BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Business Management

Table of Content

Section A3

Global Organization4

Global Management5

Global Mind-Set5

The Cultural Perspective7

The Strategic Perspective8

Reflection10

Section B10

Historic and cultural heritage10

Current environment11

Traditional practices12

Lifetime employment13

Recruitment and careers14

HRM of Japanese Companies in the Global Competition15

Reflection15

Bibliography17

Business Management

Section A

Within the time frame of a single generation, the traditional boundaries for management have been dissolved and replaced by an integrated, interconnected global economy. Pick up any newspaper, scan the recent business publications in your local book-store, or surf the Web and you are certain to encounter the word “global.” Not since the time that nations industrialized their economies have we encountered such powerful economic forces as those presently brought by the marriage of information technology and globalization. Succeeding in the global economy has risen to the top of many organizational agendas, and in increasing numbers, it is global leaders who are asked to lead the way.

Unfortunately, these transformations have occurred at such a pace that we have had little time in the organizational field to gain consensus as to what globalization and its consequences mean for management. Currently, the global management and leadership literature lacks theoretical ground, and there are multiple competing frames of reference. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to create consensus around this topic, this chapter does seek to outline and frame the key contextual issues, concepts, and current directions that inform the research and practice of global management in the 21st century.

Simply put, global management is defined by its context. This context is one in which global organizations operate across national borders, simultaneously achieving the twin aims of global integration and local differentiation. This environment is understood in the field to be both quantitatively and qualitatively more complex than the one in which more traditional (and researched) types of leadership take place. In navigating this complexity, global management can be defined as leadership processes enacted across interacting boundaries of distance, country, and culture. The opening section of this chapter seeks to embed global management within its context.

The next section identifies some of the key concepts in the study of global management. At present, the literature remains largely at a conceptual stage. Fortunately, how-ever, a core set of ideas serves as touchstones. The global management concepts that will be discussed in this section include (a) culture shock, (b) global mind-set, (c) cultural adaptability, (d) cross-cultural values, (e) cultural intelligence, (f) learning to learn, and (g) global leader competencies.

The final two sections of this chapter explore current and future directions in global management for research and practice, respectively. In terms of research, a number of established theories and models can be applied to investigations of global management. Those covered in this chapter include (a) behavioral complexity, (b) social identity theory, (c) boundary role theory, (d) connected/relational leadership, (e) and corporate social responsibility. Linking global management to existing theories such as these is critical for new papers and knowledge in this area to progress. Finally, from an applied perspective, new knowledge can also be gained by linking global management to key organizational ...