Blackwell Reference Online

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When we were asked to edit the first Handbook of Cross‐Cultural Management , we were excited about undertaking such an ambitious project. Before we could even think about emphasizing the “cross‐cultural” in management, however, we needed to define more precisely the term “management,” or at least to narrow our perspective so that this broadly expansive term might have meaning in and of itself and within the cross‐cultural area. We immediately rejected the approach of a simple definition, as this would greatly restrict our vision and force us to ignore critical areas of importance. At that point we were attracted to the ideological struggles that in the past have helped to shape the field of management. These struggles usually take the form of direct contrasts, for example, the statistical/quantitative/economic perspective on management issues and problems versus the behavioral perspective. At a very general level, such an approach may be justified. For example, the subfield “human resource management” can reasonably be portrayed in terms of three eras: The traditional era during which narrow personnel functions were emphasized while theory was given minimal attention (until about 1950); the human resources era during which behavioral theories such as theory X and theory Y framed the approaches that managers used to solve problems (1950–75); and the economics era, during which transaction ... log in or subscribe to read full text