Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective

Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in international business, international management and cross-cultural management, and all concerned with the transfer of knowledge in the global economy. It will also be a valuable source of concepts and ideas to cross-cultural trainers and to various categories of practitioners within knowledge management and international human resource management.  This book forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence. This perspective based on extensive research into the operations of four major international corporations, challenges traditional thinking by contending that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management. Key to this text are the four global case companies contrasting experiences, presented as insightful case studies about rarely observed aspects of firms cross-cultural communication behaviour.

"If books are to be judged on the effect that they have on the thought processes of the reader Professor Holden's book is outstanding.  This book will provide both a valuable theoretical underpinning and many insights that will move the study of cross-cultural management and knowledge management into the age of the knowledge economy - an achievement that will pay dividends both to researchers and practitioners for many years to come."

Prof Anthony Wensley, Associate Professor of Information Systems, University of Toronto

"By positing that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management, he broadens and reinvigorates the entire subject area at a stroke.  Researchers, practitioners and consultants are supplied with an array of new concepts, models and insights and , to some extent, a new language - all of which have been long overdue.  For the foreseeable future this will be the leading book on cross-cultural management."

Prof Dr Gerhard Fink, Director of the REsearch Institute for European Affairs and Chairman of the Faculty of Business at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration

"Holden's book is a milestone in the development of cross-cultural management.  It represents a conceptual shift in the field, one that many have been waiting for, redesigning cross-cultural management as a knowledge domain.  These new concepts will become references for practitioners as well as for researchers and trainers.  In the academic world,  where cross-cultural management is more and more to the forefront, no-one can afford not to have read this book."

Marie-Therese Claes, ICHEC Brussels, Business School and Catholic University of Louvain

Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence.

• Key to the text are four case studies of global companies which analyse rarely observed, yet everyday issues for organisations within the global economy- cross-cultural communication behaviour.
• " Supplies models and a glossary of terms to clarify the new concepts which ally cross-cultural management with knowledge management, providing an accessible, learning-oriented student and manager resource.

Nigel Holden holds visiting professorships at the Vienna School of Economics and Business Administration, the Leiden University School of Management and the Kassel International Management School. He was formerly Professor of Cross-Cultural Management at Copenhagen Business School.  He has wide international experience as a management educator, researcher and consultant and has been a keynote speaker at academic and business conferences in the UK, various EU countries and the USA.