Students Rendezvous with Prof. Alexandra Y. Benz at ISME, Bangalore

Students Rendezvous with Prof. Alexandra Y. Benz at ISME, Bangalore

"A collective programming of the mind," this is exactly how Prof. Alexandra Y. Benz described Culture. ISME, Bangalore had invited the Professor for a brief rendezvous with the student community to discuss on 'Intercultural Management'.

An international consultant, having worked with leading organizations including World Bank and the UN, Prof. Benz is now associated with B-schools across the globe. Stern Schools of Business, ALBA (The Athens Laboratory of Business Administration), IIM-B, C, L are some of the institutes where she has taken up a variety of courses.

The session commenced with a preface on the current perspectives in Intercultural Management. Being very apt to the ambience, the Professor linked cross-cultural management to the field of marketing and finance. Prof. Benz was able to steer the discussion from the view of understanding culture to using the same understanding in marketing to different nationalities.

Certain aspects of differing nationalities were brought about. For instance, the Germans lay a lot of emphasis on past relationships and are very personalized people. The familiarity of this is employed by marketers in promoting their product on the basis of past examples of their work. On the other hand, the North Americans are a diverse race. They prefer looking at the future. The marketing strategy can be customized to suit this thinking.

The students were made aware of the cultural differences existing in different parts of the world and the various reasons for the same.

Speaking from her experience of working with Arthur D. Little, as a consultant, Prof. Benz made the gathering of budding managers cognizant of the Tool Box which she had developed. The tool box is a system comprising of tools and techniques in cultural analysis. It enables the use of grasping culture and application of the same in business. The whole gathering was sprinkled with interesting anecdotes from her experiences in different countries across the planet.

The discussion was guided from culture to management and back in a very subtle fashion so as to sensitize the students on the merits of integrating both the aspects. The essence of the session was that culture is an amalgamation of Values, Beliefs and Standards. It was indisputably a session which made the students more equipped to work in a global business environment.

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Academic Club,
ISME, Bangalore.

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