Management Development through Cultural Diversity

Citation

Beaumont, P.B. (1999), "Management Development through Cultural Diversity", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 113-115. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.1999.18.2.113.1

Culture, Diversity, Management development, Managers

The author is critical of the assumptions and content of most current management development approaches such as the MBA, because of the specialist subject matter, disregard of cultural differences and suitability only for managers in their late 20s. In contrast:

This book is aimed at a person who wants to be a truly rounded manager rather than a narrowly bound specialist, who wishes to have a global reach rather than a parochial one, and who wants to be able to manage in their thirties and forties, fifties and sixties, and not only in their twenties (p. 1).

To be a worldwide master manager, it is, so the argument goes, essential to uncover and put to work principles and practices of management drawn from all over the globe. In short:

as a would‐be global manager, able to adapt to, and even fuse together, different cultural and economic orientations, you will be seeking after the ultimate in worldywiseness, that is to participate in the development of world class′′ knowledge‐creating organisations. In the process, and in the course of scaling what we have termed a developmental trajectory′′, you will have ascended through the primal and rational, developmental and metaphysical domains of management, of managing, and ultimately of your managerial self (p. 3).

The conceptual framework and structure of the book involve detailed discussion of: the overall conditions for metamorphosis: forces of cumulation (developmental trajectory); change (transcending the East‐West divide); continuity (crossing the North‐South divide); and complementarity (creative tension involving the soft‐hard edges of management); and general management domains: primal; rational; developmental; metaphysical.

This is a relatively easy and pleasant book to read which mixes summaries of well‐known literature with interesting facts, case studies, illustrative examples and personal stories and profiles. Indeed, it is difficult to point to any chapter in which the interested reader would not pick up something of value and interest. This being said, it is not a book that will please all. First, it is a difficult book to categorise. It is not a research monograph based on original research, nor is it a conventional textbook involving a wide‐ranging summary of existing literature. For instance, some individual chapters largely summarise and discuss one single piece of work; for example, Chapter 2, Transcending the East‐West divide′′, is very largely a discussion of Turner and Trompenaars. Accordingly, any reader who feels that the national culture card is being overplayed′′ or who does not like their approach to culture will not like this chapter.

I can also envisage many commentators arguing that the book has too ambitious an agenda. Even if one agreed that this is the desirable direction for management development, one could see many people questioning whether the necessary resources and mechanisms exist to deliver such an agenda. Nevertheless, in an overall context of dumbing down′′ so many courses, this particular book may perform a useful service in getting some people to think more seriously about the content of management development courses and programmes.