Here are 42 books that Cultures and Organizations fans have personally recommended if you like
Cultures and Organizations.
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I grew up as the son of immigrants, which meant I learned early that the way people say things matters as much as what they say. That sensitivity turned into a career. I have spent over twenty years helping companies build partnerships across Japan, China, and South Korea, and the pattern I keep seeing is the same: smart people losing deals not because their product is wrong, but because they misread the room. I wrote The Asia Code because I got tired of watching good opportunities die. The invisible architecture of trust and relationships in East Asia is not a mystery. It just takes someone willing to explain how it actually works.
I found this book genuinely useful because Meyer breaks down cultural differences into eight distinct scales, from communicating to scheduling, and her concept of "relative" cultural positioning clicked something into place for me.
It explained why Germans in the room thought the British were disorganized, while the French thought those same British colleagues were rigid. I use her framework to map out the invisible friction points before I step into a boardroom.
Whether you work in a home office or abroad, business success in our ever more globalized and virtual world requires the skills to navigate through cultural differences and decode cultures foreign to your own. Renowned expert Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain where people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.When you have Americans who precede anything negative with three nice comments French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans who get straight to the point ( your presentation was simply awful") Latin Americans and Asians who are steeped in hierarchy Scandinavians who think the…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I was born in Toronto, yet spent formative years in Atlanta during the height of the civil rights movement. My family shared values dedicated to social justice and actively working against discrimination. Yet at times, I endured antisemitic jokes and name-calling while observing the parents of my “friends” using racist and hateful language toward Black people. We moved to the Seattle area where I later studied political science at the University of Washington, then earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership from the City University of Seattle. For 20+ years, I led global teams at Microsoft and Amazon.
I love this book as a resource guide for leading people with different styles to work effectively together. “Riding the Waves of Culture” furthered my understanding of people and cultures around the world by elevating my knowledge from how people from different cultures vary, to the next level, how the interactions between people from different cultures impact the effectiveness of our communication and working relationships.
I keep this book close to my desktop because it’s a treasure trove of stories and practical applications for resolving what the authors describe as “cultural dilemmas.”
For over 25 years, Riding the Waves of Culture has set the standard for leading effectively in an international business context. Helping leaders to be highly attuned to cultural differences, and to leverage such differences for maximum competitive advantage.
Retaining its in-depth exploration of underlying cultural frameworks that have made it a business classic, Riding the Waves of Culture, Fourth Edition provides new, evidence-based information and insights on critical business matters, including: - How to enhance and improve chances of success in M&A deals by expertly handling corporate and cultural differences - Ways of improving and handling competencies, dilemmas, servant…
I was born in Toronto, yet spent formative years in Atlanta during the height of the civil rights movement. My family shared values dedicated to social justice and actively working against discrimination. Yet at times, I endured antisemitic jokes and name-calling while observing the parents of my “friends” using racist and hateful language toward Black people. We moved to the Seattle area where I later studied political science at the University of Washington, then earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership from the City University of Seattle. For 20+ years, I led global teams at Microsoft and Amazon.
I love this book because of its very specific tips and useful strategies for working with people from countries different than my own. I was able to better understand the culture of each country through concise descriptions of their history, language, educational system, religions, and demographics.
I appreciate that it’s organized in a methodical and consistent fashion that helped me skip to my areas of interest without having to use the table of contents or index to find what I was looking for. I also found this book a ‘must-have’ for my work in leading cross-cultural teams because it helped me to understand and appreciate different cognitive styles, negotiation strategies, value systems, and business practices. Whether you travel globally on business or for pleasure this is a wonderful resource guide.
The most authoritative and comprehensive text of its kind, Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands, 2nd Edition is your must-have guide to proper international business protocol. With countries such as China and India taking on a more significant role in the global business landscape, you can't afford not to know the practices, customs, and philosophies of other countries.
Now fully revised, updated, and expanded with over sixty country profiles, Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands, 2nd Edition provides invaluable information on how to handle common business interactions with grace, respect, and an appreciation for different cultures.
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I was born in Toronto, yet spent formative years in Atlanta during the height of the civil rights movement. My family shared values dedicated to social justice and actively working against discrimination. Yet at times, I endured antisemitic jokes and name-calling while observing the parents of my “friends” using racist and hateful language toward Black people. We moved to the Seattle area where I later studied political science at the University of Washington, then earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership from the City University of Seattle. For 20+ years, I led global teams at Microsoft and Amazon.
This book gave me a framework to understand change management at a strategic level, that you don’t have to create an enormous change all at once. Instead, you can take small, intentional actions. Meyerson describes this action as “dropping a pebble,” one that causes a ripple, which in turn motivates someone else to drop a pebble that also causes a ripple, which in turn motivates someone else to drop a pebble, and so on.
It is the aggregation of all those pebbles that leads to waves of systemic change. I also found Meyerson’s “rocking the boat” metaphor incredibly valuable. I learned the importance of having the courage and heart to do what is right and not what is expected. I love the “tempered radical” moniker. You need to rock the boat to effect change, but not so hard that you knock yourself and others out of the boat. You need…
"Very well researched, very readable. Anyone who feels they don't fit in or who manages those who don't fit in will want to take a look." - "Inc. Magazine". In this engaging book, Debra E. Meyerson reveals how adaptive, family-friendly, and socially responsible work places are built not by revolutionaries but by those she calls "tempered radicals," a group of people that balance company conformity with individual rebellion. While their differences often put them at odds with the "mainstream" organizational culture, Meyerson argues that these "everyday leaders" act as crucial sources of new ideas, alternative perspectives, and organizational learning and…
James M. Jasper has written a number of books and articles on politics and social movements since the 1980s, trying to get inside them to see what participants feel and think. In recent years he has examined the many emotions, good and bad, involved in political engagement. He summarizes what he has learned in this short book, The Emotions of Protest, taking the reader step by step through the emotions that generate actions, to those that link us to groups, down to the emotional and moral impacts of social movements. The book is hopeful and inspiring but at the same time also clear-eyed about the limitations of protest politics.
Meetings are one of the main activities of social movements, and plenty of misunderstandings occur based on the way people talk due to different backgrounds. This amusing book focuses on the effects of social class, which both activists and scholars have tended to forget about in recent years. If nothing else, it will give you something to think about during your next meeting.
Many activists worry about the same few problems in their groups: low turnout, inactive members, conflicting views on racism, overtalking, and offensive violations of group norms. But in searching for solutions to these predictable and intractable troubles, progressive social movement groups overlook class culture differences. Missing Class looks through a class lens and discovers that members with different class life experiences tend to approach these problems differently. Using this class lens enables readers to envision new solutions, solutions that draw on the strengths of all class cultures to form the basis of stronger cross-class and multiracial movements.
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
Working between cultures, as I do, I have been reading the Sinologist François Jullien for many years. I like how he traces the passage of an idea across cultures as they reveal tensions between the same and the different. The question Jullien poses with this book is, “Are universal values possible,” especially between the East and the West?
Although a common concept may exist, this does not mean a common meaning does. In my experience, we all communicate constantly, oscillating between understanding and misunderstanding, which is more so when cultural differences occur.
The once-read, never forgotten Wittgenstein statement: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,’ ever resonates–I believe language mediates all sensory experience, but often inadequately.
Francois Jullien, the leading philosopher and specialist in Chinese thought, has always aimed at building on inter-cultural relations between China and the West. In this new book he focuses on the following questions: Do universal values exist? Is dialogue between cultures possible?
To answer these questions, he retraces the history of the concept of the universal from its invention as an aspect of Roman citizenship, through its neutralization in the Christian idea of salvation, to its present day manifestations. This raises the question of whether the search for the universal is a uniquely Western preoccupation: do other cultures, like…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
As an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, one of my great joys is recommending books to others. I was able to indulge this joy consistently while teaching at a university, introducing students to authors and books and topics they otherwise might never have encountered. I find this same excitement in my own writing, searching for ways to reveal to others the magnificent wealth I find in modern poetry and in the brilliant concepts of poetic thinking.
A renowned teacher of expository writing, Perl is invited to Austria to offer a course on how to teach the Holocaust. Although her mother warned her that as a Jew she should never enter a German-speaking country, Perl decides to accept.
She writes with brutal honesty about the troubled and often profound relationships she establishes with her Austrian students. Her explorations of difficult and sometimes excruciating issues are conducted with a spirit of love and openness toward her students and herself. This is the most ethically engaged book I have read about the profession of teaching.
An award-winning teacher takes a journey into alien territory: Austria, Hitler's birthplace, and the territory of her own hatred. A teaching memoir that offers a pedagogy of hope.
I was born in Quebec, have lived in eleven countries, and speak four languages. In my 20+ years as an author and journalist, my goal has always been to create bridges between cultures and to tell stories that enable individuals to better understand each other. For me, a trip to a new country, no matter how short or long, is incomplete unless I’ve had the chance to meet locals.
"The first person you meet when you travel abroad is yourself.”
I was very happy to discover this self-help book (way back in 2004) on how to deal with ‘the other’ when traveling or living in a foreign culture. It’s a classic in its approach to understanding the people you meet abroad.
Our impressions of other people always start with our own expectations and beliefs of what is right and proper. This book helps us understand our own biases in the process of trying to understand the locals.
This is the first book to take a unique psychological approach to intercultural interactions. The author helps the sojourner to examine his or her own personality traits, both strengths and weaknesses, and how these characteristics may improve one's ability to communicate effectively in a different culture. Most expatriate placements are made on the basis of technical ability to do the job and the candidates circumstances and willingness to relocate. Apart from overseas development organisations, candidate selection that has any specific focus on intercultural aptitude is the exception rather than the rule. In either case, both the development worker and the…
I'm an economic anthropologist and teach classes and conduct research in this area. Economic anthropology is different from economics in that it questions many of the things that economics takes for granted. For example, most economists assume that allocating goods through the market by buying and selling is the best way to organize human communities. Economic anthropologists have shown, in contrast, that many societies have been organized according to other exchange principles. In fact, some of the oldest communities in the world, such as Sumer and Babylon, based their economies around elaborate systems of redistribution, in which every citizen was guaranteed food shares.
We often think of national identity as fixed: one is either Canadian or American, British or Chinese, Australian or Indian.
The Olympic games come along and people pick up a flag to which they apparently belong. In contrast, Ong shows how economic globalization—the integration of production systems, financial activities, and labour markets across national borders—has created a situation in which national belonging is far from fixed and is instead flexible.
She documents, on the one hand, how individuals strategically obtain citizenship from more than one country and use citizenship for goals both personal and economic. On the other hand, she also documents how nation-states are using flexible definitions of citizenship to foster their own ambitions for economic growth.
Few recent phenomena have proved as emblematic of our era, and as little understood, as globalization. Are nation-states being transformed by globalization into a single globalized economy? Do global cultural forces herald a postnational millennium? Tying ethnography to structural analysis, Flexible Citizenship explores such questions with a focus on the links between the cultural logics of human action and on economic and political processes within the Asia-Pacific, including the impact of these forces on women and family life. Explaining how intensified travel, communications, and mass media have created a transnational Chinese public, Aihwa Ong argues that previous studies have mistakenly…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
I don’t have a passion for the diversity, equity, and inclusion topic. I have an obligation. When I didn’t see or understand the horrific injustice of systemic oppression, I couldn’t do anything about it. Now that I see it, I cannot ignore it. I’ve become an expert through my work in organizational development. I work with technology, healthcare, financial services and educational services clients around the globe, and in 2016 I founded GAR (Gender, Age, Race) Diversity Consulting. Prior to GAR, I was a director in the National Diversity and Inclusion office at Kaiser Permanente, and I worked for many years as a global management and technology consultant with American Management Systems, Inc (now CGI).
Workplaces are increasing in diversity, making it essential for workers to understand the nuances of cross-cultural relationships. This book delves into those nuances in a way that is practical, insightful, and fun. The author begins by introducing the four stages of cultural awareness, then builds by providing workbook opportunities for the reader to develop often profound insight. The author remarkably shows no bias toward one culture over another, which heightens the book's value. It’s also a terrific read for global travelers to gain an understanding and appreciation of places and people visited.
Here is the ultimate, self-instructional cross-cultural training manual. Craig Storti, author of The Art of Crossing Cultures, The Art of Coming Home, Incident at Bitter Creek and Cross-Cultural Dialogues, brings his wealth of knowledge and his creative mind to this exceptional new resource.
Figuring Foreigners Out is designed for anyone who wants to help in "figuring out" the behavior of someone from another culture. Educators, trainers and individuals will profit from this user-friendly workbook. readers can work through exercises which are vintage Storti - on their own, or in a training group.
Concepts at the heart of intercultural communication are…
