African Managers' Stories and Cultural Awareness: An Exploratory Classroom Exercise

Cross-cultural awareness is an essential skill for managers of multinational corporations. In an increasingly globalized world, global awareness is a key proficiency that is essential to include in the curriculum of business schools (Ang, Van Dyne, & Koh, 2006 ). Recognizing the valuable contrib...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Africa journal of management 2016-10, Vol.2 (4), p.444-465
Main Author: Brunt, Carol
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African learning materials
American business schools
classroom exercise
cultural awareness
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Summary:Cross-cultural awareness is an essential skill for managers of multinational corporations. In an increasingly globalized world, global awareness is a key proficiency that is essential to include in the curriculum of business schools (Ang, Van Dyne, & Koh, 2006 ). Recognizing the valuable contribution from the African continent to management learning (George et al., 2006; Nkomo, 2011 ), this article explores the use of curriculum content from East Africa in an American business school, and the development of cultural intelligence (Eisenberg et al., 2013 ) among upper-year management students. It is a unique exercise that adopts a holistic approach to the study of cross-cultural awareness (Szkudlarek et al., 2013 ) and engages students in active project-based learning. The exercise appears to have stimulated cross-cultural awareness and served to initiate the development of a global mind-set. It is a replicable teaching model that illustrates the potential of African learning materials in a US-taught management course.
ISSN:2332-2373
2332-2381
DOI:10.1080/23322373.2016.1256177