Product Description

As U.S. organizations continue to explore overseas business opportunities, they will be challenged to adapt to the new market's local characteristics, legislation, fiscal regime, sociopolitical environment and cultural system. Riding the Waves of Culture shows international managers how to build the skills, sensitivity, and cultural awareness needed to establish and sustain management effectiveness across cultural borders. This revised edition is updated with new research and statistics.

More than an encyclopedia of cultures and customs, this essential guide:

• Describes successful and failed cross-cultural business transactions of multinational organizations such as AT&T, Heineken, Motorola and Volvo
• Offers techniques managers can use to anticipate and mediate some of the difficult dilemmas of international management
• Uses country-by-country graphs, examples, and other comparisons to illustrate how different cultures regard and respond to various management approaches
• Includes a CD-ROM of graphs, charts, and exercises to help readers evaluate their effectiveness as a global manager

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74339 in Books
• Published on: 1997-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 274 pages

From the Back Cover
Read the book that is revolutionizing international business!

With over 50,000 copies sold in its first edition, Riding the Waves of Culture dispelled the idea that there is only one way to manage, and was the first book to show professional managers how to build the cross-cultural skills, sensitivity, and awareness required in today's global business environment. In this second edition, Fons Trompenaars and co-author Charles Hampden-Turner reveal the seven key dimensions of business behavior, and how they combine to form four basic types of corporate culture:

• The Family (Japan, Belgium)
• The Eiffel Tower (France, Germany)
• The Guided Missile (US, UK)
• The Incubator (Silicon valley)

This revised and updated edition features completely new sections including:

• An in-depth examination of one of the world's most multicultural nations­­South Africa­­and how recent events make it an ongoing laboratory of intercultural reconciliations
• A detailed analysis of how gender differences within the United States affect workplace and problem-solving behavior
• Current research findings on how ethnic differences within a society can be more troublesome than international differences­­and how some managers are keeping the peace
• A systematic program for uncovering, understanding, respecting, and reconciling cultural differences at all levels of the organization

About the Author

Fons Trompenaars is managing director of United Notions, an international management and training consulting group with clients that include Motorola, Mars, Shell, Eastman Kodak, Heineken, and Apple Computer. Trompenaars, an accomplished consultant and author, has given over 1,000 cross-cultural training programs in 18 countries. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Management at the University of Pennsylvania.

Charles Hampden-Turner is a leading management consultant with a DBA from Harvard. He has authored over a dozen books, including Maps of the Mind, and with Fons Trompenaars coauthored The Seven Cultures of Capitalism and Mastering the Infinite Game. Hampden-Turner is a past winner of the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award and is based at the University of Cambridge Judge Institute of Management Studies.

Customer Reviews

This is a Book that will Expand your Horizons
This book was used as the core text in a Master Level course I took in Global Leadership.

It frankly is one of the best books I have ever read which surprises me even, given that it was used in this context from a primarily academic point of view. I did not expect this book to be as readable and as practical as I found it to be.

First, it's important to note the book's own disclaimer from the earliest pages. This is not a book that assumes nor is it designed to explain to the reader how other culture's think and function to where a reader will come away with a complete grasp of other cultures. Frankly, that is a nearly impossible task. If you're looking for a book on cultural etiquette that will catalog and recount all the possible missteps and misunderstandings that can occur when different cultures meet, this is not your book.

What this book does is break cultural elements into general categories and through the use of an extensive database of about 50,000 managers from around the world, it demonstrates how different cultures, defined primarily by national boundaries, approach universal challenges and compares them by use of a sliding scale between two identified extremes.

This is done for 7 different cultural elements. An example and the first element explored, would be the tendency toward Universalism versus Particularism. Universalism is the tendency of people within a specific culture to appeal to concepts of social justice, absolute values or the like and guide their individual decisions on that basis. This is a fairly high tendency with the United States for example. Particularism, on the other hand, is the tendency to define such choices more on the basis of one's relationship to the people involved rather than principles that apply in every situation. Russia and Venezuela (interestingly enough, both nations which seem perpetually at odds with the US and criticized by Americans for being "corrupt") are examples of nations that score higher in this realm.

While it can be a little dry to read through these elements, the authors do a good job of balancing data and theory with illustrations from real life and a continuing scenario that is returned to several times illustrating these elements in the context of a multi-national firm's managers meeting.

The primary value of this book for me has been the ability to suspend and step outside of my own biases, prejudices and stereotypes and from a more objective position, see and understand how different cultures approach situations. When that can be achieved then there is a better chance of coming up with a solution that will make sense and achieve a desired end, than when the noise common to cross-cultural or multi-cultural situations is left to reign free.

The authors are European and management consultants in the field. As a revision to a prior edition, this most recent book has expanded the value of the base concepts by including 2 additional chapters. One looks at South Africa which is a case study of multiculturalism within a single nation and it helps to identify what is no doubt true in other nations as well, namely that even with the measurements and objective evaluations of the earlier chapters, it is still important to do your homework and recognize that cultural nuances exist within the country by other factors such as ethnic group.

Illustrating this point even further is the final chapter which focuses upon the differences found within management task roles in the same firm and the same country. This is a little anticlimatic in some ways as it serves to diminish the value of the generalizations drawn earlier in the book, but it does serve to reinforce the warning of assuming too high a level of familiarity and thus moving from confidence into arrogance.

This book should be required reading not only for the business community moving toward multi-nationalism or transnationalism, but also for diplomatic personnel, world travellers or anyone wanting to raise their cultural IQ and sensitivity to different situations.

5 Stars. Buy this one to keep in your professional reference library.

Bart Breen

Outstanding research results in clear & useful guide
I was surprised to have my horizons expanded greatly though I had initially expressed skepticism at another book on diversity. On the contrary, this one contains real, practical, appropriate cultural nuances and advice on particulars for many national and cultural traditions. I heartily suggest it as a cornerstone of a modern cultural analysis of the factors that can contribute to enhancing diversity. Even though a bit dated, their research still is valuable. I cannot wait for the next edition!

Essential reading for executives - and politicians
This book is deservedly already an international management classic, and should be required reading for anybody who needs to interact with other nationalities and cultures. Hofstede got there first with his classifications of cultural dimensions, but Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars' are arguably more compelling, and - more importantly - the book is both highly readable and replete with case studies. It gives American and Northern European business people insights into why their assumptions about what motivates people from other parts of the world are wrong, and why so many US-centered initiatives founder on the rocks of unrecognized cultural differences. Send a copy to the White House!