HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Across Cultures

by Harvard Business Review, Jeanne Brett (Contributor), Yves L. Doz (Contributor)

Put an end to miscommunication and inefficiency―and tap into the strengths of your diverse team. If you read nothing else on managing across cultures, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you manage culturally diverse employees, whether they’re dispersed around the world or you’re working with a multicultural team in a single location. This book will inspire you

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Management, Self Help, Psychology

176 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2016

Reviews

[Stewart]

The final two sections are entitled "lost in translation" and "the right way to manage expats". There is seriously valuable information in the latter article with regards to cross-cultural competency and statistics relations to expatriate experiences.

In the former, there is a distinct focus on the relationship with failure and offers some questions to ask to illuminate this relationship. These questions are as follows:

1. Are failures a fact of life or can they be avoided by planning?
2. What would you do if a friend made a professional mistake on which you needed to report it publicly?
3. Is it individual creativity or team consensus that is most important for avoiding mistakes?
4. Do you address criticism to the task or the person?
5. Is the seriousness of a mistake affected by the person who made it or not?
6. Are failures attributed to a person or team involved or to the department head?

[Petya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though it’s a bit dated in general, the book is a good starting point if you’re facing the challenges of multicultural work environments for the first time. The first few articles are more applicable to the distributed web development business which I’m particularly interested in. The majority though deal with topics relevant to a broader corporate perspective, and don’t dig particularly deep into any of them, and I can recommend them only as a starting point to map out concepts of interest to explore further. Be that as it may, as someone interested in all aspects of multicultural management this was a quick and curious read.

[Yesica Aguirre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very dynamic and interesting way of talking about working through different cultures and the impact it could have in productivity and performance itself, most important how people and companies need to adapt to the different cultures in and endless process to redefine he new standard. Another must read to increase our performance in or work environment and most in our managing skills courtesy of HBR.

[Keiran · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this at the airport on the way home, I didn't take away much from this, as I would of assumed alot of this was straight forward, this will be going onto the shelf.

The articles themselves are interesting and may be useful to someone working in a senior position, at a very large company otherwise it may not be worth the read.

[Ashish Piplani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breezy, gives a good sensitivity on culture. E.g. a grasshopper is a pet in china, delicacy in thailand and insect in India

[Pang Khong Yun · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick review on the international management.

[Mary Wyman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was for a class.

[Arun Narayanaswamy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scattered content like most hbr books. Not something I enjoyed much.
The last chapter on benefits and managing expats was a good learning.