Exercise 4A: Curing Cultural Blindness For many organizations, a major problem is cultural blindness. In the organizations you know, what factors cause managers to remain blind to the impact of cultural diversity? List factors causing cultural blindness on the web. Review the list of factors causing cultural blindness of the web. What would you recommend to decrease manager’s work-related cultural blindness? Participate in the Forum discussion for this exercise, and reflect on your personal learning in your Global Insight and Wisdom Journal.
Exercise 4B: Recognizing the Advantages of Cultural Diversity
What are the advantages of participating in this course with people from around the world (rather than all participants come from the same country or culture)?What are the advantages of using a multicultural senior management team for a company that conducts a substantial portion of its business globally?
What are the advantages of using a team of senior executives selected primarily from the local area (rather than a multinational team)? Participate in the Forum discussion for this exercise, and reflect on your personal learning in your Global Insight and Wisdom Journal.
Exercise 4C: Creating Cultural Synergy
Select a cross-cultural conflict situation that is currently in the news or occurring in an organization. As a consultant, what process would you recommend to help the parties involved create a culturally synergistic solution? Identify one culturally synergistic solution that might work for the parties involved in the situation. Identify one cross-cultural conflict situation that the entire group can try to resolve from a synergistic perspective.
Describe the situation from each culture’s perspective and post your descriptions on the Forum. Review what your colleagues have observed.
Analyze the patterns that make each culture’s behavior logical from within its own perspective. Post your analysis on the Forum. Review your colleagues analysis.
Brainstorm possible synergistic solutions by posting each of your ideas on the Forum, reading your colleagues suggestions, and continuing to “build” a solution until everyone in the group is satisfied that you have identified a cultural synergistic solution that might work for all parties involved.
Participate in the Forum discussion for this exercise, and reflect on your personal learning in your Global Insight and Wisdom Journal.