Beyond the Ugly American

Abstract

The novel The Ugly American published in the late 1950s depicts the blunderings which can take place when decision makers are overly ethnocentric. Happily, in interpersonal dealings, executives are becoming more accepting of the ways of other people. Anthropologists such as Edward T. Hall have developed a wealth of material which explores the habits and customs of other people and how to interact in situations with such people. Thus, overt ethnocentrism is largely on the wane. Ironically, as Westerners have become more worldly in their interpersonal dealings with other people, they have also embraced a strong “global marketing” orientation. This global paradigm contains a “covert ethnocentrism” since it presupposes that the whole world is being transformed in the same way by technology. Although in the long flow of history this might be true, global theories are not usually relevant to short‐term analysis on strategic planning. In an era when we have largely purged our thinking of overt ethnocentrism, we must resist this new “covert” ethnocentrism.

Citation

Walle, A.H. (1990), "Beyond the Ugly American", Management Decision, Vol. 28 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000000060