Combining Multicultural Management and Diversity Into One Course on Cultural Competence
本文指出当前多元文化管理课程不足，提出将多元文化管理与多样性管理合并为一门以文化能力为核心的课程，以帮助学生将文化差异转化为竞争优势。
There can be little debate that culture—the multiple characteristics and backgrounds that shape individ-uals ’ and organizations ’ identities, perceptions, atti-tudes, and behavior—strongly influences the suc-cess of business enterprises today. Intergroup conflict constantly threatens the ability of both do-mestic and global firms to operate efficiently, coop-eratively, and fairly. Did a merger between a Japa-nese-owned firm and an American-owned firm fail because of inferior products and inappropriate pric-ing or because themanagerswere personally incom-patible and the organizations ’ operating styles too disparate? Did a company’s efforts to advance women into management fail because the women were not up to the challenge or because the work environment undermined their performance or per-ceived performance? Business educators cannot sim-ply teach undergraduate and graduate students that cultural differences matter. They must equip stu-dents to understand how cultural differences work and thus how to turn cultural competence into a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, undergraduate and graduate courses in multicultural management (also called “cross-cultural management”) tend to fall short of this goal. We identify cultural management skills required for success in today’s business environ-ment, then examine gaps between those target competencies and current teaching in multicul-tural management, and the source of those gaps in the courses ’ conceptual foundations. We suggest improving these courses using concepts from, among other places, “domestic ” diversity manage-ment courses. In fact, we propose to improve both types of courses by merging them into a unified course designed around the border-erasing con-cept of cultural competence.