Critical Cross-Cultural Management (CCM): Contours and Contributions
On 15 May 2019, Jasmin Mahadevan gave a guest lecture at CBDS with the titel Cross-Cultural Management: Contours and Contributions
In this guest lecture, Professor Jasmin Mahadevan (JM) outlined five perspectives in Cross-Cultural Management (CCM) studies which she assumes to constitute to a Critical CCM. The comparative CCM perspective and the interactional interactionist perspective constitute the mainstream CCM approach, but she argues that we need to add three more for doing the realities of contemporary CCM justice. These are the cultural perspective which acknowledges the complexity of culture in the anthropological sense and moves beyond the selective approach to what culture involves as currently prevalent in CCM (e.g. culture as immaterial values or communication). Together, these three perspectives enable us to reflect upon culture, to uncover relative differences between cultures and to potentially move beyond them in intercultural interactions.
Furthermore, JM suggests that CCM needs to take diversity, cultural hybridity and multiple identities seriously (critical multiple cultures perspective), and to acknowledge power as major constituent of CCM (power-sensitive perspective). These five perspectives are conceptual and not completely separate in research and practice, nonetheless thinking about a Critical CCM in terms of these perspectives serves to contribute to a more culturally- and historically-aware, power-sensitive and reflexive CCM theory and practice.