This course will help the participants to:

·            Develop a cognitive framework to appreciate the impact of culture on managerial behavior and business processes

·            Develop behavioral and cognitive skills to operate in the cultures of key countries

·            Apply his/her understanding of cultural nuances to managerial/ leadership effectiveness, interpersonal communication/ negotiations, designing systems and structures, HR practices, etc.

This course is designed to provide both conceptual and experiential learning to help appreciating how culture influences behaviour and why it is important for practicing/ potential managers to understand the culture relativities.

To fully benefit from the course, regular class attendance, pre-class preparation, and participation is essential.

The course is designed in four modules:

Module 1: Understanding Culture  (Sessions 1-4)

This module will help the students to gain insight into the underlying structures of culture and how these mould our perceptions, attitudes and mental models of reality. The focus of this module is to establish that cross-cultural sensitivity requires going deeper than just business etiquettes.

Quiz-1 in Session 5

Module 2: Frameworks for Mapping the Culture (Sessions 5-8)

This module discusses two comprehensive frameworks which help one to analyse and compare different cultures and derive their implications for management practices.

Module 3: Studies of National Culture (Sessions 9-16)

In this module - which will be handled by the students - we will use the frameworks discussed in the previous module to understand the nuances of cultures of different countries. Please go through the evaluation section given later to know what is required from you.

You will also find some useful links for your Country Study:

The evaluation for the course will be based on 4 components. These are:

]: see Group Presentation and Term Project given below

There will be 4 quizzes, each of 7 marks. There will be no makeup quiz (unless you have been officially granted leave from the institute on the day of the quiz)

The grade cutoffs marks will be as follows:

(Country Studies)

·            For the purpose of this part of the course, the class will be divided into 8 groups.

·            Each group will be assigned one country to prepare a presentation - to be made in the scheduled session - and a paper on its culture. The presentation and the paper should cover:

o       Cultural history and background of the country

o       How the culture of the country influences (and is influenced by) areas such as formation of self-concept/identity, family structure/life, kinship patterns, gender relations, customs and etiquettes, etc.

o       Use one (or more than one) framework(s) - Edward T Hall/ Geert Hoefstede/ Clyde Kluckhohn - to analyse the salient features of the culture

o       Implications for business practices/ organisational systems & structures

o       Do's & Don'ts

o       etc. (this etcetera is important ;-)

·            Please submit a 1500 words synopsis of your presentation to me, at least a week (7 X 24 hrs) before your presentation - so that I can get it photocopied, to be distributed before/during/after your presentation (your choice)

·            Submission of the synopsis and the quality of synopsis constitute 10 marks of the evaluation for presentation

·            Please plan a presentation of about 60-75 minutes.

·            Please note that there is an intrinsic logic in sequencing of the countries for the presentations - exchange of presentation dates are not permissible.

·            The final Term Project, based on your presentation (and incorporating the feedback from the presentation) has to be submitted in the 20^th session. The structure of the Project will be same as the one given above. You can also add examples, cases etc. to highlight the points.

·            Your Term Project will be considered complete only when you have submitted:

o       Hard Copy of your Country Study Report

o       Soft Copy of your Presentation

o       Soft Copy of your Country Study Report

·            Note: The soft copies are needed, so that I can get a CD burned with all the report, and the class gets a copy each containing all presntaitons and Country Reports.

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