
In a last brief section the effectiveness of strong corporate culture in improving organizational performance is questioned with a model of constructive dissent being seen as potentially more enriching. In any case the likelihood of being able to control culture is called into question: the most one can hope is to shape it.
Part four, “Negotiating across cultures”, starts with Stephen Weiss’s well-known
“Negotiating with Romans”. This model relies on the assumption of good will between the parties enabling knowledge of the others’ culture to be used to achieve win-win outcomes and assuming win-lose distributive “red” negotiation not to take place. To get the other party to negotiate in our way implies knowledge of our culture and conversely. Such options are not open if neither party has knowledge of the other culture. Where both have a rich understanding imaginative and synergistic approaches are possible. Weiss identifies twelve dimensions along which negotiations may vary reflecting cultural variables.
The second part of this article goes on to stress the importance of knowing your own culture’s scripts (pre-dispositions to react to events) and learning about your counterpart’s.
The major contribution is to make us re-consider the balance of power issue in negotiation.
Predicting and influencing your counterpart’s approach is vital to selecting one’s own as is monitoring and watching the relationship.
In chapter 23, a highly specialized short article, the author analyzes compliance in crosscultural transactions emphasizing that “accurate judgment of the degree of risk is …. crucial to competitive transactional judgments”. Deriving from transactions costs theory the article underlines trust as a key factor but adds legal, reputational and social mechanisms in encouraging compliance behaviour. From the cross-cultural point of view, relationship business, translating into personal trust, varies in strength and “the returns to honesty” vary with moral codes. The cross-cultural difficulties stemming from this can be seen as a measure of “network reach” of outsiders as well as differing interpretations of what is acceptable behaviour: high trust does not necessarily embrace outsiders.
James Sebenius in his case study (chapter 24) argues that cross-border negotiation obeys the basic rules of any deal-making operation with additional flexibility and mapping needs to take account of the culture-specific considerations and sensitivities of the parties. The case involves an Italian company that successfully completed deals to take over major
German and French interests. Key issues were getting the French managers on board and dealing with complex German ownership structures.
The first chapter in part 5, on international JV’s and strategic alliances, is a straightforward review of the reasoning behind such operations such as economies of scale, materials supply, R&D and distribution issues and using JV’s for diversification. Success depends on

testing the logic of the deal and the fit between the companies, as well as seeking win-win solutions and being aware of cultural factors. It is emphasized that cultural differences are not only national but also such as functional, size-based and rural/urban. In a contrast between outcomes for developed and developing country companies government intervention, rate of success and managerial satisfaction are contrasted and favour the developed country group. The concept of the pseudo alliance is contrasted with true alliances the former lacking the long term benefits flowing from the latter.
The next chapter is a rather specialized consideration of instability in JV’s and concludes that the assessment of the need for subsequent re-negotiation, inter-partner conflict, coordination costs and uneven negotiating power are among the multiple facets of instability reflected in JV performance. Past research is reviewed exhaustively and lines for future research proposed.
Chapter 27 is a brief review (1999) of knowledge transfer in Chinese JV’s and in such a dynamic setting feels somewhat dated now. The authors propose a contingency approach to knowledge acquisition: for the Western partner knowledge of government behaviour, labour, capital and market variables, the local non-government sector, the complexity of multiple legal systems, negotiating style and other cultural factors are all vital. A survey of
JV managers in Shanghai demonstrated the differences in goals of the Western and Chinese partners, normally SOE’s. The nature of the business is critical in determining knowledge acquisition needs varying with the degree of sophistication of technology, the orientation to export market and the need for government as a client or for co-operation. These are key in determining how far the Western JV partner can simply apply previous experience to the
China situation. Western companies may feel the Chinese are trying to tap into company secrets and be leery about investing in knowledge sharing initiatives.
Chapter 28 on knowledge management as for us a strong sense of déjà vu pointing out the difficulty of acquiring and mobilizing tacit knowledge in alliances and the reluctance of management to benefit from clear learning potential offered. Again NUMMI, the GM-
Toyota alliance, is quoted as an example of good practice. One insight worth recording is that TK just because it is tacit is likely to be of value and that knowledge, unlike many other assets, grows by being shared. The article concludes by summarizing key success issues such as clarifying knowledge strategy objectives, drawing on existing knowledge and being careful that cultural features are aligned.
In the next chapter the importance of building trust in alliances is emphasized. The old loner mentality of IBM, GM, 3M or Ford with its strong hierarchical culture has shifted and the Texas Instruments lawsuit against Hitachi and other Japanese companies revealed how much they could learn from their rivals. The perception of the need for alliances made it clear that trust was a key success factor and that it did not appear automatically. The vital match between expected and observed behaviour in interactions as in the Snecma-GE case, the reputation effect gained by “always being constructive” and building trust slowly are all success factors. There may be, it is suggested, not only too little but too much trust, exposing companies to risk. Trust in any case requires “deliberate investment” of time and funds. We are finally warned against premature forecasts of emerging “cultures of cooperation”.

The last chapter in this section is a sensible review of “options and guidelines” covering selection of partners and the negotiation, implementation and evaluation of performance in alliances. It is a step-by-step action plan focusing on the balance between co-operation and competition, focused on making alliances sustainable in the longer run.
Part VI starts with a literature review of expatriation issues, referring to the work of
Edstrom & Galbraith and covers selection and definitions of success (turnover, handling culture shock and task performance). The well-known hypothesis of the U-curve of expatriate adjustment going back to Lysgard 1955 (honeymoon, shock etc) is shown to be open to debate though it is intuitively attractive: the issue is more complex than supposed.
The literature review shows a lack of conclusive findings in many areas but identifies turnover, dealing with culture shock and task performance as key measures. The connection between adjustment and performance is also open to question with answers sought in individual characteristics and demographic features such as age gender and marital status.
Once again women are seen to be hugely under-utilized and American expatriates more likely to fail than others. Doubt is cast on the concept of cultural distance, or “novelty” as it is termed, as being closely related to the likelihood of adjustment. Selection is still seen to be based on technical rather than inter-cultural effectiveness. The author concludes that the literature is fraught with contradiction.
In spite of its date the 1992 piece on dual allegiance is interesting. After a pessimistic view of expat failure they categorize the majority as “hired guns, plateaued careers, going native, hearts at home” and only 32% as having dual allegiance to corporate and local operations.
Among other arguments that continue to be relevant today are the shortcomings of preassignment cross-cultural training, unsuitable selection of managers for postings, preconceptions and prejudice and failure to plan re-patriation. Lack of clarity in role definition, the challenges of role ambiguity and conflict and the strains of role discretion are cited as important aspects of the expats environment.
The following chapter is an excellent research paper dealing with dual career dilemmas, distinguished from dual income by degree of commitment on the part of both re-locatee and spouse. The greatest problems are likely to arise where the wife has a greater earning capacity and career involvement and it is the husband who is re-located. Stress is seen as the balance of demands, constraints and supports available to the couple; organizational and social support is seen as vital. An interesting insight is that the couple’s careers are likely to be out of sync with the spouses starting and peaking later. The family life-cycle is also broken down in detail. Corporate strategy should concentrate on empowering families to maintain positive attitudes.
The following 1990 review of cross-cultural training is dated, with references in the literature review only up to 1988. It uses social learning theory, preparing future expats for situations they will meet and seen, rather quaintly it now seems, as a “means for modeling behaviors”, and “learning the appropriate behaviors vicariously”: not quite experiential learning. Benefits are self confidence, relational skills and perception of target cultures. The authors also emphasize incentives, (intrinsic and extrinsic are not distinguished), without which “the person will not execute these behaviors”, which has a slightly post-Skinnerian

ring about it. Culture shock is well described as “a state of not knowing how to behave appropriately…and being overwhelmed by this anxiety”, a 1960 quote.
In chapter 35, inpatriation (is impatriation not now a more common spelling?) is seen not as a policy but as forced on companies by demand and supply for managers to work at the cross-cultural inter-face. Benefits are described but the approach is to dealing with a potential problem arising in “accelerating globalization within an organization”. This is a competency based approach, using a modified Berry quadrant model of acculturation in which misfit between integration, assimilation, separation or individualist approaches can lead to conflict between organization and inpatriate. Strategic global HRM (SGHRM) is vital to balance these multicultural and transcultural approaches.
In their paper on the classic concept of the “coffee machine system” of international selection, H. Harris and Chris Brewster suggest that for all the high flown literature reality is often different from the identification of firm’s needs, external market conditions and employee identification with management value systems reported in the 1990 “Developing
Effective Global Managers” report. Competences such as cultural empathy, technical skills, spouse orientation, motivation, and adaptability have been reported in research since the
1980’s, neatly summarized as self-efficacy, relational and perceptual skills in understanding host nationals. A 1992 finding breaks competences down to cognitive complexity, emotional energy and psychological maturity though companies still show reliance on technical skills in selection and regard the process as universalistic.
The reality, at least in British MNC’s, was found to be more closely related to personal recommendation and negotiation of conditions. Using a closed/open and formal/informal quadrant model they found that the coffee-machine system, representing the closed/informal option to be the most common selection process used in practice. This militates against managers not known to the selectors being selected and tends to work against women and would appear to be a sub-optimal method of selection.
Rosalie Tung presents a contingency framework for selection and training of expats. based on her earlier work from the 1980’s. The environment had changed substantially by 1998 with alliances common, global/local tensions greater, networked organizations, increasing diversity, competition from non-Western countries and more overseas assignments.
Globalization is neatly defined as “de-regulation on a global scale” and requires companies in the West to learn more about the rest of the world. The author sees greater complexity affecting IHRM and reiterates her contingency view since managers need to be specifically prepared for different missions. The basics of sensitivity, language training, cross-cultural personal skills and suitable expectations continue to be key to success whilst success for
IHRM lies in a holistic approach.
In the last chapter in this section, the authors supplement other approaches by proposing taking advantage of individual managers’ bi-cultural experience and bringing it to bear on international postings. They see this as more effective than the limited cross-cultural training normally offered, demonstrating parallels between the two. This strategy is predicted to lead to lower role conflict in dealing with greater cultural novelty, except in cases of specific prejudices in the host country.

The last part of the book deals with ethics and CSR cross-culturally. The first chapter is an early version of Donaldson and Dunfee’s classic analysis of ethics as social contract though the familiar terminology of hypernorms and community norms do not yet appear. The approach is basic posing the question “when is different just different and when is different wrong?” Cultural relativism is dismissed as ultimately morally blind since it suggests moral neutrality in assessing behaviour. The analysis is based on rights rather than obligations, which, as we will see in the next chapter, is far from unanimously accepted. The core values proposed are respect for human dignity, respect for basic rights and good citizenship. Obviously the real problem is in interpreting and applying these in practice; one key question is whether the practice would have been acceptable in one’s own culture at a comparable stage of development. There are many now well-known examples of ethical issues.
John Hendry takes issue with the Donaldson - Dunfee model in the next chapter and argues that ethnocentric influences in supposedly universal models are inevitable and that the developmental question Donaldson asks implies the moral superiority of one’s own culture.
He holds that the central question is whether an assessment is reciprocal, that is if one were in the other party’s situation the same value would apply, and if analysts from the two cultures concerned can reach similar judgments. This is a very densely argued article of a high intellectual standard.
Chapter 41 is an earlier article (1992) that seems to be in search of the ideas that becomes clearer in subsequent literature - including the extracts in this book. Based on a model by
Owens (1982) it sees public opinion, economic and political dimensions mediating managerial decisions in a concentric model with the manager at the centre. It is claimed there is intensity as well as direction, which is indisputable, and macro (social) and micro
(individual) levels of moral behaviour. The article does not seem to me to address issues of the importance raised in the first two chapters of this part of the book.
The next chapter offers many enlightening examples of ethical dilemmas and appeals rather unexpectedly to “Seven Cultures of Capitalism” (C. Hampden Turner) which had then just come out, on how to identify what is a moral issue. Appealing to utilitarianism, the proposed model is highly pragmatic and suggests information gathering about the values of the culture one’s dealing with, reflection on one’s own system and determining “which practices can be accommodated so that the business can go ahead”. This is presented as a yes/no algorithm for effective action. No sign of the categorical imperative here.
43 consists of early (1995) empirical studies applying the Donaldson / Dunfee social contracts model across cultures. They suggest that cross-cultural variation can be explained by varying community norms; the issue is whether they are considered to contravene any hypernorm. An example of the latter is the prohibition across cultures of extortion and bribery. In a series of vignettes respondents differed on whether the prime issue is business opportunity or ethics. The authors’ attempt to determine whether an over-arching hypernorm is involved or not though reference to the varying responses does not clarify this very much I fear, especially since the managers in different cultures are reported to differ in

the nature of the hypernorms detected. This was, however, an important attempt to put the notions of hypernorm and community norms into practice.
The last piece suggests that ethical capability can be a sustainable competitive advantage, noting de George’s (1993) reservations about the Donaldson / Dunfee social contract model and appealing for more judgment in individual cases. The argument is that from a resourcebased point of view ethical standards can be valuable to the firm. Paralleling this with the local responsiveness / global consistency approach suggests ethical standards might tend to be relativist locally but universalistic globally. This is seen as an extension of HRM-based competitive advantage: values should be rare, hard to imitate but implementable. The key to this orientation to ethical conduct stems from inspirational leadership, the facilitation of organizational learning and the strengthening of a corporate culture that encourages ethical attitudes. This requires a mix of selection and development to generate appropriate competencies by HRM together with reinforcing mechanisms such as performance appraisal and reward systems.
Barcelona, January 3 rd
2005.