I have been away from blogging and plan to re-enter the blog-sphere continuing to blog my way through Lao Zi’s Dao de Ching and now through the course Cross Cultural Management that i am facilitating at Concordia College’s Offutt Business School. There are several names this course goes by like international, transnational, cross-cultural, and global management. I think the term globalization captures a deeper sense of the analysis into the processes underlining the transformation to a global village. Luthans and Doh (2012:2), authors of course’s textbook begin by pointing out that “Globalization has and continues to have profound impacts on international management.” This profound impact is identified in this clip by President Obama on Globalization, After I watched this clip, other related clips appeared on the sidebar feed and I selected “Globalization” – The Greatest Criminal Heist In History, a short comment by Prof. Herman Daly, a former senior World Bank economist, suggesting multinational corporations (MNC) are criminally hijacking our economic life, an issue of globalization we need to pay attention to.
I can remember vividly driving into Norman Oklahoma on the evening of 20 July 1969 just as astronaut Neil Armstrong was landing on the Moon and taking his One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. The whole world was riveted to TVs watching this event unfold as the image of the Earth rising over the Moon mesmerized the world. It is this event on this date that we became globally conscious of our responsibilities to maintain a healthy Earth – it was the birth of the environmental movement. Here is what the World watched – the view of the Earth rising over the Moon, that motivates our study of globalization. After watching these clips, reflect in your journal what you are feeling and thinking.
We have come a long way in the last 44 years and this new PBS Nova special Earth from Space identifies the topics the 21st Century Global Manager, YOU, need to take a firm stand on – the Earth as system of dynamically interrelated systems. Man’s impact on the Earth has become very significant and it is critical to understand this and act! This is a long documentary so watch it in segments over the next week and again reflect in your journal on the implications for managing. Besides the YouTube clips hyperlinked here, there are Wikipedia hyperlinks above on globalization and systems theory that present readings that we can also work into our journaling and papers being written for the course – might as well get started.
The pedagogy of the course uses the Luthans and Doh (2012) textbook, International Management: Culture, Strategy, and Behavior, which is well-written and comprehensive. So, reading it smartly, that is analytically, is necessary if we are going to craft a successful strategy to get top grades in the course – this of course is our goal. The class pedagogy is experiential, or what today is being called a flipped course, which puts responsibilities on each of us to generate our learning experiences, reflect on them as they relate to our theories, keep a journal, write papers, and complete projects that challenge us to think creatively. I call this pedagogy thinking-in-writing – in other words, we do not think unless we write. A Kong Fuzi, Confucius, saying with the last line added by Shr Lingyuan, Scherling, captures our course’s pedagogy:
I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand,
I write and I create.
So, retrieve from your bookshelf the book you used in your writing class and begin reviewing it. The book I keep by my side is Rosenwasser and Stephen (2009) Writing Analytically. Read the Journaling, Paragraph Types, and Thinking-in-Writing Mechanics documents posted at the Moodle page and start journaling that is, thinking-in-writing.
Okay, we have an important mystery to solve, what is becoming of our global village? Not all goes well a decade into the 21st Century – poverty, hunger, wars, economic and climate meltdowns are not well addressed. Growing up I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories and the current movies with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are action packed! Two new current TV series, Sherlock and Elementary, about modern day versions of the detectives, are interesting; especially of interest Watson is a woman in Elementary. The importance of the female is part of the mystery carefully considered in our study of globalization.
However, I really enjoyed Maria Konnikova RSA presentation of how Sherlock Holmes teaches “us to optimize not only our own everyday existence, but our broader contributions to society and the lives of those around us”. This is the challenge and the course objective, so understanding how Konnikova’s presentation helps us develop our analytical skills and how does this individual skill impacts the collective? “A mystery is a foot” and Maria now suggests we often need to take a “walk-in-the-park” – Why?
References:
Luthans, F. and Doh, J.P. (2012). International Management: Culture, Strategy, and Behavior. 8e. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin
Rosenwasser, D. and Stephen, J. (2009). Writing Analytically. 5e. Boston: Thomson.
