Fockera

Upon making the decision to manage a group of people in a foreign country, a manager must study the local culture and the differences between his culture and the new one. For this particular assignment the country of choice is New Zealand. For the manager to be truly effective in his new country, one must study the New Zealand culture. The manager has three years before he begins his new role and must prepare accordingly. Even though there is no available data for the future, one can study current major findings of reputable academic sources within the cross-cultural field.

To better understand the cross-cultural field, one must first define culture as a term. Geert Hofstede defined culture as “the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense is a system of collectively held values.” Gesteland and Gesteland (2010) made a more relevant definition for the case in hand, they defined business culture as “a unique set of expectations and assumptions about how business people are supposed communicate, negotiate and manage.” Justin Paul (2011) stressed the importance that culture plays in the modern day business world. He stated that culture is very important to the practice of international business; it has an impact on everything from finance to accounting and from production to service.

Cross-cultural awareness is a key element in the repertoire of an effective modern day manager. In order to better understand cross-cultural management, one must study the academic findings of experts in the field, like Hofstede, Schwartz and other experts. Nigel Holden (2002) discussed that cross-cultural management can no longer be seen as “the management of the cultural differences”, but as the “managerial activity in a new geo-economy with its emphasis on global networking, organizational learning and knowledge management."

Hofstede 's (1980) cross-cultural research is one of

References: Gesteland R. and. Gesteland M. (2010), India-Cross-Cultural Business Behavior: For Business People, Expatriates and Scholars, Copenhagen Business School Press, Holland. Hofstede G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values, Sage Publications, USA. Hofstede G. (2001), Culture 's consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations, Sage Publications, USA. Holden N. (2002), Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective, First Edition, Financial Times Prentice Hall, UK. House R. J., Hanges P. J., Javidan M., Dorfman P. W. & Gupta V., (Eds) (2004), Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 9-28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Inglehart R Inglehart R. and Welzel C. (2012), The WVS Cultural Map of the World [online], Available: <http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54> [accessed: 18 Jan 2013]. Minkov M. and Hofstede G. (2013), Cross-Cultural Analysis: The Science and Art of Comparing the World 's Modern Societies and their Culture, First Edition, Sega Publications, USA. Paul J. (2011), International Business, Fifth Edition, PHI Learning, US. Blanchard K. (1982), The One Minute Manager, William Morrow & Co, US. Schwartz S. H (1999), "A theory of cultural values and some implications for work", Applied Psychology: An International Review, Vol. 48, Iss. 1, pp. 23-47. Schwartz S. H. (2004), "Mapping and Interpreting Cultural Differences around the World", In: Vinken H., Soeters J. and Ester P. (Eds.), Comparing Cultures, Dimensions of Culture in a Comparative Perspective, Brill. The Hofstede Centre (2013b), Dimensions [online], Available: <http://geert-hofstede.com/dimensions.html> [accessed: 15 Jan 2013]. Van de Vliert E., & Janssen O. (2002), “Better than: performance motives as roots of satisfaction across more and less developed countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33, 4, 380-397.