African Managers’ Stories and Cultural Awareness: An Exploratory Classroom Exercise

Abstract

Cross-cultural awareness is an essential skill for managers of multinational corporations. In an increasingly globalized world, global awareness is a key proficiency that is essential to include in the curriculum of business schools (Ang, Van Dyne, & Koh, 2006). Recognizing the valuable contribution from the African continent to management learning (George et al., 2006; Nkomo, 2011), this article explores the use of curriculum content from East Africa in an American business school, and the development of cultural intelligence (Eisenberg et al., 2013) among upper-year management students. It is a unique exercise that adopts a holistic approach to the study of cross-cultural awareness (Szkudlarek et al., 2013) and engages students in active project-based learning. The exercise appears to have stimulated cross-cultural awareness and served to initiate the development of a global mind-set. It is a replicable teaching model that illustrates the potential of African learning materials in a US-taught management course.