Management Worldwide ^{2nd Ed.}

Management today needs people who can operate on a global stage, whether as international managers, technical specialists, expatriates or 'parachutists' who make occasional troubleshooting trips abroad. Yet cultural misunderstandings in the workplace can complicate even the simplest tasks.

Societies obviously have distinct dress codes and favourite foods, but they also have very divergent attitudes to age and time, power and status, gender and individualism, directness, uncertainty and loyalty. Even something that sounds like a 'Yes' to a foreigner may actually be a polite way of saying 'No'.

Fully updated and expanded for this second edition, Management Worldwide is essential for managers, students of management and organizations who want to know how managers operate and how business is conducted in different societies. David Hickson and Derek Pugh describe how things work in the countries of the seven major cultural and economic groups around the world: Anglo-Saxon, Latin. Northern European, Eastern European, Asian, Arab and the Developing World. There is new material on Hungary, Indonesia and South Korea, and each chapter has been revised to take account of fresh research and writing from authorities worldwide. Later chapters provide profiles of the internationally minded manager and practical guidance for expatriates returning to homebase. It concludes by looking at convergence and the factors that may be slowly overcoming local differences and forging a common international management style.

1. Managing with Wide Horizons
2. Managing and the Cultures of Societies
3. The Anglos across the Continents
• Britain
• The United States
• Canada
4. The Latins — Southern Europe and South America
• France
• Italy
• Brazil
5. The Northern Europeans, and Israel
• Germany
• Sweden
• Israel
6. The East-Central Europeans
• Russia
• Poland
• Hungary
7. The Asians
• China and Nanyang Chinese Capitalism
• Japan
• South Korea
• Indonesia
8. The Arabs of the Middle East
• Saudi Arabia
• Egypt
9. Developing Coúntries
• Africa (below the Sahara)
• India
10. The Cross-Cultural Manager
11. Managing More and More Alike?

Nice and accessible book on business cultures, heavily based on Hofstede's work. A bit too limited in scope, as a lot of decisions of ramifications had to be made in writing this book. It makes you happy to have read it, but gets you yearning for a more thorough treatment, and getting through all of Hofstede's material may be a bit painful for most people.

All in all, I liked it, but it could have been more extensive.