A detailed, helpful, and well-written guide to developing and sustaining cross-cultural partnerships.
A manual focuses on making successful professional connections in the Arab world.
In this book, Hornok draws on a long experience working in Arab countries to counsel readers on the most effective ways to deal with businesses in the region. The guide begins with a psychological approach to establishing interpersonal connections, urging readers from other cultures to understand their own mindsets and enter into interactions from an open and nonjudgmental perspective. (Problematic emotions are personified throughout the volume; examples of what Hornok calls “Emotional Hinderers”—“Relentless Judgment,” “Aggressive Inner Critic,” and “Incensed Anger Rascal,” among others—appear in several places, occasionally accompanied by Sung’s illustrations.) The author explores the role of small talk, the importance of family loyalty and bonds, and methods of coming to agreement, with numerous examples provided for each topic. Hornok also addresses cultural taboos and the appropriate use of humor in business settings. Anecdotes from international and Arab businesspeople—some named and some anonymous, with each speaker identified by country of origin and industry—make up much of the narrative. They serve as inspiration for the author’s methodical and persuasive analysis of what was done right and wrong in each situation as well as how the underlying principles of these specific incidents can be more broadly applied. The volume also encourages readers to adopt key strategies like the “From Inside to Outside technique” (fostering a “positive inner attitude”) and “the Gas-Shift-Brake technique” (calculating how much pressure to exert and when to pull back) in their interactions, with Hornok making frequent mention of the concepts throughout the work. Taken together, the book’s elements offer a step-by-step guide to establishing the relationships that make business transactions succeed.
From the manual’s opening pages, the author presents a convincing case for developing cross-cultural understanding as a crucial business skill and a minimum qualification for working internationally. Readers will not be left wondering about the value of the volume’s advice, as the anecdotes provide many stories of deals and sales achieved through understanding local norms and methods. Overgeneralization is always a risk in books that attribute traits to an entire region or culture, but Hornok does much to mitigate this by including a wide range of first-person accounts from Arab professionals throughout the region (“The personal relationship is equally as important as the business relationship itself,” an Omani reports), demonstrating that the values dissected in these pages are more shared reality than stereotype. The “Emotional Hinderers,” which are further discussed in an appendix, can feel overused, especially when Hornok encourages readers to address them directly (“So, dear ‘Relentless Judgment,’ I’m asking you, politely, to relax”). But the anthropomorphizing of emotions detracts little from the volume’s overall effectiveness. The author is knowledgeable about the realities of working in Arab countries and does a good job of transmitting that expertise in an authoritative and straightforward way, acknowledging cultural differences without making value judgments. The section examining small talk as an essential feature of business conversations is particularly well done, showing how extensive preparations for minor discussions can deliver substantial results. On the whole, the book is comprehensive, well organized, and skillfully crafted, a useful tool for Westerners looking to attain a professional win in a different part of the world.
A detailed, helpful, and well-written guide to developing and sustaining cross-cultural partnerships.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-367-26502-1
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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