Keynote Speech:
The Management of Strategic Dilemmas
Dr
Fons TROMPENAARS
Managing
Director, Centre for International Business Studies
I.
Preamble
We
increasingly face an international world.
We used to advocate becoming international whilst being sensitive
to international differences – when in Rome, do as the Romans do –
until we realised that the Romans wondered why Dutch people did not behave
like Dutch people. The era of
expatriation and adaptation to local circumstances has passed.
We have now swung the other way, to globalisation, which is about
doing the same everywhere. The
thinking was: provided everyone understands that, the world will be okay.
MBA education, mediocrity and arrogance followed: ‘how can we
make the world stop thinking and just apply the basic themes across the
world?’ That has not worked
either.
Hence,
neither local adaptation nor global application has worked.
We now consider those challenges ‘dilemmas’.
How can we manage and lead those dilemmas?
The main difference between leaders and managers is that leaders
realise they have dilemmas while managers just think they have a problem.
II.
A Three-step Model of Dilemmas
1.
Approach
I
will use a model of dilemmas to stimulate thought on dilemmas and how they
are caused. Most dilemmas are
value dilemmas caused by cultural differences – that is how dilemmas and
understanding of cultural differences interact.
I will propose a three-step...
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