The soul. .. never thinks without a picture (Aristotle, 384-322 BCE). Eight-hundred million peopl... more The soul. .. never thinks without a picture (Aristotle, 384-322 BCE). Eight-hundred million people go to bed hungry every night; including more than 300 million children. Every 3.6 seconds, a person dies of starvation. Most companies consider such poverty-related tragedies to be society's problem, not the primary concern of business. They not only fail to see the more than 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day as an opportunity, they remain completely blind to the possibility that they might constitute a lucrative market (Prahalad, 2006). Belief in the great trade-off illusion (see Figures 1 and 2) has insidiously blinded most managers into assuming that the choice to do good precludes the ability of corporations, along with the executives who lead them, to do well. Most managers falsely assume that the more they focus on enhancing societal well-being, the worse their companies will perform financially. At the close of the twentieth century, business widely embraced the illusion that generosity and compassion were bad for business. But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, global business strategist Gary Hamel (2000, p. 249) articulated what a small but growing number of executives were beginning not only to recognize, but to act on: What we need is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues. For too many employees, the return on emotional equity is close to zero. They have nothing to commit to other than the success of their own career. Why is it that the very essence of our humanity, our desire to reach beyond ourselves, to touch others, to do something that matters, to leave the world just a little bit better, is often denied at work?. .. To succeed in the [twenty-first century]. .. , a company must give its members a reason to bring all of their humanity to work. A leadership of possibility When you cease to dream, you cease to live (Malcolm Forbes, Forbes magazine (as cited in Bryan et al., 1998, p. 25)).
As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practit... more As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.
A liderança extraordinária nasce no líder como um todo e não apenas no somatório de suas estratég... more A liderança extraordinária nasce no líder como um todo e não apenas no somatório de suas estratégias e táticas aprendidas, não importa quão bem executadas. O século XXI coloca-nos numa época desafiadora — época que exige uma liderança extraordinária em nível global, nacional, organizacional e comunitário. Para aumentar as possibilidades de líderes empresariais influenciarem o mundo de forma a beneficiar a sociedade e a rentabilidade das empresas, a Universidade de McGill lançou um seminário sobre “A arte da liderança em 2003. O seminário já foi oferecido aos gerentes e executivos na Áustria, Canadá, Dubai, França, Índia, Israel, Japão, Coreia, Holanda, Nova Zelândia, Eslovênia, Suécia, Suíça e Estados Unidos. Resgatando as tradições e processos artísticos, o seminário vai além da gestão tradicional ao focar na compreensão mais profunda da nossa cultura e valorização do “possível”. O seminário foi concebido para desenvolver as capacidades dos participantes de criar, de apoiar e refor...
Music is a form of leadership. Music-based interventions in organizations and society are being u... more Music is a form of leadership. Music-based interventions in organizations and society are being used throughout the world, including in situations of extreme conflict and consequence. Artists are going beyond the dehydrated language of economics, politics, and war to achieve goals that have eluded those using more traditional approaches. This article presents musical interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, South Africa, the United States, and Venezuela, in which musicians have had the inspiration and courage to make a difference.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2014
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
In the midst of chaos, how do we see beauty? Surrounded by turbulence, how do we discover simplic... more In the midst of chaos, how do we see beauty? Surrounded by turbulence, how do we discover simplicity? Living together on one planet, how do we simultaneously celebrate our collective humanity and the unique resonance of each of our individual voices? Given the power of analytic understanding-driven as it is to claim life as knowable-how do we re-recognize the unknowable? Knowing all that we know, how do we surrender to the humility it takes to stand in awe of life's mysteries? Allowing a painting to be born is to stand in awe of one of life's most beautiful mysteries. Invited by the blank paper, my best intentions enter into a dance with uncontrollable coincidence. Neither the process nor the resulting art is ever completely defined. Which way will the colors run? What surprises will the ink reveal? I purposely work primarily with water-based media and monotype print techniques as there is never any illusion that I control the process or the outcome. I enter the dance; paintings and monotype prints emerge. Creation-whether on a canvas of words, visual images, organizational spaces, or the world's stage-is about giving birth to the possibilities inherent in mystery. As an artist and a global leadership scholar, management consultant, and educator, I draw inspiration from many of the world's most influential artistic and societal leaders, including Earth Palette from Finding Beauty in a Fractured World series, Nancy Adler, 2015 This essay is based on my work as an artist and management scholar, including my Artist Statement, multiple keynote addresses, the programs from my exhibitions at The Banff Centre and in Montreal, and designs from many of my management seminars. I would like to thank the TD Fund for Leadership, McGill University, and The Banff Centre for their generous support of my work integrating the arts and leadership.
Transnational {irms need transnational human resource management systems. This article recommends... more Transnational {irms need transnational human resource management systems. This article recommends global human resource changes at two levels: individual and systemic.yirst, it presents a set of skills needed by individual managers to be globally competent, highlighting those which transcend the historic competencies required oi expatriate managers. Second, it suggests a framework for assessing the global competence of firms' human resource systems. Based on a survey of fifty major North American firms, the authors find today's human resource strategies to be significantly less global than firms' business strategies. To overcome this gap. they identify a series of illusions preventing firms from creating human resource systems which are sufficiently global to support transnational business strategies. Article "Top-level managers in many of today's leading corporations are losing control of their companies. The problem is not that they have misjudged the demands created by an increasingly complex environment and an accelerating rate of environmental change, nor even that they have failed to develop strategies appropriate to the new challenges. The problem is that their companies are incapable of carrying out the sophisticated strategies they have developed. Over the past 20 years, strategic thinking has far outdistanced organizational capabilities.^"
To my mother,Liselotte Adler,who brought together two worlds and two very different cultures in c... more To my mother,Liselotte Adler,who brought together two worlds and two very different cultures in creating the home in which I grew up. —Nancy J.Adler To my nieces, Stephanie and Melissa Merakis,who give me hope and inspiration for the future. —Allison Gundersen Copyright ...
Forty-one women have become president or prime minister of their country in the past four decades... more Forty-one women have become president or prime minister of their country in the past four decades, more than 60% of whom have come to office in the last 8 years. What are these women bringing to the word's most influential roles of both political and business leadership? In which ways do their paths to power and styles of leadership bode well for the 21st century? In which ways do the women simply replicate the patterns of 20th century leadership most frequently exhibited by men? This article, told through the experience of Charity Ngilu, the first woman to run for the presidency of Kenya, highlights some of the emerging trends in global leadership as women increasingly assume the most senior positions in the leadership of countries and companies
PurposeLeadership insight describes the importance of and approach to reflection for leaders, usi... more PurposeLeadership insight describes the importance of and approach to reflection for leaders, using traditional journal writing, leadership wisdom statements, and art work.Design/methodology/approachThe article introduces the multiple ways in which the Leadership Insight journal supports leaders' most profound aspirations.FindingsIt explains the ways in which paintings help leaders to go beyond the dehydrated, and limiting, conventional language of management.Originality/valueBased on the article, managers will be able to use the Leadership Insight journal and reflection process to support their own most important aspirations for contributing to their organization, community, and the world. The article stresses the ability of mangers, by reflecting on a daily basis, to do well by doing good.
Will women become leaders in the increasingly global world of the twenty-first century? According... more Will women become leaders in the increasingly global world of the twenty-first century? According to many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), promoting the best people-whether male or female-into senior leadership positions is a strategic necessity if their companies are to succeed, let alone prosper. This article describes the commitment that one major multinational's CEO made to moving women from around the world into the most senior leadership positions. It describes an organizational development process, led by the CEO that included a targeted survey of both male and female executives, convening a 4 1/2-day Global Leadership Forum, and actively changing the organization based on recommendations generated at the Forum.
This article presents a unique case history to elucidate the cultural, historic, and societal for... more This article presents a unique case history to elucidate the cultural, historic, and societal forces that influence who one becomes as a leader and a human being.
Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 2001
Makes the case that companies intending to become globally competitive must recruit and develop t... more Makes the case that companies intending to become globally competitive must recruit and develop the most talented people, men and women. Describes the experience of one company in developing women for global leadership positions. Shows how this initiative integrated organizational development, team and network building and individual leadership development.
International dimensions of organizational behavior, 1986
If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that par... more If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that particular historical and cultural background. ... It is not easy for a person of one country to enter into the background of another country. So there is great irritation, because one fact that seems obvious to us is not immediately accepted by the other party or does not seem obvious to him at all. ... But that extreme irritation will go when we think ... that he is just differently conditioned and simply can't get out of that condition. One has to recognize that whatever the future may hold, countries and people differ ... in their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking. In order to understand them, we have to understand their way of life and approach. If we wish to convince them, we have to use their language as far as we can, not language in the narrow sense of the word, but the language of the mind. That is one necessity. Something that goes even much further than that is not the appeal to logic and reason, but some kind of emotional awareness of other people. ... Jawaharlal Nehru, Visit to America All international business activity involves communication. Within the international and global business environment, activities such as exchanging information and ideas, decision making, negotiating, motivating, and leading are all based on the ability of managers from one culture to communicate successfully with managers and employees from other cultures. Achieving effective communication is a challenge to managers worldwide even when the workforce is culturally homogeneous, but when one company includes a variety of languages and cultural backgrounds, effective two-way communication becomes even more difficult (16:1; 10:3-5, 121-128). CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION Communication is the exchange of meaning: it is my attempt to let you know what I mean. Communication includes any behavior that another human being perceives and interprets: it is your understanding of what I mean. Communication includes sending both verbal messages (words) and nonverbal messages (tone of voice, facial expression, behavior, and physical setting). It includes consciously sent messages as well as messages that the sender is totally unaware of sending. Whatever I say and do, I cannot not communicate. Communication therefore involves a complex, multilayered, dynamic process through which we exchange meaning. Every communication has a message sender and a message receiver. As shown in Figure 3-1, the sent message is never identical to the received message. Why? Communication is indirect; it is a symbolic behavior. Ideas, feelings, and pieces of information cannot be communicated directly but must be externalized or symbolized before being communicated. Encoding describes the producing of a symbol message. Decoding describes the receiving of a message from a symbol. The message sender must encode his or her meaning into a form that the receiver will recognize-that is, into words and behavior. Receivers must then decode the words and behavior-the symbols-back into messages that have meaning for them. For example, because the Cantonese word for eight sounds like faat, which means prosperity, a Hong Kong textile manufacturer Mr. Lau Ting-pong paid $5 million in 1988 for car registration number 8. A year later, a European millionaire paid $4.8 million at Hong Kong's Lunar New Year auction for vehicle registration number 7, a decision that mystified the Chinese, since the number 7 has little significance in the Chinese calculation of fortune (20). Similarly, the prestigious members of Hong Kong's Legislative Council refrained from using numbers ending in 4 to identify their newly installed lockers. Some Chinese consider numbers ending with the digit 4 to be jinxed, because the sound of the Cantonese word sei is the same for four and death. The number 24, for instance, sounds like yee sei, or death-prone in Cantonese (9). Communicating across Cultural Barriers Adler 2 Translating meanings into words and behaviors-that is, into symbols-and back again into meanings is based on a person's cultural background and is not the same for each person. The greater the difference in background between senders and receivers, the greater the difference in meanings attached to particular words and behaviors. For example: SENDER
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2006
Given the dramatic changes taking place in society, the economy, and technology, 21 st-century or... more Given the dramatic changes taking place in society, the economy, and technology, 21 st-century organizations need to engage in new, more spontaneous, and more innovative ways of managing. I investigate why an increasing number of companies are including artists and artistic processes in their approaches to strategic and day-today management and leadership. 6 David Whyte worked with the senior executives at McDonnell Douglas for more than a year. In 1997, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. 7 At the 2004 Davos World Economic Forum, the session "If an Artist Ran Your Business" was held on Thursday January 22 nd at 2:45 pm and led by Denmark's Lotte Darsoe, Research Manager for The Creative Alliance Learning Lab Denmark, and included such noted artists as photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, film director Shekhar Kapur, director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky, and actor Chris Tucker. The session was described as follows: Creativity is an admired and sought after trait in business. But despite-or perhaps because of-creativity's high value, there are no easy methods for cultivating it. (1) What is creativity? Who determines whether or not something is creative? (2) How can the use of artistic competencies and communication forms contribute to organizational change and new product development? (3) What can business leaders learn from artists? 8 See www.cbs.dk/cal 2006 487 Adler 2006 489 Adler
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2009
To be published as an exemplary contribution in Academy of Management Learning and Education, Mar... more To be published as an exemplary contribution in Academy of Management Learning and Education, March 2009. Prepublication Draft: Please do not publish in whole or in part without the expressed written permission of the authors. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense and Nonsense of Academic Rankings ABSTRACT "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein Has university scholarship gone astray? Do our academic assessment systems reward scholarship that addresses the questions that matter most to society? Using international business as an example, this article highlights the problematic nature of academic ranking systems and questions if such assessments are drawing scholarship away from its fundamental purpose. The article calls for an immediate examination of existing ratings systems, not only as a legitimate scholarly question vis a vis performance-a conceptual lens with deep roots in management research-but also because the very health and vibrancy of the field are at stake. Indeed, in light of the data presented here, which suggest that current systems are dysfunctional and potentially cause more harm than good, a temporary moratorium on rankings may be appropriate until more valid and reliable ways to assess scholarly contributions can be developed. The worldwide community of scholars, along with the global network of institutions interacting with and supporting management scholarship (such as the Academy of Management, AACSB, and Thomson Reuters Scientific) are invited to innovate and design more reliable and valid ways to assess scholarly contributions that truly promote the advancement of relevant 21 st-century knowledge and likewise recognize those individuals and institutions that best fulfill the university's fundamental purpose. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense and Nonsense of Academic Rankings "Measurement of scientific productivity is difficult. The measures used … are crude. But these measures are now so universally adopted that they determine most things that matter [to scholars]: tenure or unemployment, a postdoctoral grant or none, success or failure. As a result, scientists have been forced to downgrade their primary aim from making discoveries to publishing as many papers as possible-and trying to work them into high impact-factor journals. Consequently, scientific behaviour has become distorted and the utility, quality, and objectivity of articles have deteriorated.
The soul. .. never thinks without a picture (Aristotle, 384-322 BCE). Eight-hundred million peopl... more The soul. .. never thinks without a picture (Aristotle, 384-322 BCE). Eight-hundred million people go to bed hungry every night; including more than 300 million children. Every 3.6 seconds, a person dies of starvation. Most companies consider such poverty-related tragedies to be society's problem, not the primary concern of business. They not only fail to see the more than 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day as an opportunity, they remain completely blind to the possibility that they might constitute a lucrative market (Prahalad, 2006). Belief in the great trade-off illusion (see Figures 1 and 2) has insidiously blinded most managers into assuming that the choice to do good precludes the ability of corporations, along with the executives who lead them, to do well. Most managers falsely assume that the more they focus on enhancing societal well-being, the worse their companies will perform financially. At the close of the twentieth century, business widely embraced the illusion that generosity and compassion were bad for business. But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, global business strategist Gary Hamel (2000, p. 249) articulated what a small but growing number of executives were beginning not only to recognize, but to act on: What we need is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues. For too many employees, the return on emotional equity is close to zero. They have nothing to commit to other than the success of their own career. Why is it that the very essence of our humanity, our desire to reach beyond ourselves, to touch others, to do something that matters, to leave the world just a little bit better, is often denied at work?. .. To succeed in the [twenty-first century]. .. , a company must give its members a reason to bring all of their humanity to work. A leadership of possibility When you cease to dream, you cease to live (Malcolm Forbes, Forbes magazine (as cited in Bryan et al., 1998, p. 25)).
As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practit... more As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.
A liderança extraordinária nasce no líder como um todo e não apenas no somatório de suas estratég... more A liderança extraordinária nasce no líder como um todo e não apenas no somatório de suas estratégias e táticas aprendidas, não importa quão bem executadas. O século XXI coloca-nos numa época desafiadora — época que exige uma liderança extraordinária em nível global, nacional, organizacional e comunitário. Para aumentar as possibilidades de líderes empresariais influenciarem o mundo de forma a beneficiar a sociedade e a rentabilidade das empresas, a Universidade de McGill lançou um seminário sobre “A arte da liderança em 2003. O seminário já foi oferecido aos gerentes e executivos na Áustria, Canadá, Dubai, França, Índia, Israel, Japão, Coreia, Holanda, Nova Zelândia, Eslovênia, Suécia, Suíça e Estados Unidos. Resgatando as tradições e processos artísticos, o seminário vai além da gestão tradicional ao focar na compreensão mais profunda da nossa cultura e valorização do “possível”. O seminário foi concebido para desenvolver as capacidades dos participantes de criar, de apoiar e refor...
Music is a form of leadership. Music-based interventions in organizations and society are being u... more Music is a form of leadership. Music-based interventions in organizations and society are being used throughout the world, including in situations of extreme conflict and consequence. Artists are going beyond the dehydrated language of economics, politics, and war to achieve goals that have eluded those using more traditional approaches. This article presents musical interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, South Africa, the United States, and Venezuela, in which musicians have had the inspiration and courage to make a difference.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2014
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
In the midst of chaos, how do we see beauty? Surrounded by turbulence, how do we discover simplic... more In the midst of chaos, how do we see beauty? Surrounded by turbulence, how do we discover simplicity? Living together on one planet, how do we simultaneously celebrate our collective humanity and the unique resonance of each of our individual voices? Given the power of analytic understanding-driven as it is to claim life as knowable-how do we re-recognize the unknowable? Knowing all that we know, how do we surrender to the humility it takes to stand in awe of life's mysteries? Allowing a painting to be born is to stand in awe of one of life's most beautiful mysteries. Invited by the blank paper, my best intentions enter into a dance with uncontrollable coincidence. Neither the process nor the resulting art is ever completely defined. Which way will the colors run? What surprises will the ink reveal? I purposely work primarily with water-based media and monotype print techniques as there is never any illusion that I control the process or the outcome. I enter the dance; paintings and monotype prints emerge. Creation-whether on a canvas of words, visual images, organizational spaces, or the world's stage-is about giving birth to the possibilities inherent in mystery. As an artist and a global leadership scholar, management consultant, and educator, I draw inspiration from many of the world's most influential artistic and societal leaders, including Earth Palette from Finding Beauty in a Fractured World series, Nancy Adler, 2015 This essay is based on my work as an artist and management scholar, including my Artist Statement, multiple keynote addresses, the programs from my exhibitions at The Banff Centre and in Montreal, and designs from many of my management seminars. I would like to thank the TD Fund for Leadership, McGill University, and The Banff Centre for their generous support of my work integrating the arts and leadership.
Transnational {irms need transnational human resource management systems. This article recommends... more Transnational {irms need transnational human resource management systems. This article recommends global human resource changes at two levels: individual and systemic.yirst, it presents a set of skills needed by individual managers to be globally competent, highlighting those which transcend the historic competencies required oi expatriate managers. Second, it suggests a framework for assessing the global competence of firms' human resource systems. Based on a survey of fifty major North American firms, the authors find today's human resource strategies to be significantly less global than firms' business strategies. To overcome this gap. they identify a series of illusions preventing firms from creating human resource systems which are sufficiently global to support transnational business strategies. Article "Top-level managers in many of today's leading corporations are losing control of their companies. The problem is not that they have misjudged the demands created by an increasingly complex environment and an accelerating rate of environmental change, nor even that they have failed to develop strategies appropriate to the new challenges. The problem is that their companies are incapable of carrying out the sophisticated strategies they have developed. Over the past 20 years, strategic thinking has far outdistanced organizational capabilities.^"
To my mother,Liselotte Adler,who brought together two worlds and two very different cultures in c... more To my mother,Liselotte Adler,who brought together two worlds and two very different cultures in creating the home in which I grew up. —Nancy J.Adler To my nieces, Stephanie and Melissa Merakis,who give me hope and inspiration for the future. —Allison Gundersen Copyright ...
Forty-one women have become president or prime minister of their country in the past four decades... more Forty-one women have become president or prime minister of their country in the past four decades, more than 60% of whom have come to office in the last 8 years. What are these women bringing to the word's most influential roles of both political and business leadership? In which ways do their paths to power and styles of leadership bode well for the 21st century? In which ways do the women simply replicate the patterns of 20th century leadership most frequently exhibited by men? This article, told through the experience of Charity Ngilu, the first woman to run for the presidency of Kenya, highlights some of the emerging trends in global leadership as women increasingly assume the most senior positions in the leadership of countries and companies
PurposeLeadership insight describes the importance of and approach to reflection for leaders, usi... more PurposeLeadership insight describes the importance of and approach to reflection for leaders, using traditional journal writing, leadership wisdom statements, and art work.Design/methodology/approachThe article introduces the multiple ways in which the Leadership Insight journal supports leaders' most profound aspirations.FindingsIt explains the ways in which paintings help leaders to go beyond the dehydrated, and limiting, conventional language of management.Originality/valueBased on the article, managers will be able to use the Leadership Insight journal and reflection process to support their own most important aspirations for contributing to their organization, community, and the world. The article stresses the ability of mangers, by reflecting on a daily basis, to do well by doing good.
Will women become leaders in the increasingly global world of the twenty-first century? According... more Will women become leaders in the increasingly global world of the twenty-first century? According to many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), promoting the best people-whether male or female-into senior leadership positions is a strategic necessity if their companies are to succeed, let alone prosper. This article describes the commitment that one major multinational's CEO made to moving women from around the world into the most senior leadership positions. It describes an organizational development process, led by the CEO that included a targeted survey of both male and female executives, convening a 4 1/2-day Global Leadership Forum, and actively changing the organization based on recommendations generated at the Forum.
This article presents a unique case history to elucidate the cultural, historic, and societal for... more This article presents a unique case history to elucidate the cultural, historic, and societal forces that influence who one becomes as a leader and a human being.
Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 2001
Makes the case that companies intending to become globally competitive must recruit and develop t... more Makes the case that companies intending to become globally competitive must recruit and develop the most talented people, men and women. Describes the experience of one company in developing women for global leadership positions. Shows how this initiative integrated organizational development, team and network building and individual leadership development.
International dimensions of organizational behavior, 1986
If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that par... more If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that particular historical and cultural background. ... It is not easy for a person of one country to enter into the background of another country. So there is great irritation, because one fact that seems obvious to us is not immediately accepted by the other party or does not seem obvious to him at all. ... But that extreme irritation will go when we think ... that he is just differently conditioned and simply can't get out of that condition. One has to recognize that whatever the future may hold, countries and people differ ... in their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking. In order to understand them, we have to understand their way of life and approach. If we wish to convince them, we have to use their language as far as we can, not language in the narrow sense of the word, but the language of the mind. That is one necessity. Something that goes even much further than that is not the appeal to logic and reason, but some kind of emotional awareness of other people. ... Jawaharlal Nehru, Visit to America All international business activity involves communication. Within the international and global business environment, activities such as exchanging information and ideas, decision making, negotiating, motivating, and leading are all based on the ability of managers from one culture to communicate successfully with managers and employees from other cultures. Achieving effective communication is a challenge to managers worldwide even when the workforce is culturally homogeneous, but when one company includes a variety of languages and cultural backgrounds, effective two-way communication becomes even more difficult (16:1; 10:3-5, 121-128). CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION Communication is the exchange of meaning: it is my attempt to let you know what I mean. Communication includes any behavior that another human being perceives and interprets: it is your understanding of what I mean. Communication includes sending both verbal messages (words) and nonverbal messages (tone of voice, facial expression, behavior, and physical setting). It includes consciously sent messages as well as messages that the sender is totally unaware of sending. Whatever I say and do, I cannot not communicate. Communication therefore involves a complex, multilayered, dynamic process through which we exchange meaning. Every communication has a message sender and a message receiver. As shown in Figure 3-1, the sent message is never identical to the received message. Why? Communication is indirect; it is a symbolic behavior. Ideas, feelings, and pieces of information cannot be communicated directly but must be externalized or symbolized before being communicated. Encoding describes the producing of a symbol message. Decoding describes the receiving of a message from a symbol. The message sender must encode his or her meaning into a form that the receiver will recognize-that is, into words and behavior. Receivers must then decode the words and behavior-the symbols-back into messages that have meaning for them. For example, because the Cantonese word for eight sounds like faat, which means prosperity, a Hong Kong textile manufacturer Mr. Lau Ting-pong paid $5 million in 1988 for car registration number 8. A year later, a European millionaire paid $4.8 million at Hong Kong's Lunar New Year auction for vehicle registration number 7, a decision that mystified the Chinese, since the number 7 has little significance in the Chinese calculation of fortune (20). Similarly, the prestigious members of Hong Kong's Legislative Council refrained from using numbers ending in 4 to identify their newly installed lockers. Some Chinese consider numbers ending with the digit 4 to be jinxed, because the sound of the Cantonese word sei is the same for four and death. The number 24, for instance, sounds like yee sei, or death-prone in Cantonese (9). Communicating across Cultural Barriers Adler 2 Translating meanings into words and behaviors-that is, into symbols-and back again into meanings is based on a person's cultural background and is not the same for each person. The greater the difference in background between senders and receivers, the greater the difference in meanings attached to particular words and behaviors. For example: SENDER
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2006
Given the dramatic changes taking place in society, the economy, and technology, 21 st-century or... more Given the dramatic changes taking place in society, the economy, and technology, 21 st-century organizations need to engage in new, more spontaneous, and more innovative ways of managing. I investigate why an increasing number of companies are including artists and artistic processes in their approaches to strategic and day-today management and leadership. 6 David Whyte worked with the senior executives at McDonnell Douglas for more than a year. In 1997, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. 7 At the 2004 Davos World Economic Forum, the session "If an Artist Ran Your Business" was held on Thursday January 22 nd at 2:45 pm and led by Denmark's Lotte Darsoe, Research Manager for The Creative Alliance Learning Lab Denmark, and included such noted artists as photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, film director Shekhar Kapur, director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky, and actor Chris Tucker. The session was described as follows: Creativity is an admired and sought after trait in business. But despite-or perhaps because of-creativity's high value, there are no easy methods for cultivating it. (1) What is creativity? Who determines whether or not something is creative? (2) How can the use of artistic competencies and communication forms contribute to organizational change and new product development? (3) What can business leaders learn from artists? 8 See www.cbs.dk/cal 2006 487 Adler 2006 489 Adler
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2009
To be published as an exemplary contribution in Academy of Management Learning and Education, Mar... more To be published as an exemplary contribution in Academy of Management Learning and Education, March 2009. Prepublication Draft: Please do not publish in whole or in part without the expressed written permission of the authors. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense and Nonsense of Academic Rankings ABSTRACT "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein Has university scholarship gone astray? Do our academic assessment systems reward scholarship that addresses the questions that matter most to society? Using international business as an example, this article highlights the problematic nature of academic ranking systems and questions if such assessments are drawing scholarship away from its fundamental purpose. The article calls for an immediate examination of existing ratings systems, not only as a legitimate scholarly question vis a vis performance-a conceptual lens with deep roots in management research-but also because the very health and vibrancy of the field are at stake. Indeed, in light of the data presented here, which suggest that current systems are dysfunctional and potentially cause more harm than good, a temporary moratorium on rankings may be appropriate until more valid and reliable ways to assess scholarly contributions can be developed. The worldwide community of scholars, along with the global network of institutions interacting with and supporting management scholarship (such as the Academy of Management, AACSB, and Thomson Reuters Scientific) are invited to innovate and design more reliable and valid ways to assess scholarly contributions that truly promote the advancement of relevant 21 st-century knowledge and likewise recognize those individuals and institutions that best fulfill the university's fundamental purpose. When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense and Nonsense of Academic Rankings "Measurement of scientific productivity is difficult. The measures used … are crude. But these measures are now so universally adopted that they determine most things that matter [to scholars]: tenure or unemployment, a postdoctoral grant or none, success or failure. As a result, scientists have been forced to downgrade their primary aim from making discoveries to publishing as many papers as possible-and trying to work them into high impact-factor journals. Consequently, scientific behaviour has become distorted and the utility, quality, and objectivity of articles have deteriorated.
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Papers by Nancy Adler