Cross-cultural management

Don't just build your leadership muscle - find new muscles.

Multicultural teams offer a number of advantages to international firms, including deep knowledge of different product markets, culturally sensitive customer...

How to promote candor across cultural, gender, and generational divides

Yang Jianguo was promoted from country manager for China to global head of product development at a staid French perfume maker. How to shed some biases and win over his Western, tradition-bound colleagues—while still breathing new life into an aging product line?

With few exceptions, Americans are relative newcomers on the international business scene. Today, as in Mark Twain’s time, we are all too often “innocents abroad,” in an era when naiveté and blundering in foreign business dealings may have serious political repercussions. When the American executive travels abroad to do business, he is frequently shocked to […]

How to tackle a management role in a new cultural and regulatory environment.

Because of growing commitments of their companies in developing countries, large numbers of American and European managers have entered negotiations with government officials in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Also, with emerging nationalism, these negotiations have become increasingly frustrating. Sometimes misunderstandings have been so great that they have led to a breakdown in negotiations that […]

The first wave of foreign direct investment in China, in the 1980s, mostly took the form of joint ventures. A second wave followed in the 1990s in the form of greenfield wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs). Now a third wave of foreign direct investment—cross-border mergers and acquisitions—is gaining strength. Consider the forces driving this third wave. […]

Chinese business culture is unique, but not in all the ways outsiders tend to assume. To identify the most common myths, we interviewed dozens of North American and European expats as well as some Chinese managers now working in the West, all of whom have spent at least three years doing business in China. Our […]

Just focusing on differences isn’t enough.

In an increasingly diverse business environment, managers must be able to navigate the thicket of habits, gestures, and assumptions that define their...

And how to rise to the challenge.

A new study of American and Chinese counterparts.

For the last decade, the Gallup Organization has surveyed the people of China, as both consumers of goods and employees of the companies that produce those goods. The data provide a unique picture of changing consumer attitudes, market opportunities, and management challenges.

Four pitfalls to avoid.

Generational identity should be a source of learning, not division.

How can an understated watch brand stand out in China?

Firms need to understand the people and places they affect.

How decision making, communication, and dark-side tendencies vary.

Decision by ‘consensus,’ lifetime employment, continuous training, and the godfather system suggest ways to solve U.S. problems