COMMGMT 3500OUA - Managing Across Cultures

Course Details

Course Code	COMMGMT 3500OUA
Course	Managing Across Cultures
Coordinating Unit	Management
Term	Trimester 1
Level	Undergraduate
Location/s	OUA
Units	3
Contact	Up to 3 hours per week
Available for Study Abroad and Exchange	N
Prerequisites	COMMGMT 1001 or COMMGMT 1001 OUIA or COMMGMT 2500
Incompatible	COMMGMT 3500
Restrictions	Available only to University of Adelaide Open Universities Australia students
Assessment	Exam/assignments/tests/tutorial work as prescribed at first lecture

Course Staff

Course Coordinator: Dev Kumaria

Location: Room 9.11, Nexus 10 building, 10 Pulteney Street

Email: devendra.kumaria@adelaide.edu.au

Course website: COMMGMT 3500OUA - Managing Across Cultures | Course Outlines (adelaide.edu.au)

Note: Weekly Interactive Session details will be posted on MyUni.

Note: To arrange face-to-face/zoom appointments, please contact me directly via email.

Course Timetable

The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from Course Planner.

Interactive Sessions:
- Occur once weekly across Trimester 1.
- The first interactive session commences in week 1.
- the last interactive session will be in week 12.

The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from the Course Planner at https://access.adelaide.edu.au/courses/search.asp

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1 Critically analyse the drivers and consequences (political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal and ecological) of globalization, its impact on specific regions and the emerging concerns about its influences on countries around the world.
2 Understand and appreciate the need for ethics and social responsibility in international management, and the growing pressures on firms to act in an ethically and socially responsible manner in their global business operations.
3 Compare different theoretical approaches to the concept of culture (at national, regional and organisational levels) and implications of these differences for international and cross-cultural managers.
4 Apply theories of culture and management to address the challenges of managing individuals, groups and organisations in an increasingly diverse global context.
5 Integrate and apply the basic elements of international strategic management, including the pressures and cost/benefits of strategies that emphasize global integration versus local adaptation; evaluate the specialized strategies required for emerging economies and for international new ventures.
6 Compare and evaluate practices related to the management, motivation and leading of employees in an international and cross-cultural context.

University Graduate Attributes

This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attribute(s) specified below:

University Graduate Attribute	Course Learning Outcome(s)
Attribute 1: Deep discipline knowledge and intellectual breadth Graduates have comprehensive knowledge and understanding of their subject area, the ability to engage with different traditions of thought, and the ability to apply their knowledge in practice including in multi-disciplinary or multi-professional contexts.	1,2,3,4,5,6
Attribute 2: Creative and critical thinking, and problem solving Graduates are effective problems-solvers, able to apply critical, creative and evidence-based thinking to conceive innovative responses to future challenges.	1,4
Attribute 3: Teamwork and communication skills Graduates convey ideas and information effectively to a range of audiences for a variety of purposes and contribute in a positive and collaborative manner to achieving common goals.	4,6
Attribute 4: Professionalism and leadership readiness Graduates engage in professional behaviour and have the potential to be entrepreneurial and take leadership roles in their chosen occupations or careers and communities.	6
Attribute 5: Intercultural and ethical competency Graduates are responsible and effective global citizens whose personal values and practices are consistent with their roles as responsible members of society.	1,2,3,4,5,6
Attribute 8: Self-awareness and emotional intelligence Graduates are self-aware and reflective; they are flexible and resilient and have the capacity to accept and give constructive feedback; they act with integrity and take responsibility for their actions.	2,4,6

Required Resources

Course Text:

There is no recommended textbook for this course.

Each module has been provided with specific reading and the same is available through the course reading list within the MyUni course reading section.

Recommended Resources

Additional Reading:

Steer, RM., Nardon, L., Sanchez-Runde, CJ., Samaratunge, R., Ananthram, S., Fan, D. & Lu, Y. (2017) Management Across Cultures: Australasian Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Jackson, T. (2002) International HRM: A Cross-Cultural Approach, London: Sage.
This particular text provides a useful analysis of a variety of national and organisational approaches to management. Some individual chapters will be specifically recommended in the schedule provided below, but candidates are recommended to explore other chapters during the course.

As with any course of Higher Education, candidates will inevitably have varying levels of interest in the different subjects/topics covered.

To allow for this, the weekly readings will include essential preparatory reading, but some lecture topics will include recommended additional reading (from Jackson,2002). These are seen as offering some useful extra sources that apply some of the relevant theories and models in a more fully developed analysis of ‘real-life’ organisations; please note that this edition is relatively old, but still provides one of the best sources, combining an excellent scholarly analysis of international management issues in a historical context (and many of the featured organisations are still operating today and offer a further opportunity for candidates to ‘up-date’ the analysis in the present day).

Students will also be expected to prepare for weekly interactives and this will normally include some reading, focusing on
refereed academic sources. Full details will be provided weekly in advance on MyUni.

Recommended Resources:

There are a number of other general textbooks available in the library. These can be useful to ‘get started’ with a topic
area. There are also a number of more focused/specialised texts:

Chanlat, JF., Davel, E. & Dupuis, JP (2013) Cross-Cultural Management: Culture and Management Across the World, Abingdon, UK: Routledge. (online version in the library)
This is a particularly interesting text, taking a largely French view of culture and management – highly recommended, especially as an alternative to the many books on the subject that seem rather too obsessed with Hofstede and quantitative approaches to understanding culture.

Gannon, MJ and Pillai, R. (2010) Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 29 Nations, 4th
Edition, London: Sage. (online version in the library)
This is a very useful addition to the ‘dimension based’ theoretical approaches to understanding culture. Metaphors are an important way of communicating about a variety of issues (not only culture) and can also be a powerful way of thinking about phenomena in a creative way that encourages insight and innovation.

Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations
Across Nations, 2nd Ed., London: Sage.
This is the latest edition of Hofstede’s classic work on cultural dimensions. Although often controversial, his theoretical approach has long been influential in the study of culture at a national level; it is important that any serious scholar or culture should be familiar with his model, and it is a good idea to explore his own publications rather than relying on the often simplified versions presented in many textbooks.

Porter, ME. (1990) The Competitive Advantage of Nations, London: Macmillan Press.
This text is another influential one. Although it is quite old (in academic terms), it still provides an interesting perspective and draws from his other, better-known work that introduces his model of generic strategies.

Stiglitz. JE. (2007). Making Globalisation Work. New York: WW Norton.
Possibly one of the best-known critics of globalisation (and a Nobel Laureate); still a topical, emotive and controversial issue. If interested you could try his other writing in the field

Trompenaars, F. (1993) Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business, London: Nicholas.
Not so much an alternative to Hofstede's work, as a variation on this approach to identifying and applying dimensions to cultural analysis.

There are also a number of relevant academic journals including (but not limited to):
Journal of International Business Studies
Cross-Cultural Management: An International Journal
International Journal of HRM
Journal of International Management.
International Journal of Commerce and Management.
International Journal of Hospitality Management
Management International Review.
International Business Review.

Online Learning

This course is completely delivered online.

All learnings and assessments are available through the MyUni portal. Students are expected to self-pace their learnings within the course stipulated timelines, details of which are provided in the MyUni portal.

There will be weekly interactive sessions with the course coordinator where support and certain planned activities will be discussed, these will be recorded and made available on MyUni.

Resources for this course are available from the relevant MyUni site.

The University of Adelaide believes that education needs to be available to everyone, which means supporting the creation of accessible educational resources. We are actively committed to increasing the accessibility and usability of the courses we produce

This course has been designed to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, level AALinks to an external site by incorporating these features:
- Keyboard navigation through all pages and interactions
- Alternate text and description text for visual content
- Closed captions, text transcripts and audio-only alternatives for all video content
- Text transcripts for audio content
- Colour and contrast considerations for visual content
- Links, headings, tables, and images have been designed to work with screen readers
- Font size can be increased with the use of browser control, and
- Microsoft Immersive Reader is enabled for all content pages.

While we strive to ensure that this course is as accessible and as usable as possible, we might not always get it right. We always aim to communicate clearly and simply, but this is not always possible when discussing technical subjects.

If there are any issues, please raise this with your tutor as the first point of contact. If you require further assistance, please contact Disability Support.

Learning & Teaching Modes

This course is completely delivered online.

All teaching and learnings are available through the MyUni portal. Students are expected to self-pace their learnings within the course stipulated timelines, details of which are provided in the MyUni portal.

There will be weekly interactive sessions with the course coordinator where support and certain planned activities will be discussed, these will be recorded and made available on MyUni.

Please refer to MyUni for additional support materials.

Workload

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

This course is comprised of 12 modules, over 12 weeks.

You do not have to spend a full week on each module if you would like to progress through them more intensively, but we recommend that you move through each module in sequence (start with Orientation, then Module 1, then Module 2, etc.), as the modules are linked to each other, and to the requirements and timing of assessments.

Key readings are pointed out to you and accessible from within the lesson pages. You can also always find them under the Course Readings tab, marked according to whether they are recommended or optional.

The Assignments tab is where you will find the most up-to-date information on each of the assessments for this course. We recommend that you spend some time at the start of this course getting familiar with the assessments: make sure you know the structure of each assessment and when it is due.

Each week, an interactive session will be held. The interactive sessions will focus on supporting you with the weekly topics and also the assessments. See the Interactive sessions page for details of when these are held.

Throughout the modules, there are also some discussion pages, which provide touchpoints for class discussion of key topics, cases, and issues. These can feed into the interactive sessions, and also provide a way for you to engage with your peers if you cannot attend that week's interactive session. You can find these within the module's lesson sequence, and also find all the discussion pages organised at any time under the Discussions tab.

Finally, keep an eye out for announcements from the teaching team. If we need to provide you with any quick alerts, reminders, or updates, we will make use of the announcements feature, and so recommend that you either regularly check the Announcements tab when engaging with the course materials, or manage your Canvas (MyUni) account notifications (by going to Account > Notifications, and setting your announcement notifications to immediate), so that whenever there are new announcements you receive an email notification.

Learning Activities Summary

No information currently available.

The University's policy on Assessment for Coursework Programs is based on the following four principles:

Assessment must encourage and reinforce learning.
Assessment must enable robust and fair judgements about student performance.
Assessment practices must be fair and equitable to students and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned.
Assessment must maintain academic standards.

Assessment Summary

Assessment 1	Graded Discussion - Critical Analysis	Weightage 10
Assessment 2	Presentation: Cross-cultural Advisory Video	Weightage 40
Assessment 3A	Report: Policy Analysis	Weightage 25
Assessment 3B	Report: Policy Recommendation	Weightage 25

Assessment Related Requirements

Assessment extensions:
Extensions are granted on medical, compassionate or other special circumstances recognised under the University’s Modified Arrangements for Coursework Assessment policy.

Extension Application form:
The completed extension application form and any documentation (such as a medical or counsellor's certification) should be emailed to your course coordinator, and submitted 2 days before the due date.

Your course coordinator will consider the request in the light of the case made, and University deadlines and may grant an extension of up to 3 days. You will be notified of the result of your request by email.

Late penalties:
For each assessment, your grade will be penalised by 5% per day if submitted after the due date and time, unless you have an extension approved by the Course Coordinator.

Appeal of grade:
Students who wish to appeal their mark for an assessment item should initially discuss their concerns with their tutor. If they are still dissatisfied they should then make contact with the course coordinator. Any student who, after discussion of the result with the course coordinator, is still dissatisfied with the mark awarded for a particular piece of assessment work, and who has specific grounds for objecting to the mark, may lodge a written request for a review of the result or an independent second assessment with the Head of Discipline or School within 10 University business days from the date of notification of the result.
Such a written request must contain details of the grounds on which the objection is based. Requests must include a summary of the reasons the student believes his or her assessment work deserves a higher mark. These reasons must be directly related to the academic quality of the work.

You can refer to the University Policy on Student Grievance for further information.

Assessment Detail

Assessment 1: Weightage 10%
Students will critically analyse a text, express their views and respond to other perspectives.

They will present their critique and views in a 300–word (+/- 10%) discussion board post.

Once a student has submitted their post by the end of week 2, they will gain access to your peers’ posts.

In week 3, you will reply to at least one of your peers’ posts. The reply should be at least 100 words.

The purpose of the assessment is to critically analyse a text, express your views and respond to other perspectives.

Due date: Post - End of Week 2 (Sunday 11:59pm ACST)
Due date: Reply - End of Week 3 (Sunday 11:59pm ACST)

Assessment 2: Weightage 40%
The students will deliver an 8-minute recorded video presentation, including slides providing advice on cultural differences to an Australian national who is about to take up an expatriate country manager role in another country from any country out of the list provided in the assignment in MyUni:

They must integrate at least five (5) academically-oriented scholarly sources.

The purpose of Assessment 2 is to demonstrate student ability to compare cultures by applying different culture-related frameworks, tools and models.

Due date: End of Week 5 (Sunday 11:59pm ACST)

Assessment 3 - Two Part: Weightage 50%

Assignment 3 - PART A - Policy Analysis - Weightage 25%
Students will write a 1,500-word (+/- 10%) report that analyses the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) and Bribery-related policies of an Australian organisation in a cross-cultural setting.
They will review and identify ethical conflicts and challenges that may emerge because of differences in cultures and values when taking such policies to another country. This assessment focuses on comparing two cultures to identify ethical conflicts and challenges that may emerge as a result of differences in cultural values.

Due date: End of Week 8 (Sunday 11:59pm ACST)

Assignment 3 - PART B - Policy Recommendations - Weightage 25%
Students will write a 1,500-word (+/- 10%) report which evaluates the extent to which the company could adopt a universal (standardised) versus localised approach when taking their D&I and Bribery policies to international markets.

They should also explain the different approaches available for managers to avoid cross-cultural ethical challenges. Students will also identify and explain approaches and best practices available for managers to face ethical conflicts.

As this report is a continuation of Assessment 3 Part A, students are expected to provide a concise summary of the outcomes from the previous report and attach Part A in the Appendix.

Due date: End of Week 11 (Sunday 11:59pm ACST)

Submission

- Please note that all requests for extensions should be directed in writing to the Course coordinator no later than 48 hours before the due date.
- Extension requests after this time will only be granted for exceptional circumstances. This does not include poor time management or poor file management.
- Extensions to the due date of individual and group assessment may be granted under special circumstances.
- An extension request based on illness or on exceptional personal circumstances must include the "Supporting Statement / Certification Form" that should be asked through the student services.
- Students applying for an extension based on medical reasons must visit their medical practitioner, with the approved University form, and have the medical practitioner complete it. A normal doctor's certificate will not be accepted.

- All assignments are to be lodged at, or prior to, the due date and time. A late assignment where no extension has been granted will be penalised by a reduction of 5% of the mark given for each day, or part of a day, that it is late.
- Assessment marks prior to the final exam will be displayed on the course website. Students are encouraged to check their marks and notify the Course Coordinator of any discrepancies.
- The quality of English expression is considered to be integral parts of the assessment process. Marks may be deducted in the final examination because of poor English expression.

5.3.1 Presentation of Assignments
- Students must retain a copy of all assignments submitted.
- All individual assignments must be attached to an Assignment Cover Sheet that must be signed and dated by the student before submission. Lecturers will withhold students’ results until such time as the student has signed the Assignment Cover Sheet.
- All group assignments (if applicable) must be attached to a Group Assignment Cover Sheet that must be signed and dated by all group members before submission. All team members are expected to contribute approximately equally to a group assignment.
- Students may not submit work for an assignment that has previously been submitted for this course or any other course.
- Markers can refuse to accept assignments that do not have a signed acknowledgement of the University’s Policy on Plagiarism: www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/230/

Course Grading

Grades for your performance in this course will be awarded in accordance with the following scheme:

M10 (Coursework Mark Scheme)
Grade	Mark	Description
FNS		Fail No Submission
F	1-49	Fail
P	50-64	Pass
C	65-74	Credit
D	75-84	Distinction
HD	85-100	High Distinction
CN		Continuing
NFE		No Formal Examination
RP		Result Pending

Further details of the grades/results can be obtained from Examinations.

Grade Descriptors are available which provide a general guide to the standard of work that is expected at each grade level. More information at Assessment for Coursework Programs.

Final results for this course will be made available through Access Adelaide.

The University places a high priority on approaches to learning and teaching that enhance the student experience. Feedback is sought from students in a variety of ways including on-going engagement with staff, the use of online discussion boards and the use of Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys as well as GOS surveys and Program reviews.

SELTs are an important source of information to inform individual teaching practice, decisions about teaching duties, and course and program curriculum design. They enable the University to assess how effectively its learning environments and teaching practices facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes. Under the current SELT Policy (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/101/) course SELTs are mandated and must be conducted at the conclusion of each term/semester/trimester for every course offering. Feedback on issues raised through course SELT surveys is made available to enrolled students through various resources (e.g. MyUni). In addition aggregated course SELT data is available.

This section contains links to relevant assessment-related policies and guidelines - all university policies.

Students are reminded that in order to maintain the academic integrity of all programs and courses, the university has a zero-tolerance approach to students offering money or significant value goods or services to any staff member who is involved in their teaching or assessment. Students offering lecturers or tutors or professional staff anything more than a small token of appreciation is totally unacceptable, in any circumstances. Staff members are obliged to report all such incidents to their supervisor/manager, who will refer them for action under the university's student’s disciplinary procedures.

Authorised by:	Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic)
Maintained by:	Course Outlines Administrator