What comes to mind when you hear “cross-cultural management”?
Expat assignments. International meetings. Navigating cultural clashes with local staff overseas.
That’s what most people imagine — and I was no different. When I signed up for “Cross-Cultural Management” as an MBA elective at GLOBIS, I thought of it as preparation for potential international projects. A nice-to-have skill set.
Six sessions later, my understanding had completely changed.
Cross-cultural management is about what inevitably happens when people from different backgrounds work together.
It’s not limited to overseas postings. When your workplace fills with mid-career hires, when a parent company changes through acquisition, when team members span different generations — cultural walls exist between people sitting right next to each other.
I’ve been in the IT industry for 28 years, and during that time, my company’s ownership structure changed dramatically. It started as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Japanese trading company, was partially sold to a U.S. IT firm, and then acquired by an Indian company ten years ago. Today, the Indian parent holds two-thirds, and the Japanese trading company holds one-third. I never left Japan, yet my workplace became a crossroads of cultures.
In this series, I’ll share what I learned from the course and how it connected to my own 28 years of experience in IT — exploring how we can better navigate the cultural differences that surround us every day.
“Justice” is not universal
The very first question posed in class was deceptively simple:
“Is it okay to lie?”
In Western traditions, lying is considered a sin — a violation of divine commandments. Honesty and directness are virtues. In Eastern traditions, there’s a saying: “Even a lie can be a useful tool” — preserving harmony in relationships takes priority.
The point wasn’t which answer is correct. It was that “justice is diverse” — and this is where cross-cultural management begins. The class also posed harder questions: “Is euthanasia ethical?” “Should pharmaceutical companies sell drugs cheaply?” For every question, there was no single right answer, and each person’s response was shaped by their cultural background. The realization that my own “obvious” answers were culturally contingent was jarring.
At first, I thought, “This is about differences between countries, right?” But as the course progressed, I realized these clashes of “justice” aren’t limited to nationality. Even among people from the same country, the organizations they’ve belonged to, the careers they’ve built, and the environments they grew up in create entirely different assumptions about “what is right.”
For example: “We should do everything possible to meet the customer’s requests” versus “We should follow globally standardized processes.” Neither is wrong. But when these two “justices” collide, we instinctively label the other side as “not getting it.”
This is the essence of cross-cultural collision.
In my own experience, this played out vividly after the Indian acquisition. Global headquarters pushed for standardized processes, while our field engineers — who had served the same client for over 20 years — believed that customization for each client was non-negotiable. Both sides were right from their own perspective. But both felt the other side “just didn’t understand.” Discovering that this dynamic had a name and a framework was, in itself, a breakthrough for me.
People are driven by simple emotions, not logic
Another early insight hit hard:
“I don’t want to take orders from someone younger.” “What does a newcomer know?” “I don’t want my years of work to be dismissed.”
In business settings, these emotions stay hidden. In meetings, they’re dressed up as logical objections. In emails, they’re wrapped in polite language. Yet these invisible feelings are what truly shape decision-making and collaboration.
One case study involved a global integration project where a leader who had built a successful operation over 15 years fiercely resisted headquarters’ new direction. From the outside, it seemed irrational — why oppose a reasonable reform? But inside, his feelings were raw and simple: “I spent 15 years building this, and someone who knows nothing about it wants to tear it down.” He refused to sign financial statements, blocked the transition to his successor, and sat in complete silence for three hours during a meeting with the CEO. Every action stemmed from one feeling: “My existence has been denied.”
The three-hour silence sparked intense debate in class. Some classmates said, “I can’t understand staying silent.” Others said, “I get it — when the anger is that deep, words fail you.” I leaned toward the latter, because I’d seen similar dynamics in my own workplace.
This was an overseas case, but the same pattern plays out in ordinary workplaces. When a new manager arrives and tries to change established processes, veteran employees may comply on the surface while resisting internally. Sound familiar? In my own team, when a mid-career hire tried to change our approach, senior engineers would say “understood” in meetings but quietly continue the old way. The logic looked rational on the surface, but underneath, it was all emotion — “my way of doing things has been rejected.” Does this happen in your workplace too?
Seeing the invisible — Mindfulness
So how do we get past these emotional walls? The course introduced “mindfulness” as the foundational attitude.
In the context of cross-cultural management, mindfulness isn’t about meditation. It means:
- Don’t reject opinions that differ from yours. Suspend judgment first
- Ask “why?” to understand the values underlying someone’s position
- Read emotions not just from words, but from body language and silence
In other words, it’s the ability to see what’s invisible — the context.
The third point felt especially relevant for Japanese business culture. Japan is inherently a high-context culture — much information is conveyed through what’s left unsaid. We unconsciously process non-verbal cues through “reading the air.” But the problem is, we only do this instinctively within our own cultural sphere. With people from different cultural backgrounds, we need to consciously activate mindfulness, or we risk completely misinterpreting silence, eye contact, and gestures.
Looking only at someone’s logic won’t reveal the real problem. The feelings underneath — pride, insecurity, the need for recognition — require patient, attentive reading. This is the starting point of cross-cultural management.
When I heard this, I reflected on myself. When someone’s comment irritated me, did I pause to consider why they said it? Or did I immediately judge them as “wrong” against my own sense of justice?
Honestly, the latter was far more common. In IT — especially infrastructure — there’s usually a clear right answer. The system either works or it doesn’t. The outage is either resolved or it isn’t. After 28 years in this black-and-white world, “suspending judgment” felt deeply uncomfortable. But that’s precisely why it’s necessary — and this course made me see that.
Cross-cultural management starts with noticing your own reaction patterns. That was the biggest takeaway from the very first session.
The instructor closed with words I won’t forget: “Leaders of the future must choose a path among diverse justices.” In a world without a single right answer, you still have to decide and act. What’s needed isn’t the power to impose your own justice, but the ability to understand multiple justices and choose wisely among them.
Another question from class also stayed with me: “You have food for 100 people, but 1,000 are starving. How do you distribute it?” Equally? Prioritize the weakest? Draw lots? Every answer reflects a different cultural and ethical framework. Learning to face questions with no right answer — that is exactly where cross-cultural management begins.
Recommended reading
To visualize cultural differences
Erin Meyer, The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business (PublicAffairs)
This book maps cultural differences across eight dimensions — communication, leadership, decision-making, and more. It makes the invisible visible, showing exactly how cultural gaps affect business interactions. If you read one book on cross-cultural management, make it this one.
To challenge your assumptions
Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Flatiron Books)
“Developed vs. developing,” “us vs. them” — this book uses data to show how far our binary assumptions stray from reality. A powerful primer for recognizing unconscious bias before diving into cross-cultural learning.
→ Next: [Cross-Cultural Management #2] explores “cultural cruise control” — the dangerous autopilot that makes us impose our own way without realizing it.
