Managing Across Cultures: The Seven Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset Hardcover – May 18, 2009

This book was purchased for college. The price was reasonable and I was also able to resell the book and make some of my money back.

Clear and consistent advice and research on how the differences in cultures can and do affect global business. Refer to this regularly.

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Managing Across Cultures is a wonderfully interesting and useful book from two masters of the intercultural field.As an individual who has already experienced life in other cultures and countries, I realize the value of being aware of culture in its many manifestations. Managing Across Cultures reinforces and deciphers all the feelings and situations I'd been through in the past, paving the way for an even more successful experience in the future.For those who are new to working and living in a globally connected, interdependent world, cultural cues may be hard to recognize, which is why this book is so key to living in the 21st century.Everyone, not only businesspeople, should be required to know and recognize culture. The book also made me discover the inherent strength of multicultural teams, companies, countries, etc. Managing Across Cultures made me realize that diverse organizations are usually the most successful and that being prepared to take advantage of working in a multicultural setting is vital to achieving that success.This book engenders a greater appreciation for diversity, showing how incredibly bright and stimulating it can be to communicate and, of course, manage across cultures. I give this book my highest recommendation.

I am not embarrassed to admit that I am currently reading The History of France for Dummies. This "Dummy" series of books, written at the lay level in accessible language and reader friendly organization, could have been a good publisher for Solomon and Schell's latest book. It could have done well as "Managing across Cultures for Dummies."Before you accuse me of panning the product, let me explain. Managing across Cultures is a thorough, well written, simple presentation of intercultural management boilerplate, suitable for those seeking a comprehensive introduction to the field. If is a useful starting point for students starting in a management program as well as a practical read for first time managers facing the realities of global teamwork and the possibility of overseas assignments or engagements.The authors present well the problems and challenges of working in international, multicultural environments with copious verbal and graphic illustrations of the problems, supportive case studies, theories about and approaches to intercultural challenges in business. The writing is simple, understandable and ESL compassionate. Despite its close to 350 pages, digestible in a couple hours.At the core of the opus is the authors' distillation of the Hall, Hofstede, Trompenaars intercultural models--nothing new or cutting edge here, just clear reductionist presentation with copious examples, tips and best practices. The authors contend that understanding this culture general framework created by classic researchers is a viable tool for both self analysis and coping with intercultural challenges one will meet at home and abroad. It serves as a starting point for what the author's describe as "developing a global mentality."The book attempts to engage the reader actively in measuring his or her own position in the ranges of cultural difference in each of the seven key dimensions. This self awareness is assumed to facilitate the understanding of the cases and challenges described as well as ones that will be met along the way in real life.Additionally, the authors have attempted to connect the reader through the book to their website for forum type discussion. Since the release date of the book, however, their web forums do not seem to have been populated to any degree. I suspect this is due to two things. The first is that hardcover book readers, perhaps even Kindle readers, are not used to or motivated to mix online learning with printed text. Secondly, I found the questions raised for discussion in the book and then repeated online were far too vague to be either interesting or challenging.The penultimate chapter is dedicated to "Women Crossing Cultures," presenting challenges unique to them and tips again based on the "Seven Keys." The book closes with a discussion of the traditional model of the cycle of culture shock in the expatriate experience.Managing across Cultures is US American in style. It appears largely written for that market, also in the sense that it pays no attention to the context of history or the role of national or organizational politics in the cultural mix. Finally it purveys a certain easy-as-pie, can-do optimism. The dust jacket touts it as an "in depth strategic guide," suggesting that it contains is all that super(wo)man need to know to avoid being enfeebled by the kryptonite of culture. One is armed with stories of the great gaffes of the past and destined to succeed in a global future.In sum, knowing something about cultural dynamics is a useful start, but only a start on the challenge to know and appreciate the real people into whose lives and cultures global business will take us.

[[ASIN:0071605851 Managing Across Cultures: The 7 Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset] Nowhere does the saying "Don't leave home without it" apply more powerfully than to Solomon and Schell's new book, "Managing Across Cultures." It's "must reading" for anyone who in business, or even socially, mixes with people of other cultures. In the world of the 21st century, that encompasses a large segment of the population. While "Managing Across Cultures" is geared towards businesses, its teachings and applications extend far beyond the "business" community.The book is well thought-out, well organized, well written, and extremely easy and enjoyable to digest. It's enormously informative. Clearly, its subject matter is one about which Solomon and Schell know an enormous amount. Without trying very hard, you can spend many thousands of dollars consulting with experts in the field of cross-cultural training. Why not learn more spending just a few hours reading this book?Highest recommendations!

I work for a small company with development sites in 6 countries and customers on three continents so have to cope with a wide array of differences in cultural expectations. Initially I liked the book - it offers a framework for discussing cultural differences in a non-judgmental way. For this it has been useful among the set of managers that has read it, but I have found relying on the classifications by nation in the book to be problematic. I especially lost it when they were highlighting differences between US and British engineers in addressing risk. The book describes a case study where differences in approach to risk mitigation were causing problems. While the case study may be accurate, and the differences may be real, they were no predicted by the ratings provided for US and British culture. In other words, they were describing a problem that they were claiming could be been predicted and mitigated by taking their advice when looking at their data did not suggest the problem. I dislike when things are not at least self consistent.

Presented to my team and it created some interesting conversation! We are a multicultural society. This opens conversation enabling more understanding about where people are coming from.Thanks.

Non tutte le culture soo uguali. Ogni approccio ha la sua cultura, si potrebbe dire ... uno stimolo ad andare oltre lo stereotipo dei concetti del management