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Hyderabad, 16th March 2022: Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Hyderabad, hosted the seventh session of its Global Immersion Program on 16th March 2022. The speaker for the session was Prof. Mielly Michelle from Grenoble Ecole de Management (France), who discussed the topic "Cross-culture management". An official welcome address was given by Prof. (Dr.) Manoj Das, Assistant Professor & Area Chairperson - Marketing, IMT Hyderabad. After a warm welcome by Prof. (Dr.) Manoj Das, Sri Vaishnavi Atreyapurapu, a first-year PGDM student, briefly introduced the speaker.
At the beginning of the session, Prof. Mielly Michelle talked about herself and used her experience as an example to stress the importance of cross-cultural management as a person born and raised in America and living in France for over 20 years. Then she discussed global rage and said there is a massive outpouring of paranoid hatred. In addition, she briefly addressed racism, intolerance, and misogyny on the internet. Prof. Mielly Michelle discussed the VUCA model, which refers to four characteristics of operational environments: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. According to her, the acronym VUCA seems appropriate due to current uncertain and volatile conditions.
She briefly touched upon the theory of time compression based on Dave Harvey's work, also known as space decay. She mentioned that the value of space is declining, and everything is now moving faster. Her discussion then turned to the current situation and the direction we are heading, Ethnocentrism, which means to judge from a single perspective, and Ethno-relativism, which means to evaluate from multiple perspectives. Then she explained to the students that othering is a psychological tactic that we use to survive and enables us to determine that an individual or group is not one of us based on their age, sexual orientation, religion, gender, skin color, or political affiliation. She said to combat this issue; managers should cultivate empathy, which is putting yourself in others' shoes, and tolerance of ambiguity.
Further, she talked about the word foreigner, which originates from an old French word meaning stranger. Diversity management can help us better embrace our differences to understand others' differences in our daily lives.
Later, she discussed Hofstede's culture dimension and Schein's reverse pyramid of culture. She elaborated a brief outline of the Hofstede model of national culture is presented, consisting of power distance, individualism versus collectivism, feminism versus masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. In addition, she stated that individualists often have a lower power index than collectivists. Her final point was on the Pygmalion effect, how our actions impact others' beliefs, and how others' actions reinforce our beliefs.
The session was followed by an interactive question and answer session between the students, the professors, and the guest speaker. Afterward, the students expressed their sincerest gratitude and thanked the speaker for an insightful session
