Common guidance for global managers usually just focuses on managing global teams. This easy-to-read volume goes beyond that. As one in a series of Blackwell handbooks on management, it was edited by three professors and a university institute chair who invited a variety of perspectives. To that end, its twenty-three chapters were written by forty-one members of the International Organizations Network, a group of scholars formed in the late 1990s to foster the study and understanding of international organizational behavior.
The first part sets the tone for the rest of the volume. It describes the importance of focusing on the people and processes of globalization—an aspect of globalization that often is overlooked and therefore causes organizations to fail to meet expectations. Parts Two and Three discuss challenges such as cultural miscommunication, building trust, making ethical decisions, and creating and evaluating global teams.
The final section is especially interesting. It looks at challenges related to competitiveness and successfully managing employees who are less familiar with North American culture. These chapters discuss how important it is to manage organizational knowledge and technology, seek external sources of critical knowledge (from suppliers, for instance), transfer knowledge during mergers and acquisitions and, finally, pay special attention to managing in developing countries (not only because of the potential for economic growth, but also due to what is often greater cultural diversity than in the developed world).
Each chapter of the book ends with a brief conclusion that highlights the salient points for managers. Bibliographies aid in locating additional relevant reading. —Cynthia D. Churchwell