Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2013, Vol. 12, No. 3, 494502. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amle.2012.

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Building Cross-Cultural
Leadership Competence:
An Interview With
Carlos Ghosn
GNTER K. STAHL
Vienna University of Economics and Business, and INSEAD
MARY YOKO BRANNEN
Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, and INSEAD

one of the companys most successful divisions,

Ghosn became the head of Michelins North American unit and supervised a restructuring after the
acquisition of American Uniroyal/Goodrich Tire
Company. His skill in transforming troubled businesses caught the attention of Louis Schweitzer,
president of Renault, who asked Ghosn to become
his second in command in 1996. When Renault
acquired a large stake in Nissan in 1999,
Schweitzer asked Ghosn to turn around the nearly
bankrupt Japanese automaker.
His radical restructuring that returned Nissan to
profitability earned Ghosn the nicknames le cost
killer and Mr. Fix It, as well as Asias CEO of the
Year Award (2001) from Fortune Magazine. The
Renault-Nissan Alliance, a unique business platform in which each company helps the other and
has mutual cross-shareholdings, is now the longest surviving cross-cultural combination among
major automakers. It has become the worlds third
largest car group, after General Motors and Volkswagen. The Alliance is responsible for more than
one in 10 cars sold worldwide.
Ghosn is the recipient of Automotive News 2000
Industry Leader of the Year Award, the Strategic
Management Society Lifetime Achievement Award
(2012), and the INSEAD Transcultural Leadership
Award (2008), which honors an individual who
exemplifies the importance and necessity of working across borders. Ghosn travels extensively and
splits his time mainly between Paris and Tokyo. He
also frequently visits his companies major mar-

Carlos Ghosn is chairman and chief executive officer of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, and he holds
the same roles at both Renault and Nissan. Born in
Brazil to Lebanese parents in 1954, Ghosn moved to
Beirut when he was 6 years old, and he completed
his primary education at a Jesuit school. He then
earned engineering degrees from two of the most
highly esteemed schools of higher education in
Francecole Polytechnique and the cole des
Mines de Paris, both noted for their highly selective entrance exams. He holds French, Brazilian,
and Lebanese citizenships.
Ghosns first job was at Michelin, Europes largest tire maker, where he worked for 18 years. He
started in manufacturing and was rapidly promoted at 27 years old to plant manager in Le Puy,
France, where he started honing his leadership
skills. Industrial Scion Franois Michelin later
asked him to turn around Michelins ailing South
American division, naming Ghosn chief operating
officer during Brazils inflationary economic crisis.
After restoring the South American operations into

We would like to thank Associate Editor Carolyn Egri and three

anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier
versions of this article. We also would like to thank Carlos
Ghosn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Renault and
Nissan, for providing us with this generous interview opportunity, as well as Frdrique Le Greves, CEO Chief of Staff, Anja
Wernersbach, Assistant to Chairman and CEO, and Masaaki
Nishizawa, Head of Marketing and Sales Japan, Nissan, Motor
Co. for their support. Final thanks go to Allan Bird, Mansour
Javidan, and Martha Maznevski who provided thoughtful and
enriching commentaries on our interview.
494

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Stahl and Brannen

kets, including emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

On June 14, 2012, Carlos Ghosn talked with Professors Mary Yoko Brannen and Gnter K. Stahl
about challenges in managing across borders, his
multicultural background, the mind-set and skill
sets that managers require to create cultural synergies, and how global corporations can utilize
their cultural diversity to build cross-cultural competence in individuals and teams. Following the
interview, three leading cross-cultural management scholars and educators were invited to comment on selected issues and to place the interview
in the context of existing research. These are Allan
Bird, Darla and Frederick Brodsky Trustee Professor in Global Business, DAmore-McKim School of
Business, Northeastern University; Mansour Javidan, Garvin Distinguished Professor and founding
director of the Najafi Global Mindset Institute,
Thunderbird School of Global Management; and
Martha Maznevski, professor of organizational behavior and international management and MBA
program director at IMD.

LEVERAGING CULTURAL DIVERSITY:

CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AS A SOURCE
OF SYNERGY, LEARNING, AND INNOVATION
Mr. Ghosn, you have been touted as a leader
without borders, the quintessential global
executive, and multiculturalisms poster boy
and have even inspired a manga comic book in
Japan, where your efforts to turn around and
transform Nissan made you a Japanese hero.
From your extensive experiences in managing
across borders, how important is cross-cultural
management education for global corporations
such as Renault and Nissan today?
It is critical. More and more, managers are dealing
with different cultures. Companies are going
global, and teams are spread across the globe. If
youre head of engineering, you have to deal with
divisions in Vietnam, India, China, or Russia, and
you have to work across cultures. You have to
know how to motivate people who speak different
languages, who have different cultural contexts,
who have different sensitivities and habits. You
have to get prepared to deal with teams who are
multicultural, to work with people who do not all
think the same way as you do.

495

You have to know how to motivate

people who speak different languages,
who have different cultural contexts, who
have different sensitivities and habits.
You have to get prepared to deal with
teams who are multicultural, to work
with people who do not all think the
same way as you do.

You have also talked about cultural differences

as being a source of cultural synergies, as
opposed to the general concern that they present
barriers and impediments to doing business. In
fact, in many teaching cases and anecdotal
reports about the Nissan turnaround in the wake
of the Renault-Nissan alliance, there have been
examples of such synergistic outcomes. How do
such synergies actually come about and,
specifically, what kinds of cross-cultural skill sets
do you look for in people that help foster these
synergies in real life? Can you provide an
example from the Renault-Nissan alliance?
I can give you many examples. A very prominent
example is around the concept Japanese refer to as
monozukuri.
[Note from the interviewers: Monozukuri literally
means making things. However, rather than focusing on the operational aspects of making
things, the phrase embodies the concept of the
spirit that energizes individuals to produce excellent products and continually improve them.
Rather than mindless repetition, monozukuri relies
on creativity and perseverance earned through
lengthy apprenticeship practice rather than the
structured course curricula taught at traditional
schools. In that sense, monozukuri is art rather than
science.]
We all know that monozukuri is a core competence of Japan. And its embedded in the culture of
Japan about how to work together coming from
different functions for a specific objective. You
have purchasing people working with engineering, working with logistics, working with manufacturing in order to get this car out of the door of the
plant at the best quality and lowest cost possible.
Its not optimization by function; its an optimization as a whole by people coming together and,
often in a disorganized manner, coming to a good
conclusion. This is one area where culturally Nis-

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san and Renault are completely different. Obviously, we as French absolutely do not have this
culture. The synergies in this example are created
by the fact that Renault, by trying to learn from a
different culture, can advance a lot in terms of
monozukuri. It translates into better quality and
lower cost for the product by just having a completely different approach. This is for me a great
example of how cultural differences and having
completely different approaches to the same problem create synergies. In this case, Renault employees are learning something that they could not
have done by themselves, by just going and sitting
down with monozukuri teams, by learning the processes of Nissan and implementing them in the
Renault way back home.
I could give you lots of other examples where in
one national or organizational culture something
is a blind spot or weakness and in another culture
its a strength, and by working together, synergy is
created. We all know that the Japanese culture is
very strong in engineering, very strong in manufacturing, very weak in communication, and very
weak in finance. The Renault culture generally is
very strong in some of the places where the Nissan
culture is weakfor example, in finance, in telling
the company narrative, and in artistic and emotionally evocative advertising and marketing.
Thats why I think the Renault-Nissan Alliance
works so well because the cultures are different,
yet complementary.
Can you elaborate on how these cultural
complementarities lead to synergies in the
Renault-Nissan alliance?
The Japanese culture is very sectionalist. The
principle of the chimneys that exists in France
also exists in Japan, except that its called sections in Japan. The Japanese are sectionalists; you
have it in the Japanese bureaucracy, and we have
it at Nissan. But the flip side of this is an incredible
strength of community and common purpose
what I call neighborhood collaboration.
In Japan, the plant is a sacred place. If the plant
manager calls all the functions to come to work
around him, to help him optimize the product, they
will come. Because there is a sense of community
in Japan, there is a sense of collective purpose. Its
a community which has a sense that the car coming out of the plant is our car. They are proud of it,
they want to come and help the plant manager do
the best possible job. This is the essence of mono-

September

zukuri. The purchasing guys are going to contribute, the engineering guys are going to contribute.
They will overcome even the strongest sectionalism because the one thing even more important
than sectionalism is a shared sense of community
and purpose. Monozukuri or other Japanese concepts, such as nemawashi have become key words
of the Alliance. [Note from the interviewers: Nemawashi refers to collective project planning through
cross-functional team input, advance communication and consensus; literally, preparing the roots
of a tree for transplant]. Even Renault people
people in France and those in Brazil, Morocco, and
elsewherenow talk about monozukuri and nemawashi, which they learned from their Japanese colleagues. So, there are words which used to belong
to one culture which now belong to the Alliance.
You have given us examples of synergies that
result from optimizing the best of both worlds
what the French bring and what the Japanese
bring. These kinds of cultural synergies might be
said to come about naturally due to economies of
scale. Another way to think of synergies is to
think of them as economies of scope where there
is colearningsomething new for both parties
arises from working together. Have you seen
something like this that has emerged at
Renault-Nissan?
Yes, for example the electric car. This is something
that neither company could have done by itself
something that came about because the companies are working together. Because we have the
scale and we have the complementary skills and
resources, we were able to pursue something completely new to both. We have many projects that
would have never been realized if each company
had tried to do it alone. So, yes, synergy is not only
what exists in one company or the other. It is not
just about transferring best practices. Its also
about creating together something that neither one
could have done alone.

[S]ynergy is not only what exists in one

company or the other. It is not just about
transferring best practices. Its also about
creating together something that neither
one could have done alone.Ghosn

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COMPETENCIES REQUIRED FOR WORKING

ACROSS BORDERS AND MANAGING
MULTICULTURAL TEAMS
Lets dig a little bit deeper into the competencies
and the individual-level factors that enable such
synergies to arise. You have said that whats
really important now is for managers to be
prepared for working in multicultural teams, that
they have to understand there are cultural
differences and need to be able to not only
overcome cultural barriers but to leverage
cultural diversity. Could you discuss four or five
competencies that you have observed in
individuals that enable them to work effectively
across cultures, and that companies operating in
culturally diverse environments need to develop
in their managers?
Working in a multicultural environment necessitates from the beginning a kind of thirst for learning. If you dont have a thirst for learning, if you
think you know it all, and your system is the best,
and you dont even try, this is not going to work.
Thats the most basic thingthat you want to learn
more, develop your skills, broaden your horizon,
and that you want to work in a multicultural environment because you are going to discover new
thingsabout your business and also about yourself. The beauty of being in a multicultural environment is it eliminates your blind spots. When
you are alone, there are parts of things you cannot
see. But, if I am with you, you are going to see and
tell me things I dont know and I cannot see. So by
working in a bigger group you get wider horizons.
But working within a diverse community is difficult. A sense of humbleness is important. Arrogance is one of the reasons for which many mergers or acquisitions in our industry didnt work: You
generally have one executive or one management
team that is very arrogant, thinking that they know
everything, and they are going to teach the others
what they have to do. It doesnt work this way. Its
always a give and take, and even the company
that is weaker or smaller has a lot to teach the
stronger company.
Let me give you an example from our industry.
The American car industry collapsed in 2008 because two car manufacturers went bankrupt and
the third one barely escaped. These three companies had joint ventures with Japanese partners.
General Motors had a joint venture with Isuzu and
Suzuki, Ford had Mazda, and Chrysler worked with
Mitsubishi. The CEO of one of these American car

497

manufacturers told me one day: I am amazed at

how much the Renault-Nissan Alliance is exchanging, because we had these joint ventures for so
many years but we didnt learn from them, we
didnt take anything significant back home. So the
collaboration in this case didnt contribute to efficiency or creativity.
Another thing that is extremely important in
multicultural environments (its important everywhere but particularly in a multicultural environment) is what I call common sense. [Note from the
interviewers: Mr. Ghosn uses the word common
innovatively with the implication of building a
shared basis for understanding as in a common
ground.] When you dont have common sense in a
monocultural environment, you can escape. If you
are in a multicultural environment you cannot escape, because what enables people of different
cultures to work together is this common ground,
nothing else. Because when you are of the same
culture, lets say Germans together, French together, Japanese together, you can do a lot of
things because you already have common ground,
having been socialized in the same cultural context, so you have a basic understanding of each
others habits and traditions, and each others language and history. But, when the French are sitting
with Japanese, or with Germans, there is no way
you are going to make a decision together without
establishing common ground rooted in solid facts.
Ultimately, this is the only common denominator.
This is why I always strive to make decisions
based on common sense business logic and a
shared understanding of all sides of the issue taking into consideration everyones context, cultures,
functions, and so on. The only way to make sound
decisions in a multicultural environment is to use
facts and common sense.

Are the competencies that you mentioned equally

important at all levels of the organization?
Everybody has to be a manager of diversity, but
especially senior executives because people always look to the top. They look at the top and say,
OK, is he doing what he is saying? If employees
see top management talking about openness and
learning but they see an arrogant person who is
closed downthey will not take it seriously. So the
top management in a multicultural environment
has an important role: They must walk the talk.

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It would seem that you are suggesting that

authenticity and role modeling on the part of top
managers are critical in creating a culture that
values diversity.
Yes, authenticity is critical, particularly at top
management level. When Renault people go to
Japan to work with Japanese colleagues, thats not
their normal environment. When Japanese people
come to work in the Renault Technical Center,
thats not their normal environment. Engineers
from France and Japan think differently from each
other. Their languages are different, their environments are different. They need some common reference, support, and guidance. They need a framework, and this is where top management plays a
big rolesetting priorities, representing the culture, signaling what to do and what not to do.
The ability to find creative and mutually beneficial solutions is also important. For instance, we
have a rule that we can never make a decision to
pursue a project in which one side wins and the
other side loses. Never even if that means that
ultimately the project is completed at a slightly
slower pace than if we had imposed a top-down
decision in which one team had to surrender. Some
people dont understand this. In particular, some
outside observers have said, Come on, you are
slowing down the Alliance. There are so many
opportunities. You should decide today to make a
decision where Renault wins and Nissan loses,
and tomorrow you can make a decision where Nissan wins and Renault loses, and then everythings
going to be okay because, at the end of the day,
everybody wins. But this doesnt work.

The ability to find creative and mutually

beneficial solutions is also important. For
instance, we have a rule that we can
never make a decision to pursue a
project in which one side wins and the
other side loses. Never even if that
means that ultimately the project is
completed at a slightly slower pace than
if we had imposed a top-down decision in
which one team had to surrender.Ghosn
So, in your experience the capability of
envisioning a winwin scenario for both parties
is a critical cross-cultural skill set as well?

September

Yes. Understanding this issue is fundamental to

understanding human nature: People, in the long
run, always remember when they lose, and they
always forget when they win in a relationship. So
if you do the winlose stuff, after one or two years
you have a bunch of people who remember every
time they lost. And then the relationship is going
to burst.
This philosophy served us well in the RenaultNissan Alliance. I have always believed that an
alliance is about partnership and trust rather than
power and domination. People will not give their
best effort if they feel that their identities are being
threatened. This relates back to what I said earlier
if you are not able to establish some common
ground, and if you do not believe anything can be
learned from your partner, the venture is doomed
from the beginning.
Just to review then, the desire to learn, knowing
you have blind spots, humbleness, finding
common ground, authenticity, and a winwin
attitude are key competencies for effective crosscultural interactions. Have we left anything out?
Are there other skill sets that we might develop
in managers to help them attain cross-cultural
synergies?
Perhaps overall, a key quality that you need to
possess or develop, because you often dont have
it from the beginningis mutual respect. This was
a critical success factor in the Renault-Nissan Alliance. Mutual respect means that you dont focus
on the weaknesses and limitations of your partner.
You focus on the strengths. This is basic, but it
allows a total change of atmosphere when instead
of focusing on the weaknesses of your partner you
try to see the partners strong points. Only then are
you able to learn from your partner.
How do you instill this mind-set in your managers
and employees?
It is a continuous battle, and you are never really
finished. For instance, we have done a good job
solidifying relations between Renault and Nissan,
but now we are moving to expand our business
model to include AvtoVAZ, which is Russias largest car company and the maker of the Lada brand.
Even some of my best managers ones who were
at the beginning of the Renault-Nissan Alliance
need to be reminded about respect and tolerance
and winwin relationships. I need to remind them,

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You cant impose your beliefs or processes. You

need also to learn from the Russian team because
they are our partners. We may have a 51% stake,
but this is a partnership and we are here to make
our partner more competitiveand ultimately that
is how we are also going to make Renault and
Nissan more competitive. You constantly have to
remind people that we are taking this approach
because otherwise the tendency would be similar
to a conventional acquisition where people say,
OK, we have 51% stake, we control it, so I want
this place on the board, I want to put a controller
here, I want to control these processes. I always
remind people that the CEO is Russian, the company is Russian, the brand is Russian. The Russians are in charge. You have to instill this mindset from the beginning and then constantly
reinforce it.
The next question is about distinguishing
between what we call culture-specific skill sets
and culture-general skill sets. For example, you
yourself have exhibited strong culture-general
skill sets in leading the Nissan recovery. From
what we understand, you didnt know that much
about Japan at the time of the initial alliance.
However, based on your LebaneseBrazilian
cultural origins both what are known as highcontext cultures where a great deal of attention
is given to tacit and the relational aspectsyou
were able to leverage your pre-existing cultural
knowledge to guide you. That is part of a culturegeneral skill set. A culture-specific one would be
knowledge about Japanese customs and values
that you can get from reading books about Japan,
making a field trip to Japan, and so on. So, the
question is, Are you aware of the difference
between culture-general and culture-specific skill
sets? And do you think they are complementary,
or is one more important than the other?
I dont think of it this way. Instead, you need to
consider the situation that you are facing at the
time, and you need to leverage the skills and experience that youve acquired so far. When I arrived in Japan in 1999, Nissan faced a desperate
situation and was close to bankruptcy. I knew I
had to make significant, radical changes to turn it
aroundand to make these changes, I needed
some culture specifics for credibility. I knew about
the car industry, so that gave me some credibilitymore than if, for example, I had been in charge
of a distribution company. I also had another thing

499

that I used to my advantage: Im not Japanese. Im

a mixture of Brazilian and Lebanese, with a long
history in Franceso people dont necessarily associate me with any single culture. I might have
met up with some fierce resistance if I were more
characteristic of one particular background,
whether it was Chinese or American or German.
Why? Because people might think you are not listening to them. People think you are trying to impose on them your preconceived ideas and culture.
When you have a more vague, hybrid, multicultural background, people feel they have a chance
to talk to you. They say, He is going to listen, he is
not taken by one particular concept or representing
one particular culture. So one of the things that I
benefited from without knowing itI discovered it
only lateris that people did not see me as typical
French. They saw me as a Franco-BrazilianLebanese guy. So, they said, Hmm, he doesnt
come with a typical talk, with a particular approach, he is more open. Thats why I think embracing multiculturalism opens up more opportunities for you than if you operate in a monocultural
world. So, back to your question: My background
was probably a big asset for me. Being able to
navigate in new cultural contexts, not being rigid
or uncomfortable in unfamiliar surroundings, was
absolutely fundamental.
BEST APPROACHES AND PRACTICES TO
INCREASE CULTURAL AWARENESS AND
PREPARE MANAGERS FOR WORKING IN A
CULTURALLY DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT
We spoke about the mind-set and skill sets that
are required for success in a culturally diverse
environment. Lets talk about how to develop
these skills. In the HR development field the socalled 70-20-10 rule is now widely accepted. It
holds that most learning comes from on the job
experience and challenging assignmentsthats
the 70%; a substantial proportion of learning
approximately 20% comes from coaching,
feedback, informal social learning, and formal
training and education, that is, traditional
management development programs, training
seminars, and so on, contributes relatively little
only about 10%to the development of
leadership competences. This is not based on
strong scientific evidence, but many companies
have organized their leadership development
activities around this principle. Do you agree
with this rather pessimistic view of what can be

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achieved in management development

programs? If classroom training contributes so
little to the development of leadership
competences, then how do you develop crosscultural skills in managers?
Based on my own experience, I would tend to agree
with the 70-20-10 rule. I am an engineer. I have
never been to a business school. I have been
trained in engineering in France, which is very
formal, very technical, we barely spoke English,
we didnt have training in communication and interpersonal skills, nothing, only mathematics,
physics, that kind of training. And I started my
career as an engineer. But very quickly I moved to
business and into management. I learned nearly
everything on the job because the Michelin management said, Well, he has good people skills, he
is interested, he can influence other people. They
moved me from manufacturing to business, and
promoted me to management. But I had zero management training. I was a pure on-the-job learner.
I would have loved to get a solid education in
business, but I never had the time or opportunity to
go to a business school. So, in my case, I would
say, its even more than 70-20-10; its 80-20-0. It was
a lot of learning on the job, and from time to time
having the opportunity to learn from a boss that I
trusted and respected.
By the way, in terms of learning from the boss, I
generally learned more from his mistakes than
from his teachings. When you see someone that
you respect doing something wrong, well, then you
say, Ill never do that. Does that mean that the
10%formal training and educationis not important? No, I think academic learning is very important. For my kids, I am encouraging them to take
the time and go to Stanford, Harvard, INSEAD, or
others. And the 10% part of the equation is also
important for management development. Why? Because you can accelerate your learning by taking a
little bit of distance from the day-to-day-work and
thinking with peers who have different experience
about what you are going through. I probably
would have benefited a lot from formal management training, but I didnt have this luxury.

From your experience, what are the best

approaches and practices to increase cultural
awareness and prepare managers for working in
a multicultural environment?

September

Exposure and on the job training are very important here. You have to be working in a multicultural environment or put in a situation where you
have to overcome cultural barriers. If you are lucky
enough to get an overseas position at a multicultural company, then you will quickly develop some
international management skills. But extracting
yourself from time to time, learning some useful
frameworks and tools, and having the opportunity
to reflect on some of the notions which are the fruit
of the experience of others, thats very helpful, too.
Instead of only learning from your own mistakes,
you can then also learn from the mistakes of other
people. Thats the value of business school education. So I am very positive about what you [business schools] are doing, even though I didnt have
the privilege to do it.
Can we dig a little deeper here? What would you
say are the most effective ways to help people
develop those intercultural skills that we talked
about earlier? Traditional cross-cultural
management courses, as they are taught at
business schools, are certainly of value. But we
all agree that global leaders cannot be
developed in the classroom. Obviously, sending
people on international assignments is a
powerful leadership development tool, but it is
not always possible. Are there any alternatives to
sending people abroad for training?
You can get some good multicultural management
skills by working on international projects inside
of many organizations, even if you are based in
your own country. Some people are mobile to go
abroad, some people are not. If you are not, because you have family constraints or health constraints, or for whatever reason, you can still have
international exposure and a multicultural experience just by working on a project which involves
people from other countries, or involves people of
different companies. You can be based in Paris
and have a job in which you only work with French
people, and only with French people who are engineers and who went to the same school as you
did. Or you could be in Paris, sitting at your own
desk but working with colleagues who are Russian, Japanese, or Brazilian, working with people
from sales and finance and engineering, and communication. I would encourage people to take
these types of challenging assignmentsthose
that have international flavor and cross-cultural
contact.

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Also, encouraging people to learn other languages is important; getting them out of their comfort zone with their own language can have a big
learning effect. Encouraging people to travel,
whenever its possible, go and see on the ground
how things are. So, all these small things where
you take people out of their comfort zone allow you
to develop their multicultural skills. Thats for me
something extremely important, thats what we try
to do at Renault and Nissan. Obviously you cannot
travel all over the place for development purposes,
you have to do it in a way which makes business sense.
But the key point is to get people out of their
comfort zone, learn new languages, travel to different countries, go to places where you dont understand the culture, and expose yourself to situations where you have to deal with uncertainty. All
of this helps you to put yourself in the shoes of
people who are different from you. This is particularly important if you are a German working for a
German company, or a Frenchman working for a
French company. If you work in a monocultural
environment, you have to find some other way to
immerse yourself in other cultures or subcultures,
to put yourself in Turkish shoes or in Korean shoes
or in Brazilian shoes. You are going to work much
better with these people when they come and visit
you.

But the key point is to get people out of

their comfort zone, learn new languages,
travel to different countries, go to places
where you dont understand the culture,
and expose yourself to situations where
you have to deal with uncertainty. All of
this helps you to put yourself in the shoes
of people who are different from
you.Ghosn
How much do you think your own multicultural
background has shaped your ability to work
effectively in cross-cultural environments?
Lets put it this way, in regard to your 70 20 10%
rule, I would say 90% of my cross-cultural learning
has come from real-life experience. Because I
didnt learn about multiculturalism in a book. I
was born in Brazil and I lived in a city where we
had people from Poland, from Italy, from England.

501

My childhood was in Lebanon and I had friends

who were Jews, Muslims, Christians. . . It was a
melting pot, and I could see as a child the difficulty
of blending these different people, but I also saw
the beauty and the wealth which was created by it.
I could see it! I had the same thing in Lebanon
where you had people of different origins and different religions fighting each other, battling
against each other, but at the same time so attached to their shared identity as a Lebanese community even though they were at war. They were
very proud of being Lebanese even though they
were Sunni, Christians, Druze, or Jews, and I didnt
read it from a book. It was a life-training. So, when
you come out of this environment you know that
diversity can be a threat, or it can be an asset,
depending how you manage it, what you do with it,
and what is the purpose of it. I think that when you
have different people coming together, if you dont
give them a collective purpose, if you dont give
them a project, theres going to be chaos. Putting
diverse people together without the same vision or
the same purpose creates chaos . . . you are simply
going to create conflict.
We would like to bring the interview to a close
with a question that is directed toward the future
of cross-cultural learning. As the economy goes
from West to East, and from North to South, one of
the things that we reflect upon is the
applicability of Western models of management
in other cultures. We are teaching Western linear
logic, and in terms of cross-cultural management,
we are teaching more the cross-cultural
comparisons that are binary, like the French are
like this, the Japanese are like this. This is the
predominant mode of teaching about crosscultural management. What kind of changes are
needed in terms of how we go about teaching
cross-cultural management? Do you think we
need to adjust this kind of logic?
No, frankly, I think this way of teaching crosscultural management is quite appropriate. Its like
at school: You have physics classes and you have
literature and other subjects, and they are all part
of a comprehensive learning plan. How do you
teach physics? In teaching physics, you caricature
reality, you put it in an equation and you teach
people the most important equations and how to
apply them. That does not reflect the real world,
but helps to understand it. This is useful. And in
cross-cultural management education, when you

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say the Japanese are like this, the French are like
this, obviously this is not an accurate reflection of
the reality, but you are helping people to understand by giving them simplification, a caricature
of reality. You reduce the complexity of the reality
to manageable proportions. People need this; if
you dont start by simplifying, it gets too complicated, its overwhelming, and they dont know
where to start. It is the same in physics, in chemistry. . . you need to do this caricature, you need to
say the Japanese are process-oriented, the Japanese are community people, they prefer an indirect
style of communication, and so on. Not all Japanese are like this, but you need to say Japanese are
X, French are Y, and Americans are Z. This is a
caricature, but its like an equation. The equation
does not give an accurate picture of reality, but it
helps you understand some general rules related
to reality.
Now, after you have a physics class with all
these equations then you go to the literature class,
and in literature it is all about exceptions that are
confirming the rules, and these are the things that
make it completely different and rich and complex,
and it helps you understand the world from a new
perspective. Again, it is not always an accurate
picture of reality, it is sometimes distorted and
exaggerated and sometimes its total fiction. But
youll learn about life and about the world.
So, coming back to your question, I think you
need both: You need to draw a caricature of reality
to attract students attention and to simplify. Besides, its human nature to want to simplify: People

September

love caricatures and can understand themand

frankly, they know that they arent always true. But
they are a simple, easy to digest starting point. By
contrast, if you start with very complicated stuff,
even though its closer to reality, people get overwhelmed or bored. They shut down. Why? Because
they dont have a reference point to understand
fully what you are saying. So, in cross-cultural
management education, you need both: Start by
simplifying, then paint a more complex picture of
reality.
Thank you for granting this interview. It will
make a real contribution to advancing the
frontiers of cross-cultural management learning
and education.
Comments on the Carlos Ghosn Interview
In the papers that follow, three leading crosscultural management scholars and educators were
invited to comment on selected issues and to place
the interview in the context of existing research.
These include Allan Bird, Darla and Frederick
Brodsky Trustee Professor in Global Business,
DAmore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern
University; Mansour Javidan, Garvin Distinguished Professor and founding director of the Najafi Global Mindset Institute, Thunderbird School
of Global Management; and Martha Maznevski,
professor of organizational behavior and international management and MBA program director
at IMD.

Gnter K. Stahl is professor of international management at WU Vienna and adjunct professor

of organizational behavior at INSEAD. He received his PhD from the University of Bayreuth,
Germany, and was a visiting professor at the Fuqua School of Business, Northeastern University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Hitotsubashi University,
among others. Stahls research interests include leadership and leadership development;
corporate social responsibility and ethics; and the sociocultural processes in international
teams, alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and how to manage people and culture effectively
in those contexts.
Mary Yoko Brannen is professor of international business and holds the Jarislowsky East Asia
(Japan) Chair at the University of Victoria Gustavson School of Business. She received her
MBA and PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Brannens current research
focuses on knowledge sharing across distance and the role of biculturals in MNCs.

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