While this method often comes studded with many specific examples, case studies, and anecdotes from all over the world, including Asia, it does not actually teach our students how to manage within the confines of business systems other than our own. Most business schools and their constituencies have been satisfied with this approach, and for good reason. When American managers have been forced to confront different cultures and business systems directly, it has often been in Europe, with its linguistic and cultural similarities to North America. In non-European business environments, American managers have usually been able to delegate the task of intercultural negotiation to foreign nationals who are fluent in English, often through living and studying in the United States. The economic emergence of Asia, however, has brought all of this into question.
China is a different world.
It is impossible, for example, to understand the climate for foreign investment in China without first appreciating the long and paradoxical relationship that China has had with the West. Nor can the nature of business in Southeast Asia be appreciated unless the there is some understanding of the history of ethnic Chinese populations in the regions business centers. There are also serious shortages of managerial talent in virtually all of the major business centers of Asia outside of India, with the result that salaries for local managers are rising rapidly and that job-hopping has become common in such cities as Hong Kong and Singapore. Americans and other expatriates often have to be used to provide some continuity, with the result that they are forced to negotiate with the local culture without intermediaries. The business schools reaction to this trend has been to place more emphasis on Asia in its curriculum.