On the afternoon of October 25th, David Read, an associate professor at the Audencia Nantes, taught the The skills of the international managers for the MBA students of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies at the Room103 Teaching Building 9.He interacted fully with the students,explored the “hard knowledge”and “soft knowledge” of international managers, and focused on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory to help students understand the cultural differences of various countries and thus enhance the “cultural intelligence”.
The lecture was presided over by Liang Jie, vice president of the School of Business. Vice president Yuan Denghua presented souvenirs to the guests before the lecture.
In the field survey, David Read learned that a considerable number of people worked with different countries, or customers and suppliers with a higher degree of internationalization were from around the world.He discussed the skills required by international managers in response to the problems faced by the students.He pointed out that part of the skill depended on classroom learning, while the other came from practice.The need for classroom learning is mainly “hard knowledge”, such as finance, accounting, law,operation and management, logistics supply chain, products, sales and so on.However, there are many skills that need to be acquired through practice.In terms of dealing skill, international managers need such qualities as creativity, initiative, adaptability, humility and curiosity, respect for others, patience and restraint.The so-called “soft knowledge” is “cultural intelligence”. In practice, they perceive and contrast cultures of different countries, thus recognizing and accepting the behavior of employees of different nationalities.
How to enhance the “cultural intelligence”? In this regard, he focused on the analysis of Hofstede's cultural dimension theory, and mainly explained the four dimensions, namely, the avoidance of uncertainty, the power distance , individualism and collectivism, masculinity and masculine.Countries with high levels of avoidance of uncertainty tend to have more habitual behavior, such as keeping track of future journeys, scheduling things on the agenda, and reducing future uncertainty. The crowd under this culture is more difficult to accept the new different ideas.On the contrary, countries with low levels of avoidance are more tolerant of abnormal behavior and opinions and are more likely to accept different opinions.The length of power distance reflects the strict hierarchical framework or the relatively equal two working environments. Next, understanding individualism and collectivism is beneficial to teamwork. Finally, the difference between masculinity and femininity is that the former pays attention to achievement and competition, while the latter pays attention to cooperation and mutual love. He warned that international managers should understand the cultural differences of different countries to achieve multiple management.
