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International management may be considered synonymous with international business, which is the subject of a separate article on this site - click here - and one that discusses the types of master’s degree programmes available in the various business fields, ranging from international finance to international marketing. In day-to-day usage, however, the term international management is likely to refer to the management of people, ie, the personal and cultural aspects of international business.
In the past, relatively few jobs were particularly international, and very few careers were truly international. However, that has all changed as the globalisation of business has continued. This means that the issues presented by the international dimension of management, such as the difficulty of getting good performance from geographically dispersed virtual teams, are now worth substantial attention.
With this in mind we have drawn up a list of essential reading to give you a broad view of the relevant issues.
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Cultures and Organizations: Software for the Mind by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov
Anthropologist Geert Hofstede more or less invented the field of business culture studies, performing large surveys of IBM’s employees in six dozen countries some forty years ago. This book is an easy-to-read summary of his influential ideas (based on the original studies and ongoing research). In it he focuses on the usually unconscious, unexamined ideas that underlie the emotions, beliefs, and thoughts of people of various cultures, thereby providing a means to compare a nation’s culture to an organisation’s culture, and showing how the latter can be managed to best effect given the extent to which it does or does not fit in a given nation’s culture.
Managing Across Borders by Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal
The first edition of Managing Across Borders, published in 1989, shifted the focus of would-be international firms from divisional to global organisation. It emphasised the need to innovate as well as to transfer information and knowledge across a global organisation, which results in integration becoming the key driver of a global organisation’s structure. The second edition usefully includes an “application handbook” to help operating managers put their ideas into practice.
This is a well-written book which discusses and explains how culture affects performance at all levels in organisations, with Asia, Europe, and the United States as well as other global regions, all given substantial treatment. In International Management, the impact of culture is evaluated from four perspectives: personnel, organisational, strategic, and national. The requisite skills for successful international management are analysed, and the means to implement them are described and discussed.
International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior by Nancy J Adler and Allison Gundersen
This is a straightforward, pragmatic, and easy-to-read treatment of cultural issues meant for an operating manager rather than other researchers. It covers many aspects concerning international business today, including how cultural differences affect organisations; communication across cultures; ways of creating cultural synergy; how to manage multicultural teams; motivating people from around the world; negotiating globally; and living outside one’s own culture.
Find out more about studying a postgraduate programme in International Business.
Find out more about studying a postgraduate programme in Management.
International Management by Richard Mead