Reviews for Cross-Cultural Competence

The average rating for Cross-Cultural Competence based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-31 00:00:00 Steve Bowman Ed Hartman's book, really an under-appreciated classic, should be seen as something of a prolegomena to neo-Aristotelian virtue theory in business ethics. But for this reason, the text would probably frustrate both management scholars and business ethicists working in the tradition of virtue ethics. Management scholars will likely find the text's winding structure tedious and excessively disorganized. And business ethicists interested in virtue theory will probably wonder why the author fails to include a sustained discussion of the traditional virtues. But stopping at these criticisms, to some extent warranted, would fail to do justice to the text. What then does Hartman accomplish? He offers a sustained 'phenomenology' of business ethics (using this term in Hegel's sense). What this means is that he considers a range of prominent approaches to business ethics and shows how they are limited. And he does this repeatedly, from different angles. He argues that utilitarianism presupposes both notions of rights and communal conceptions of the good since both are required to give a sense to what it is that utilitarianism wants to maximize. Similarly, justice and rights can only be assigned insofar as we take account of their role in maximizing happiness or wellbeing. Contractarian views like Gauthier's - an approach that draws heavily on game theory - are unable to solve the problem of moral hazard in the context of collective action (more on this below); contractarian views like Donaldson's fails because we have no reason to accept any set of abstract 'hypernorms' as having an a priori priority over more local notions of norms. Likewise, autonomy cannot be the utimate basis for ethical claims since it presupposes a community to provide one with the desires, first-order and higher-order, needed to be an autonomous agent. What we are left with is an appreciation of the necessity of each of these concepts and their fundamental limitations. But we can also draw an additional conclusion: ethics is not a matter of appealing to one's preferred foundational moral principle (since nothing could serve this function) instead it is a matter of asking how we can makes things better for us as a community (where this is not meant to be an appeal to any sort of utilitarian notion of welfare maximization). In other words ethics is a matter of living well within a community that enables one to live well. The upshot of this is that if we think about ethics we are inevitably thinking about what sort of community we have reason to want to be a part of and what sort of people we must become in order to be a part of such a community. What makes this fundamentally focused on business ethics is the fact that the organizations are distinct types of communities that have the purpose of engaging in modes of production characterized by a large degree of interaction. In other words organizationally are largely focused on team production and as a result they face a particular challenge concerning the means of overcoming moral hazard (Hartman frequently refers to the notion of a prisoners' dilemma) such that each employee will be better off. The problem, of course is that while unfeigned cooperation by the entire organization will likely lead to more efficient results, any given member can benefit by shirking. Hartman addresses this problem by discussing the characteristics of the organization that one might wish to be a part of such that one could live well. But he is not merely adopting a communitarian approach as one among many other types of ethical theories; instead, after having argued that no ethical principle can be foundational, he is arguing that we can only think about ethics insofar as we think about being part of a community that can enable us to address and adjudicate specific ethical problems. And since, communities can be of many different types, we must think about the characteristics of the community that would enable us to address such ethical questions. And since business involves team production, we must think about the characteristics of the community that can enable us to both engage in team production while also enabling us to address the many ethical questions that arise in such a context. But these two requirements are not unrelated. Why not? We become able to address an answer ethical questions insofar as we recognize ourselves and others and part of a 'we,' members of a community. Doing this involves treating the claims of fellow community members as worthy of equal consideration. Likewise, we can engage in team production if we view ourselves as part of a community, if we adopt a 'we' perspective. So the moral organization will be one where members are 'recognized,' or given a voice, given the opportunity to make claims concerning the what is good and what is not in the context of the organization. And this can only happen insofar as the community inculcates loyalty, where members view the community and its members as possessing intrinsic value. Insofar as this occurs in an organization engaged in team production, everyone will be better off, because everyone will cooperate for more efficient outcomes. This is a prolegomena to virtue ethics in organizations because much more could be said about the characteristics of such communities. But Hartman has performed a great service for us by showing us that there are no viable foundational ethical principles that can function as the basis of business ethics. Instead, business ethics must ultimately be a matter of organizational politics, where one outlines the nature of the good organization, and the way it enables people to become come good organization members.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-12-04 00:00:00 Mark Freitas I think the principles in this book are just what I need and am grateful that the book was an easy read and will be easy to remember. I think the model is going to be quite helpful to me. Introduced to the principles by a respected friend and ally (and required by my boss to follow up by reading the book). But had I picked it up on my own, might not have bought it due to some style/culture issues. Anyone else find these funny? 1. How much of the book is spent telling the reader (or the characters who stand in for the reader) how extremely wonderful the ideas are. A total sales job, cover to cover. Even if what they're selling you is the life you always wanted, is that necessary? 2. How, since the teaching comes entirely in the form of a story, all the characters are perfectly lined up in their script, behavior, emotions... down to asking exactly the questions, using exactly the language in exactly the same way that goes with the system. It was a little eerie, that's all.