These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Economist Bergmann (American Univ.; The Economic Emergence of Women, 1986) presents a persuasive case on behalf of a concept that is under fierce attack. Opponents of affirmative action claim there is no longer widespread discrimination against women and minorities; that affirmative action treats white males unfairly; that it elevates less-qualified candidates; and that it reintroduces the kind of quotas once used to discriminate against Jews and other minorities. Bergmann offers what is in essence an extended legal brief, considering these and other arguments against affirmative action in light of the evidence, and then presenting her case on affirmative action's behalf. She cites surveys proving the continued existence of discrimination and offers numerous examples of affirmative action no one finds objectionable: the preferences colleges show to children of alumni and to athletes, for example; or the way business owners may overlook more qualified candidates to hire members of their families. Bergmann maintains that programs aimed at improving the status of women and minorities promise far greater dividends, including a society made healthier by reduced poverty and an easing of tensions between races. Such dividends, she writes, justify occasional losses inflicted on individual white men by ``affirmative action's removal of white men's privilege of exclusive access to high-paying jobs.'' She also argues that they justify numerical goals in hiring and admissions, because no other remedies have proved effective in ending discrimination. She acknowledges the ``quotalike aspects'' of such goals but insists that quotas used on behalf of the excluded are not the same as quotas used to exclude. Thanks to Bergmann's legalistic style, her book is not riveting. It is, however, convincing—a significant contribution to the debate over affirmative action. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-465-09833-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
A scientific attack on luxury that, though a little preachy, is not just an ascetic diatribe. Despite the truism that you can’t buy happiness, most people believe more money will make them happy. The reason for this self-deception, Frank (co-author with Philip J. Cook of The Winner-Take-All Society, 1995) argues, is that unlike the hypothetical independent agents of economic theory, real people compare themselves to others when formulating desires. Indeed, externally derived indicators of what we “need” are so powerful in shaping choices that “on the best available scientific evidence, we seem not to be spending our money in the ways that would most promote our own interests.” Consideration of what truly makes people happy would lead to, for example, buying smaller homes and less expensive cars and diverting the resources saved into “less conspicuous forms of consumption,” like more time for family and friends. Questioning the wisdom of working longer hours to facilitate buying more expensive toys and thereby sacrificing the time to play with them is nothing new, of course, but what sets Frank’s effort apart is his refusal to be a moral nag. Rather than beating us over the head with the puritannical strains of American culture, he presents systematic evidence that conspicuous consumption fails to achieve its intended goals. Having made his case that opulence at the top of the economic pyramid is skewing individual decisions throughout society in objectively unfortunate ways, he then proposes a progressive consumption tax as a way to rein in spending on luxuries by the rich. He closes the volume with a vigorous argument against trickle-down economics and for the proposition that progressivity embedded in a consumption tax will invigorate the economy. The chances that his ideas will be widely embraced are, of course, approximately equivalent to the chances that manufacturers will stop using human envy to sell their products, but they are nevertheless worth considering.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-84234-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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