Who are you? I’m Selena Castel, an associate professor of Economics and Management teaching in the BUT GACO program. Within the BUT, I teach several subjects, including economics, accounting, management tools, finance, and also international business.
Why is it important to teach intercultural management in schools? Intercultural management is a part of the course that we’ve integrated into our international business curriculum precisely to allow our students to understand intercultural differences. It’s important because 90% of our students, who go on to pursue master’s degrees, will likely work in large companies or French SMEs seeking an international presence. Therefore, they will be confronted with intercultural differences and intercultural management.
Intercultural differences can pose problems for French companies trying to export, as they can lead to misunderstandings in relationships, particularly regarding deadlines—”why aren’t they respecting them?”—and “the way things are approached in different levels of proximity.” Teaching this will allow them to apply what they’ve learned in class, to be more open, more attentive, and even without having interacted with, say, China, to have an overview of what’s done in China, how Chinese people behave during a negotiation, what’s important to them, and what not to do with them.
What’s your feedback on GapsMoov? We start the intercultural dimension of the international business course by studying authors like Hall, Trompenaars, and Hofstede. We examine the different dimensions highlighted by these authors, define them, and cite countries that represent extremes. This remains extremely theoretical for students, and when it involves countries they don’t know, they don’t really know how to interpret it. They sometimes feel like we’re reciting clichés, and I often hear students say, “Oh no, but Indians aren’t all like that.” They don’t really grasp the national, shared aspect of culture.
After this theoretical course, I ask them to go on GapsMoov and take the cultural positioning test you offer. They then see how the GapsMoov scores were generated. The first surprise they usually have is that France isn’t typically the country that most resembles them. Younger generations tend to adopt certain American characteristics.
Then, for the quiz we’ll do for evaluation, I ask them to compare France with China, France with India, and France with the United States, which are currently the countries with the highest commercial potential for French companies. This allows them to apply, with your videos, the different criteria identified by the three authors I mentioned earlier.
What’s your students’ feedback? They loved using the software; they find it interactive. However, I make them answer the questions in English. They don’t love it, but intercultural management taught in French really makes no sense. They enjoy taking the test; it allows them to define themselves, to see if they’re more like this or more like that. And afterward, they really enjoy digging around, looking at many countries on the list they know to see which one is the most extreme in a certain way. They also like the video format; they enjoy watching videos. They’re in English, but they can use subtitles. You have them in French, but I ask them to put them in English.
Tell us about a cultural shock you experienced. Before becoming a professor, I worked for the company Hurgo, and I was based in Singapore. I was a product manager. In that role, we worked with India, which was a subsidiary of Hurgo. On several occasions, when we had a meeting with my counterpart, the product manager in India, I experienced a lot of cultural misunderstanding on my part. Specifically, I found that when I asked him a question for which he didn’t have the answer, or if the question was a bit challenging—like when I asked him “why aren’t the numbers looking good?”—he would give me a 45-minute monologue on a different topic.
In fact, this aligns with quite a few intercultural concepts, particularly the strong power distance that’s identified and found on your GapsMoov software. This means you simply can’t disappoint the boss. You also can’t disappoint the client. So, there’s a tendency to say yes, even if you know it won’t be done. And there’s also a tendency to try and put oneself forward to impress the other person, the boss, or in this case, a hierarchical equivalent. Whereas in other cultures, one would have simply said no, I don’t know, I don’t have the numbers, or yes, it’s true, the target wasn’t met.
