Global Leadership and Culture (Master's level)

You will be asked to bring in examples of diversity / international cultural problems that you have experienced in the workplace. You will decide on specific topics that you will present in teams. In order for you to be able to be more self-critical and objective about your experiences, we will discuss how the breadth and complexity of the topic can be understood and analyzed. The various definitions of culture show how so many perspectives can create a conflict of understanding, but also give possibilities to for understanding contexts for cultural conflicts. You will learn to understand how various cultures think differently both in various countries and over time, and how “culture” is inseparable from history, politics, societal issues, and even geography and technology. The goal is for you to understand that culture is fluid and changing, calling into question existing assumptions of rigid cultural frameworks. The outcome of this part is a critical thinking of cultural assumptions/behavior as well as a self-assessment of personal cultural contexts. We will also focus on theoretical inputs dealing with diversity / cultural issues in the workplace, and a management framework that is needed to create a context for managing cultural diversity. We will discuss various kinds of work groups, international and individual impacts on teamwork, various diversity issues (e.g. age, gender, homogeneity / heterogeneity) that impact the workgroups, as well as a company’s responsibility in creating the framework for workgroups. The goal here is for the students to understand that cultural openness and diversity in a company requires a conscious framework. At the end of this course, you will be asked to apply learning from the theoretical inputs to personal experiences. Critical thinking and self-assessment as well as the definitions and framework topics from the previous lectures will be applied to your diversity / international cultural management working experiences introduced in the beginning. In groups, you will apply course learning and present your analyses of a select number of experiences introduced in the first part. You will need to explain the reasons these problems have occurred within an international socio-historical-cultural context. You will analyze the company’s and employees’ roles and responsibilities for the cause. And finally, you will recommend steps for improvement or frameworks for solutions. The goal behind this is to show how solutions or improvements can be created by the application of theoretical frameworks and changes in cultural thinking.