Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories and Synthetic Cultures

A brilliant book with lots of impulses, good exercises, a nicely written story that shows the difference between cultures.I especially liked the virtual cultures, where two extremes are compared with each other. These explain where there can arise conflicts in communication and behaviour when dealing with people from abroad. I also love the layout of the book.

This is the one I've been looking for. Having read and enjoyed "Culture's Consequences", I was looking for exercises to make the subject more concrete. I am a management trainer and often work with international groups. A subject that envelopes them, yet eludes them, is how to deal with cultural differences. The book offers small warming-ups, larger instructive exercises, descriptions of easy-to-do simulations and also "where to buy" pages for more sophisiticated simulations.One thing though: you might want to read up on Hofstede's other books to get more background in the subject. This book is really focused on training purposes. An improvement could have been to indicate times and needed material for each exercise, but the experienced trainer will have no problem envisioning the exercise.Although the book holds Geert Hofstede's name, it appears to have been written mostly by his son Gert Jan et al. No criticism though; as said, this was really the book I was looking for.