Cultural Insights Series: Introduction

As part of my Cross-Cultural Management class in the Master of International Business (Madrid - Madrid/Paris) and International MBA (Madrid/New York) programs at EAE Business School, I assign students another culture to study. They are required to identify real cultural insights from that society and compare their home culture with that society's values, beliefs and attitudes, and summarize the differences.

Throughout the years, these groups turned out to be highly diverse in their composition. I have had students from Norway, Colombia, France, Uruguay, Denmark, The Netherlands, Dominican Republic, Curacao, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Philippines, Belgium, El Salvador, Andorra, Switzerland, Canada, Iran, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Martinique Island, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, and of course Spain.

With such multi culturally diverse groups the result of this assignment has been a highly interesting body of real cultural knowledge. The intention with this Cultural Insights Series that I am starting today, is to share those insights with all of you. Hopefully, with your own insights and collaboration this will turn out to be a rich source of cultural information. After all, managing in this globalized world requires sensitivity to cultural differences and to appropriate ways of doing business.

Successful international managers strive to understand cultural differences and that journey starts by achieving cultural sensitivity.