International Management, 3rd edition

Citation

Deresky, H. (2001), "International Management, 3rd edition", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 164-165. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2001.6.3.164.2

Helen Deresky’s newly‐revised work offers readers a look at the problems of managing across cultures. Although slanted at managers with a practical problem of managing across borders and cultures, this book offers useful case study material for communicators.

Her approach is a practical one, tempered with a thoughtful historical and political perspective. She seems inspired, at least in part, by functionalist perspectives, at least in so far as she relies on notions of national characteristics for some of the explanations and discussion. This is almost a forgotten world for social science – a world where Mexicans are like this, the Chinese are like that, and it is this facet of the work, a kind of national determinism, that some readers may find hard to stomach. Alternatives are easy to come by, including the social interpretive approach put forward by Stephen Banks’ (1995, Multicultural Public Relations, Sage). Such a tradition of social enquiry would hold that different cultures may exist within a single workplace, for example, while it is possible to share aspects of a culture across a continent. Nevertheless, to leave these objections to one side and plunge into the case studies is a useful afternoon’s work for any practitioner who needs reminding of the problems of cross‐cultural communication or of the terms frequently used by managers to articulate them. By allowing herself to stand adrift from such issues Deresky offers a perspective where communications solutions have been found, or at least claimed, although in cultural communication, as in war, the victor often gets to write the history books.

Management systems discussed in the book are far from remote from corporate communication practice – management reporting, mentoring and coaching, leadership and management styles are all revisited in a multinational context, too. A book that seems aimed at MBA programmes, but an interesting alternative for those exploring practitioner approaches to corporate communication, too.