As someone who teaches international management courses, I am most pleased to learn about a great book with great examples to orient our learners to intercultural differences in learning. The book Organizational Learning in Asia Issues and Challenges has the seal of usefulness on it-our AOM colleague Tom Rowley as coauthor. It is just coming out: http://store.elsevier.com/Organizational-Learning-in-Asia/Jacky-Hong/isbn-9780081009833/ . (Always have the email address of your university's acquisition librarian at your fingertips!)
The blurb: Organizational Learning in Asia: Issues and Challenges addresses important and pressing questions about organizational learning in Asia for both domestic and foreign firms-those that have been forgotten in the mainstream literature or that remain unasked and unanswered. Three sets of questions are especially salient. First, how can firms operating in, or from, Asia detect, respect, recognize, and honor different cultural stances on suggestion-giving, knowledge sharing, standardization, challenging accepted wisdom, avoiding risks and mistakes, and voicing disagreement? Second, how can such firms facilitate local experimentation and innovation by providing a common knowledge platform in a non-totalitarian manner? Third, how can such forums promote 'reverse' knowledge transfer from subsidiary to headquarters and across subsidiaries in different nations by avoiding ethnocentricity, cultivating local talent, and building a group of 'communities of practice' across cultural and status boundaries?
Teaching idea (mine not the authors): Have a team of students do a video on the book. Then have them interview Asians in the class about their take on it and include that as part of the video. Then post the link(s) to IMD-L for us all to have. Hmmm, have your learners interview the authors, particularly Tom over Skype (oops, is that too old hat, now that the learners are swarming to Google hangouts?) and include that in the video too.
Gotta go,
Cybercollegially,
Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York
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