The article titled “The Past, Present and Future of Cross-Cultural Management Education: The Educators’ Perspective” discusses various issues of teaching cross-cultural management in business. It was authored by Betina Szkudlarek, Jeanne McNett, Laurence Romani and Henry Lane who are members of various universities faculties. The article was published in the journal of Academy of Management Learning and Education, volume 12, issue 3 of 2013. It explores issues that include challenges and pedagogies of cross-management education with eight prominent management educators. To this end the article is a presentation of professional views cross cultural management. It contains word by word recordings of the responses provided by the educators to questions asked by the researchers. Based on these responses the researchers identified three themes that include subject matter, expectations of audiences and roles and responsibilities of instructor. The themes have been discussed by the authors in the last section of the article. The other article titled “Research Challenges in Cross-Cultural International Business Management: The issue of Cultural Construct Equivalency” explores the challenge of construct equivalency in cross-cultural management studies. It was authored by Scroggins Wesley, Rozell Elizabeth, Guo Aimin, Sebestova Jarmilla and Velo Veronica. It was published in the 3rd volume 4th issue of Advances in Management Journal of 2010. The article discusses the problem of assuming the existence of conceptual and functional cultural construct equivalency in research with specific attention to cross-cultural management studies. The authors have used the EWORLD entrepreneurial project research to explain the concept of cultural construct equivalency and its relevance to research. The structure of the article by Betina et al is very different from the conventional research articles that source their literature from books and journals. Instead, the article sources literature directly from experts in the field of cross-cultural management. The educators are charged with the responsibility of explaining various issues relating to cross-cultural management education such as challenges, subject matter and pedagogies. This is a very powerful way of sourcing knowledge because it factors personal experiences and contexts which are rarely captured in books. Authors of books stick to authentic information, which must be verified and, so it is difficult to get the contextual setting of their knowledge. However, in this article, the educators respond to issues according to their own experiences. This makes their knowledge more practicable because they give an explanation of how it works for them. Their different approaches to issues mean the readers have been given more roles in the analysis of their knowledge. They have to distinguish between valuable information and inappropriate assertions. This is a clear departure from other articles that are focused on generating already analyzed information for readers to consume. It focuses on knowledge creation, as opposed to knowledge condition (Betina, Jeanne, Laurence & Henry, 2013). The article contains a word by word account of what educators said on various issues asked by the researchers. They have not been edited or subjected to review. Consequently, the article shift large part of analytical work to the readers. As a result, the article disadvantages those with poor analytical skills. The readers have to decide on who among the educators say the correct thing. Although, the educators are reputable individuals in the field of cross-cultural management, their responses cannot be treated as absolute sources of knowledge. In deed, some of their responses are inconsistent with known theories. Some were personal and cannot be treated as credible knowledge. Moreover, the educators gave quite different views on similar issues. For instance, none gave the same workable pedagogy. The second article by Scroggins et al provides a detailed discussion about a serious challenge of cultural construct equivalency in research practice. It states that many researchers assume cultural equivalency in their research due to belief that methodologies are universal (Scroggins, Rozell, Guo, Sebestova & Velo, 2010). This is indeed a common practice in many studies. Some researchers have no understanding of its influence, and for that reason they do not account for it. It further it explains the difference between conceptual and functional cultural construct equivalency using Douglas and Craig bicycle example which is a perfect way bringing out the distinction to the readers. It further exposes a well established truth that the equivalencies of psychological constructs are difficult to determine. The authors argue that researchers must give evidence of cultural construct equivalence in order for the result of their studies to be counted as valid. The challenge of cultural construct equivalency is also backed by evidence from EWORLD research project. The researchers used the same translated questionnaire for collecting data from different countries with different cultural constructs of items contained in the questionnaire. The evidence based argument adopted by the authors qualifies this article to be used for academic purposes. The article also contains well researched statements, which are consistent with existing findings, theories and concepts. The authors of this article assume that culture is significant to all aspect of human life. Therefore, cultural differences should be accounted for in all human practices and behavior. This is an erroneous view because there are some cultural attributes which are universal in nature. Hence, the researchers have every reason to assume cultural construct equivalency in situations that they are convinced cultural differences have an insignificant impact. Besides, cultural construct equivalency is not a measurable term. As a result, there is no widely acceptable standard for determining its acceptable level of influence.
References
Betina, S., Jeanne, M., Laurence, R., & Henry, L. (2013). The Past, Present and Future of Cross-Cultural Management Education: The Educators’ Perspective. Academy of Management Learning and Education, (12)3, 477-493.
Scroggins, W., Rozell, E., Guo, A., Sebestova, J. & Velo, Veronica. Research Challenges in Cross-Cultural International Business Management: The issue of Cultural Construct Equivalency. Advances in Management,( 3)4, 54-57.
