CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT LEARNING & EDUCATION: EXPLORING MULTIPLE AIMS, APPROACHES AND IMPACTS Sponsor: Academy of Management Learning & Education Description: As part of the intense globalization of businesses and societies over the past few decades, millions of organization members, managers and executives find themselves dealing with colleagues and customers who grew up in a different culture from their own and who, in more ways than one, speak a ‘different language.’ Moreover, skills shortages and economic conditions in many parts of the world have elicited mass migration of workers across borders, with some countries experiencing a rapid shift from cultural homogeneity to cultural heterogeneity (e.g., Ireland). Not surprisingly, the parochial assumption that ‘one-size fits all’ in management practices has to be abandoned in favor of acknowledgement that culture shapes not only our social interactions and behaviors, but also what motivates and affects our attitudes, feelings and actions at the workplace. Taken together, these events have led to the acute need for managers to understand the impact of cultural differences on organization members’ behaviors. In response to this need, during the past decade, cross-cultural management (CCM) issues have attracted an unprecedented attention in all circles of management scholarship and practice. Training employees to deal effectively with CCM issues both domestically (with colleagues and customers) and on expatriate assignments became a major priority for many organizations and, consequently, we saw a proliferation of training and consulting companies focusing on this theme. Annually, hundreds of journal articles in management and related disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology) addressing cross-cultural issues in organizations appeared and the Academy of Management’s meetings saw a surge in presentations and activities related to CCM. Several new journals focusing on this topic also emerged as did journals focusing on regional issues in management. Correspondingly, business schools began introducing and expanding CCM courses in their curricula with many schools offering multiple courses with differing levels of specificity (e.g., Doing Business in Asia; Leadership Across Cultures). At the same time, the available texts for teaching CCM increased from a rare few to well over a dozen. Reflecting these changes is the AACSB’s explicit statement of the need to develop CCM skills and competencies in the next generation of managers in its recent guide on Eligibility Procedures and Accreditation Standards. The rapid growth in CCM educational activities brought about a plethora of approaches to teaching CCM in business schools and spurred many discussions and, indeed, debates on what approach should be taken. For example, one of the livelier ongoing debates in the CCM education community is whether such a course should be based on teaching the major cultural dimensions models or whether CCM courses should instead present culture as a complex and not clearly definable set of social practices and, sometimes, paradoxes. This Special Issue aims to take stock of and advance CCM teaching and education. While the primary focus of the special issue is on teaching CCM in the academic environment, we also seek to examine approaches to CCM education and training that are practiced by other profit and non-profit organizations. Following AMLE format, we specifically seek empirical and conceptual articles for the Research and Reviews and the Essays, Dialogues, and Interviews sections of the journal. Responding to the on-going debates about the proper approaches to teaching CCM, the Essays, Dialogues, and Interviews section will focus on the theme: Emics and Etics: Global Dimensions vs. Cultural Paradoxes and will feature different approaches to teaching CCM as they are reflected in, and affected by, differing disciplinary (e.g., Anthropology vs. Psychology) and national (e.g., European-based vs. US-based approaches) contexts and traditions. Suggested topics for this special issue include, but are not restricted to, the following: • Identifying the key cultural issues that management education is and needs to be addressing to prepare future international managers; • Exploring how research on culture, cross-cultural management and expatriate training can assist in the development of approaches to increasing cultural awareness and cross-cultural management competencies; • Examining the efficacy of current CCM courses offered by academic institutions, consulting companies and in-company training (although note that such examinations should have a theoretical grounding); • Presenting research examining the approach where entire programs (such as Lauder program in Wharton School) or an entire school (e.g., Thunderbird School of Global Management) are focused on the education of international managers; • Identifying the core principles of CCM teaching and the latest evidence-based innovations in CCM education; • Presentation of research findings on measures and criteria for assessing the acquisition of CCM skills; • Examining how CCM has, or could, contribute to the greater field of Management, for example, by exploring how the guiding theories in CCM might contribute to other aspects of management scholarship such as virtual teams, conflict and negotiation, or communication; • Exploring how learning occurs in CCM contexts, such as by studying how CCM-prompted knowledge is transferred or shared over time; • Exploring how CCM teaching can be enriched by incorporating international field experiences, service learning assignments and “awareness-raising” experiences into the design of courses and programs; and • Documenting and critically evaluating the multi-media resources used in teaching CCM. Paper Procedure: Initial submissions must be received between June 1 and June 30, 2012, via ScholarOne (mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amle). Authors should designate their manuscript for this Special Research Forum (“Special Issue - Cross-cultural Management Learning & Education 2013” in the Manuscript Type pull down menu). Submissions should be accompanied by an assurance of originality and exclusivity. Papers should adhere to the “Style and Format” guide for authors that can be found on the journal’s website (www.aom.pace.edu/amle). If you have questions or suggestions regarding manuscripts, please direct them to: Jacob Eisenberg (jacob.eisenberg@ucd.ie) for Research & Reviews; Günter Stahl (guenter.stahl@wu.ac.at) for Essays, Dialogues & Interviews; and Charmine Härtel (c.hartel@business.uq.edu.au) for Book & Resource Reviews. Guest editors will be available to meet with submitting authors during the 2012 Academy of Management meetings in Boston. All submissions will be subject to a rigorous double-blind peer review process, with one or more of the guest editors acting as action editor, and final approval coming from the AMLE journal editor. Invitations to revise and resubmit will follow initial submissions in approximately 3 months. The final deadline for revised submissions is December 15, 2012. Final acceptances will be made by April, 2013. Type: special issue Deadline: June 30, 2012 Issue Date: September 15, 2013 Website: http://journals.aomonline.org/amle Contact Info: Jacon Eisenberg phone: +353-17164774 email address: jacob.eisenberg@ucd.ie
