Ranked #1 in the World
1. Click the 'RSS Feed' button above.
Executive Certificate in Global Negotiations: Defining Culture
Monday, September 19th, 2011
Anthropologists, economists and linguists all talk about culture. But settling on one clear definition is difficult. One reason is because culture remains largely invisible, especially when looking inward. ”It is clearly very hard to see one’s own culture,” says Thunderbird Professor Denis Leclerc, Ph.D., who teaches in the Executive Certificate in Global Negotiations program through Thunderbird Online. Culture is often described as a set of shared and learned preferences that bind people together, but Leclerc says his students struggle when he asks them what it means to be from a specific country, organization or group. When pressed, many people mention the importance of family — without realizing that people from all cultures say the same thing. “I have not yet found anybody who says they don’t care about their family,” Leclerc says. Despite the ambiguities, Leclerc says global managers cannot afford to overlook culture because it shapes the way people do business. | Audio: Defining Culture (9:55)
People who view the Mideast uprisings as an “Arab Spring” are missing the broader significance of a global movement, U.S. Sen. John McCain said Aug. 29, 2011, at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. “I don’t think Arab Spring is the right name for it,” McCain said. “It obviously has spread throughout the Arab world and is still going on. But I would argue that it’s going on all over the world, not just in the Arab world.” McCain said the only comparable time in recent history might be the end of the Cold War and fall of the Soviet Union. “We live in a time when we should be most excited,” he said. “Never in history have so many hundreds of millions of people had an opportunity to experience freedom and democracy and an observance of human rights.” | 