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Reflections on Cultural Aspects of International Business

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Submitted By kriste13
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Reflection Paper

Introduction

The five weeks of the Cultural aspects of international business course have been a truly enriching life experience for me. I must admit that I was a little skeptical about the value proposition of the course as I thought this was going to be one of those purely theoretical pro-diversity lectures with no potential for practical application. However, the fact that Professor Lane co-authored the textbook intrigued me so much (I have never had a Professor who actually wrote the textbook for the course) that I decided to give it a chance and sign-up for the course.

The Cultural aspects of international business course has helped me to discover new perspectives and taught me to look at things through multiple sets of eyes which I find to be an extremely effective tool while working in different cultural environments and with people from other cultures. As I value all topics covered in this course, this paper will mainly focus on select topics and theories and their practical application at my workplace. Specifically, I will discuss how learnings about Cultural dimensions and stereotyping, the MBI model, the Organizational alignment model and Global virtual teams have re-shaped my perspective and attitude towards cultural aspects of international business and what benefits my newly acquired knowledge will bring to my team and company.

Company, team and personal cultural characteristics

As it was previously mentioned, this paper will discuss how the Cultural aspects of international business course knowledge can be transferred to real life business situations. My company is a global management consulting firm with more than 75 offices around the world and its employees representing more than 120 countries. I am a Financial Analyst whose daily duties among other things involve decision support to over 30 offices in the Americas

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