Business Across Cultures

369 Pages·2003·4.05 MB·English

by  Fons Trompenaars

For Hasan Ozbekhan
Because he started to give us the essence of organizational and
system thinking

Copyright©2003byFonsTrompenaarsandPeterWoolliams
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Contents
Introduction 1
1 Theorganizationasaculturalconstruct 11
2 Theorganizationofmeaning:introducingvaluedimensions 23
3 Furthervaluedimensions 61
4 Corporateculture 99
5 Managingchangeandcontinuityacrosscultures 153
6 Marketingacrosscultures 181
7 ManagingHRdilemmasacrosscultures 239
8 Financeandaccountingacrosscultures 273
9 Thequestforanewparadigmofinternationalleadership 291
10 Thereconcilingorganization 315
Notesandbibliography 349
Index 353
v

INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION

A
s business becomes more global and the workforce ever
more diverse, the issue of “culture” becomes increasingly
importantforleadersandmanagersandtheirorganizations.
Ofcoursemanyresearchersandauthorshavealreadywrittenabout
culture. Models and frameworks have been developed and
described, ranging from early anthropological investigations
throughtostudiesofnationalandorganizationalculture.However,
mostexistingworkshavetendedtofocusonknowledgeofcultures.
Thisbook,andothersintheseries,isconcernedwithknowledgefor
cultures,andprovidesanewconceptualframeworkfordealingwith
thebusinessimplicationsofculture.Ouraimistoprovideapractical
toolkit for managers and leaders by helping them develop a new
mindset for working with and across cultures. As readers will dis-
cover, there is an entirely different logic flowing throughout this
book, one breaking away from traditional management texts which
are often overly influenced by Anglo-American research and think-
ing.
The readers of our previous books and publications, together with
audiences from conference presentations, have told us that they
needanorganizedbodyofknowledgebeyondsimplerecognitionof
culturaldifferencesinabusinesscontext.Theadvantageoftheear-
lier works was that they helped managers structure their own
experiencesandunderstandthattheywereseeingtheworldnotasit
is,butfromtheperspectiveofwhotheywere.Increasingly,however,
they have demanded a generic-solution framework to help them
develop their cross-cultural competence, and enable them to be
moreeffectiveindoingbusinessandmanagingacrosscultures.
The new thinking and knowledge presented in this book has
resulted from a synergistic mix of a number of sources. The first is
ourownrigorousresearch.Thishasincludedfundamental,applied,
3