Multicultural Learning Styles Dilemma: Re-Thinking Management Education

In this era of globalization, businesses pursue strategic advantage by shifting from being multinational to being transnational organizations. The idea of globalization represents an ever changing process that brings people and societies together into a common market of not only goods and services but also knowledge. Business curricula must also change to face this new and changed world. Arguably, business education focuses on presenting scientific principles by objectifying theories and their applications, essentially homogenizing them. However, business theories being universal are applied in various cultural contexts with varied results, and with various accreditation agencies standardizing the MBA program, homogenization is insured without regard to when, where, how and why it is applied. This thinking may be faulty. A realistic explanation for rejection of homogeneity is due to multifaceted cultural factors and contexts in which business is practiced. This apparent rejection of homogeneity is further evidenced when according to (Hooker, 2003, p. 13), “...global business and media weaken the nation state and the civic institutions it represents by making them increasingly irrelevant. More ancient forms of social organization fill the void, as nation states fracture along ethnic and religious lines.” Students may defocus themselves from real implications of understanding and subsequent application of various business theories, especially if they are out of cultural context. While numerous cross cultural studies have surfaced focusing on national culture, there has been little or no attempt to unveil the impact of ethnic culture on learning.