The difficulty of teaching in a variety of cultures is partly practical and partly a matter of content. The practical is not more difficult than learning from experience. This means that there are practical difficulties which are mainly difficult the first time one visits a particular country or region. They range from language to food.

What I mean by language is that it is impossible to speak all of the languages for the countries visited and therefore one often relies on the universality of the English language. But in some countries or parts of countries very few people speak (sufficient) English. This means that one has to get used to becoming efficient in communication and resilient in dealing with situations in which there is only the minimum of communication.

What I mean by food is that even the most tolerant traveler will from time to time be confronted with food that in taste or composition forms too much of a step to take. Personally, I am usually happy to try new cuisines and new tastes. But sometimes that food just does not agree with me, I have to admit. What I find particularly difficult is deviating from my breakfast routine. Most hotels all over the world will offer coffee, eggs, juice, bread, cereal and the such in a breakfast buffet. But during a recent trip to Haiku I was in a hotel where they were not used to foreigners and served me the kind of breakfast that is the custom in that part of China. I experienced that early in the morning I am not so receptive to fish and noodles with green tea (I am somewhat embarrassed to say this, because that diet will probably be more healthy than what I customarily eat for breakfast). Fortunately, they were kind enough to arrange coffee and cake for me.

More important is the difficulty in content. I teach the same courses in Peru  as in China, in Saudi Arabia as in Africa. And it is best to adjust the focus of the course to what is relevant in a particular country. I think that that is just a matter of being client-friendly as a teacher. But that is not what concerns me here.

In some parts of the world certain topics are next to impossible to draw attention to (which does not mean that I will not do it, by the way). The opposite is also true: in some parts of the world, certain topics are received with enthusiasm. The challenge is to use such preferences, without deviating too much from the core of the course.

An example can be found in what happened when I was teaching about culture in Nanjing, in March 2009. It was an executive course, which meant that the students were on average a bit older than otherwise and less proficient in speaking English, as a result of which I had to work with interpreters. As I was about to explain the various models for comparing national cultures, the class president stood up and gave a long and very expressive speech, which I only learned the contents of after the, somewhat intimidated interpreters had explained it to me. Apparently, he was upset to hear that he would learn about other cultures and all he wanted to know was why people in “the West” had such a “wrong” impression of the situation in Tibet (it was the week in which the Chinese government celebrated 50 years of “liberation” of Tibet). I can imagine that people from a country with a strong culture, especially if this is combined with limited exposure to people from other cultures, are less inclined to study other cultures. But it motivates me the more to do so nonetheless. What I did in this particular case is make clear to them that understanding other cultures would given them a better position for presenting Chinese culture, which did seem to motivate them.

What is often difficult is mentioning homosexuality. This subject usually comes up in teaching about discimination, after discussing discrimination by ethnic background and discrimination by gender. This subject is particularly sensitive in African and Middle Eastern countries (and other predominantly Muslim countries, as I learned in Malaysia). What I try to do in teaching about this subject is not preach according to my own sense of morality; no, the students are entitled to their own moral choices. But I do want them to be able to explain those choices. If you think you should not hire a woman “because she is weak” or a homosexual “because he would corrupt morality”, are you acting from prejudice or from solid argumentation? Are you in those cases acting fairly towards those who depend on your fair leadership? Are you acting in the interest of your company? I treat this largely as a matter of conceptual clarity. For instance, if someone does not hire a woman “because she is weak”, I will not deny that it is unattractive to hire a 'weak' person. But is being a woman necessarily the same as being weak? In terms of logic, it only takes one counter-example, while probably most of us know more than one counter-example. It is understandable to not want to hire a 'weak' person, but if that is the point then do not talk about not hiring woman, but about checking all candidates for signs of 'weakness'. After all, in that case a 'weak' man would also not do.

Also, often women are called 'weak' because they are rumored to be more emotional than men (I leave aside here, whether that is actually the case). But this aspect of femininity, assumed that it is there, may also prove to be an asset in organizations with more emphasis on leadership and maintaining relationships.

The same applies to homosexuals. Do they really “corrupt morality”? People who live out their sexual needs all day may indeed have a disrupting effect, but would that not also be the case with heterosexuals who live out their sexuality (especially in Africa)? Again, get your use of concepts straight and talk not about “homosexuals corrupting morals”, but about the damaging effects of all those who act in ways which might corrupt morality.

In some countries you hear the fear that allowing homosexuals to be who they are would lead to a kind of epidemic, as they would then 'infect' other men (typically, the people in those countries who talk in these terms do not worry about homosexual women). This is a fear with men who are concerned about their heterosexual sexuality, afraid that being exposed to homosexuals would rob them of that sexuality. This is not something for me to discuss in class (I can hardly counsel my students on their sexuality, can I?), but I can try to make at least some of them reflect on their attitudes and statements.

More positive, but also potentially distracting, is where a subject is treated eagerly by students. For instance, my students in Haiku (December 2009) were quite eager to discuss the subject of leadership. They had great expectations of that subject, but not much experience with it (the only students who mentioned his boss when I asked for examples of leaders said “he is a leader, because he is my boss, so he must be a leader”). Maybe this is because when I talk about motivation and I ask them to write down what for them is the most serious source of demotivation, most write down “my boss”. So they think about leadership from the experience of being frustrated about it and being willing to think about ways to prevent that in the future.

Another example comes from my first visit to Rwanda, where I had to teach business ethics. Discussing discrimination is one topic within that course. Going there, I felt that I had been given an important task. Only ten years before that, they discriminated each other to the point of genocide and now I had to discuss this topic with them. But to my amazement and joy, they jumped on it. It is as if the genocide had taught them to take ethics seriously (much more serious at least than what I experienced in my own country, where everybody seems to think that bad things only happen elsewhere). Of course, this did not mean that the issue was not sensitive, which it was (most of the students had lost at least one relative in the genocide). What was sensitive was something they recognized in each other and talking about it was apparently a relief to them.

Sensitivities can be complicating when teaching in other cultures. It is my experience that it does not help to be too careful; about sensitivities. For instance, in Saudi Arabia gender relations are very sensitive, but that does not mean that the students would not be able or willing to discuss them. When teaching there in October 2009, both the students in Al Khobar and the students in Jeddah were willing to discuss that particular issue (even the ladies in nikab). It is my impression that not ignoring sensitive issues, while realizing the risk in making them explicit, helps to build trust. It may not always be feasible to arrive at consensus, but that is, in my view, not the job of a teacher; it is about offering reflection and establishing communication as a channel of learning.

In december 2008 I visited Kampala. There I taught the course Managing Cultural Diversity, which went very well.

The most remarkable event perhaps was that I was addressed one day by one of the other guests, a Kenian, who mistook me for the British manager of the hotel. When I pointed out to him that I was not the manager, he said "all white people look alike". Well, maybe so. Still I find it odd, as for me not all "black people look alike".

In August 2008 I was in Arusha (Tanzania) and Lilongwe (Malawi). In both places, I have spent a week to teach the MCD course: Managing Cultural Diversity, which combines international human resource management with intercultural management.

I have the impression that it is slowly becoming clear to me what 'intercultural' means in Africa.  Maybe there is a lesson in this for all of us. We are often inclined to think about 'culture' in terms of "the great cultures of the world", but that may just make the whole notion of 'culture' too complex. After all, 'culture' is about "what people collectively and traditionally cultivate". In other words, in order to understand culture, you have to look beyond the obvious - "Chinese are different from Americans" - and observe what a particular group of people together is cultivating over time. They may look no different from other people, but if they cultivate different behavious and mindsets than other people, they have a different culture.

To give an example: my students in Nairobi told me that there are 56 cultures in Kenia. I found that hard to believe, but I had no real reason not to believe it. I decided to look more closely and asked them about the behaviours and mindsets they were used to cultivate. Then some students told me that eating chicken was taboo for women in their background. Hearing this, other students were surprised, because they were used to declaring eating chicken taboo for men, not women. The two groups of students probably have more in common than wat divided them, but they came from different traditions and represent different cultures (taboos concerning chicken was not the only thing on which they had differring customs).

The point I am trying to make is that you have to bring such nuances to the surface in order to understand why people reagard each other as 'different'. By the way, doing so does not imply making value statements. Regarding other people as different does not mean that you regard them as inferior at all; it might just as well mean that you feel enriched by what is different from what you are used to.

In het afgelopen jaar ben ik betrokken geworden bij de leergang Anti Fraude Professional, aangeboden door International Management Forum.

Deze leergang is ontwikkeld door een select gezelschap van zeer ervaren professionals. Het biedt praktische informatie voor eenieder die binnen organisaties verantwoordelijk is voor het voorkomen en bestrijden van fraude.

In de leergang Anti Fraude Professional worden verschillende aspecten van de problematiek toegeklicht en hanteerbaar gemaakt. Dit varieert van bedrijfscultuur tot economisch rechercheren, van juridische zaken tot IT. Hoewel enige achtergrond wel geboden wordt, ligt de nadruk steeds op direkt toepasbare kennis.

De bij de leergang betrokken deskundigen hebben in hun praktijk ondervonden dat aan de ene kant fraude een steeds complexer fenomeen wordt en dat aan de andere kant fraude een steeds ernstiger uitwerking heeft op de processen en resultaten van organisaties. Zij raden u deze leergang dan ook van harte aan.

Voor meer informatie, kunt u kijken naar de informatie op de website. U kunt ook bellen met IMF:  (040) 246 02 20.

Graag nodigen wij u uit voor een Diner Pensant op donderdag 3 april 2008, van 16.30 – 21.00 uur in het Duurzaam Ondernemingscentrum Culemborg (DOCC), te Culemborg.

Het diner is getiteld “Ontwikkelen en ervaren van kennisproductiviteit”. We willen de gasten laten proeven aan verschillende benaderingen van kennis. Daarbij komen ook aan bod de denkstijlen van Ned Hermann (zie het boek van Teun van Aken, Kennis maken met Denkwerk), alsmede andere aspecten van kennis, zoals wat er mannelijk of vrouwelijk is aan kennis.

We benaderen kennis zowel als datgene wat binnen organisatie processen bijdraagt tot succes, als ook als datgene dat maatschappelijk nodig is om broodnodige verbeteringen te bereiken; twee kanten van dezelfde medaille.

De unieke locatie – het Duurzaam Ondernemeningszentrum Culemborg – draagt sterk bij aan de sfeer van creativiteit en reflectie waarin wij smakelijke gerechten aan u willen voorschotelen.

U bent van harte uitgenodigd mee te dineren en daarvoor eerst het formulier in te sturen.

Met vriendelijke groeten,

Jolanda Verburg

Marlou van Beek

Teun van Aken

Joop Remmé

In the past year I have taught courses in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) and Kazakhstan (Almaty).

Both countries show strong economic growth, accompanied with environmental concerns and with being opened up to world markets and international developments. An aspect of these developments is the growing professionalisation of managers. Those who I found facing me in the classroom were proof to that.

From November 18th until December 2d, I was in Kigali to teach a course on Leading Change in Multinationals. This was my second visit to Rwanda, after two years.

What I noticed this time, in comparison to two yeras ago, was that there improvements in infrastructure (roads, internet, banking facilities) and that there were far fewer guns around (two years ago, I had an aremed guard protecting the school and this time this was not the case). But I also got the impression that the people had become more assertive.

The course deals with the topics change, leadership, organizational design, strategy, corporate social responsibility. Because of the nature of these topics, it is always different when I teach it in different locations. Although the content of the course is the same everywhere - one of the guarantees we offer at the Maastricht School of Management -, the context is different per location, whether I teach the course in China, Egypt, The Netherlands or Africa.

Especially Rwanda is a particular place to teach the course. Change, leadership and societal responsibility are strong issues in the country, as it saw a genocide 12 years ago of which the traces are still noticeable and it is experiencing strong economic development. To my students in Rwanda, who typically hold responsible positions in a variety of organizations, it is all but obvious that they have to take those issues seriously if they are to leave the past and develop towards a more stable and prosperous civilization. Perhaps managers in Europe could learn a lot from the mentality of my Rwandan students and see how responsibility can pave the way towards prosperity.

On November 2, a ´thinking dinner´ will be held on the subject of the use of knowledge within organizations. The dinnen will be preceeded with a website, where the participants in the diner can read about knowledge, place their points of view and respond to others (on the basis of a cutting edge knowledge management too - Synmind (at the moment, in Dutch) -, which is at the same time very natural in use).

The applicationform is in Dutch, but sending an e-mail is all that is needed to receive the information in English.

In connection with the dinner, a training course is offered. The basic idea for this course is that knowledge is not the domain of a particular department, staffed by high brow individuals, but is in fact owned and needed by pretty much all members of an organisation, whether they work in the cafetaria or in the planning department (again, the brochure is in Dutch, but sending an e-mail is all it takes to receive its contents in English).

With Ram Ramsahai of Multiplus (look at ' links' ), a  training course "Integrity" has been developed. In the course, we empower the individual to act according to integrity and to have insight in behavioral, social and organizational infringements on integrity. The participants are trained in terms of their own roles and responsibilties in their own organizations.

It is important to stress that we do not just look at integrity as a problem ("we have integrity issues in our organization"), although we do take that very seriously, but also as an opportunity ("how can we strengthen the capabilities of this organization through building on integrity").

The assumption is that integrity is taking place within relationships. It is not just about the character of the individual, but much more about the reliable behaviour of that individual within the relationships that person finds himself or herself in.

Earlier this month I was in Nanjing. China, where I taught a course in Corporate Restructuring to a class of executives. One of the things which I learned in teaching this course is that many issues and concerns that play a role in organizations in Europe and the US also play a role in Chinese organizations; in other words, organizational life is to a fair degree universal (I was after all teaching about the human aspects of organizational change and had expected more variance because of that human dimension). At the same time, the nuances may well vary. Perhaps one major challenge in the globalized business environment is that a manager increasingly has to be flexible enough to readjust the balance of what is universal and what is typically local.

One other thing that I noticed is that where corporate social responsibility is for Western managers often a new development, it appeared to be rather natural to my students in Nanjing. Of course, I do not know how representative they are, but it does offer food for thought.

Yesterday I was teaching a module within a program on Corporate Social Responsibility. The participants were from various countries in Africa and Asia.

The main topic was corruption, with a very practical perspective: how to fight it? The approach I took is to fight corruption by not focusing too much on it. Rather, you could focus on what it takes to make organizations more responsible to clients, to society, to the environment, to future generations. What does it take for a person to feel responsibility and what would it then take for an organization?

Probably, the first step in fighting corruption would be making people in and around organizations aware of responsiblities and expectations, and of their own role therein. As with many organizational problems, part of the problem is the individual's disenchantment with issues and the organization, as a result of which he or she does not even want to feel responsibility any more.

Also, I have suggested to the students that solution focused consulting could me more practical than traditional problem solving in fighting corruption. Where in the traditional approach you analyze the situation, map out what the gap is between the current and the required situation and then develop actions plans, which in the case of corruption fighting would have to be rather massive, one could also develop a picture of the desired situation and then see which of the actions that are already undertaken go in that direction or could be adjusted to go in that direction; a much more motivating approach.

Just now I have placed a new text on the site about the relationships between ethics and nature. In this text, I use a theory from Neoplatonism to structure the thinkiing in good and bad, especially within organizations.

The text can be found in "issues" > "what to do with values".

In the past month, I have been teaching Introduction into Human Resource Management in Cuwait. This was yet another test to see how well the MBA curriculum travels.

Most of the HRM specialism applies in Cuwait and was recognized by the students. Still, certain emphases were different. For instance, in the handbook sexual harassment was given quite a bit of attention, presumably from the sensitivities and issues in the modern US business context. In Cuwait, the issue was also important, primarily due to Islam, but I got the impression that the Cuwaiti culture had removed much of the sting out of the issue. What was much more of an issue was equity and fair treatment, which is understandable in a country where most of the work is done by foreigners, ranging from Lebanese managers to store clerks from the Filippines, from US expats to Iraqi refugees.

At the same time, the international content of the MBA curriculum serves as a standard in societies where change is felt and more change is expected, involving a globalized business context.

From November 17 until November 26, I will be teaching business ethics at the School of Finance and Banking in Kigali, Ruanda. The emphasis will be on international developments.

18/11/2004: Having worked in Kigali for several days, I have to think back to what happened as I left from Amsterdam: the lady at the airport who gave me my boarding card asked me for my destination and the reason for my trip (I wondered why she needed to know that, but perhaps she was just making conversation). When I told her that I was going to teach a course on business ethics, she asked in surprise: "Is that relevant over there?", upon which I replied "It is relevant everywhere." But I still have to think about this occurrance. The lady acted as if business ethics is not relevant to developing countries (I have to admit that I did not talk to the lady long enough to know for sure whether this was what she was thinking). If that is the case, the question would be like the question I used to hear from managers in my own country: "why do I need ethics? I only have to do my job".

If you continue that line of reasoning, you will see more 'Bhopals': if in developing countries, and elsewhere, we disregard the ethical issues, will we not get more such tragedies?

The students I am teaching were not wondering if business ethics is relevant to them. They are more than eager to talk about sustainability, discrimination, codes of ethics, the consequences of globalisation and many such issues. Is that not the right reason for teaching them business ethics, their interest, in a very practical way, in these issues?

On November 9, I will give a presentation at the Maastricht School of Management to visiting students from Malta and Peru. The topic of this introductory presentation will be "business ethics".

The presentation will introduce business ethics as a field and a range of issues, present the case of a large retail chain in the clothing industry, analyse this case using a stakeholder method and then go more deeply into one of the issues, child labor.

To_sustainable_management

Today I added a new text in the section on Organizational Developments > Towards sustainable ways of organizing and business > To sustainable management. In this text I raise some questions regarding expanding the stakeholder approach that is so important to corporate social responsibility and sustainability to include generations that are not born yet, as testifying to the quality of the decisions we make today.

From Oktober 18 until Oktober 24, I will be teaching Principles of Management on Malta. What are those principles in this day and age?

On Oktober 18, after having studied the textbook, I realize that the book (Stephen Robbins/ David Decenzo, Fundamentals of Management) is very US oriented, while I am about to meet students from a culture that is amazingly international and eclectic. What will they expect from the course? To become like US managers? I wonder, if that is in their interests, but I have to see if I can actually make them reflect on their own expectations.

Oktober19: How well do principles of management travel?

Oktober 20: Not surprisingly, some aspects of management travel better than other aspects. For instance, structuring an organisation appears more or less tha same through a diversity of cultures, while the decisions that are part of strategy formulation and implementation are sensitive to cultural differences. Probably, culture will more and more play a role in the nitty gritty of management. One reason for that is that the more the structuring of an organisation takes the human element into account, the more the characteristics of human realities will play a role.

On Oktober 20, I discussed leadership with the students. Many of the same issues heard elsewhere were raised by the students. They did not hesitate to mention examples of leadership from the public arena, such as Nelson Mandela and the soccer hero Zidane, but they had a hard time thinking of examples from the business world.

Also, surprisingly for me, they mentioned leadership examples seperate from the moral dimension. What I mean by this is that they mentioned examples of people who by most people are regarded as ' immoral', such as Hitler, while recognising that they must have had some leadership quality to do what they did. In other words, the students realized that there can be clear negative aspects to leadership, such as giving power to an immoral and destructive person. 

Unless, you associate leadership not so much with the qualities of a single individual, but with the qualities in a culture of people working together; a thought immediately recognized by the students. And then the leadership attributed with the person in charge is of a different nature, such as participative leadership or consultative leadership. That person may still be the 'editor' of the meaning that is created (a role Kets de Vries points at), but it will be the meaning of the whole group, expressing their identity, motives and objectives. It will also empower the people involved to be the leaders of their own (productive) destinies.