Interculturality : EMBAs interviewed

It was of great importance. The EMBA is about exchange with others that have a different profile than yours and a deep experience in their field of activity. Multiculturality is part of this melting-pot that makes you become better, as a manager and as a person.

I was exposed to an international environment.   But going to China and meeting Chinese students has really opened my eyes.

Definitely.  yes! A modern manager has to operate in a global environment. Talking, thinking, working in groups in a multicultural environment within the MBA gives you the skills to improve your leadership.

I have worked in a multicultural environment for the last ten years. From my own experience, working with people of different nationalities and different cultures comes as a challenge initially.

However, I chose to accept these experiences as journeys. I have learned so much and my vision and understanding of the world became richer and deeper each time. In Catalonia, you better speak Catalan to your contacts even if you think you are in Spain. In South Africa, it is better not to discuss the history of the country in business meetings, as the topic can be very sensitive for many of your contacts.

Being half Russian, I had to learn to avoid being too direct to my French clients. It still comes as a challenge sometimes. However, all these moments have taught me to adapt my speech or my e-mails according to the culture of the receiver. Very interesting exercise every time.

I am from Cameroon and I have done my university studies in France where I also have professional experience as well as in Angola and Nigeria. Most of my professional experience has been in International projects.

These experiences brought me a lot in terms of adapting to the host culture while keeping in a certain way a minimum of my own culture.

I have therefore succeeded through these professional experiences to exchange with different people, develop my professional network and even make new friends with whom I can discuss different insights on different subjects.

Multiculturalism is one of the most import aspect of an EMBA! 

1. All the courses are in English so you have to think in another language;
2. The world is "global" and we can see that business, economy is different from one country to another and most of the time it depends on cultural aspects;
3. Ways of thinking are different because of our history and our values.  To succeed in an international business, I think we have to find "universality". We can find "universality" by better knowing different countries and cultures.
4. It's very enlightening to meet and work with foreign people ; different accents (in English or other languages) - different history, culture, values etc.  Such different points of view!

Yes, I think multiculturality IS a fundamentally important aspect of an EMBA and the Kedge programme as today's business environment is different from the last generation, along with globalization of each type of company (SME, Big groups) and all categories of industry from technology, aerospace to recycling and food industry, all of us as the managers have to deal with multiculturality in today’s and tomorrow’s business environment. 

A MBA platform with multiculturality provides us a risk-free cooperation, exchange, understanding, challenges in order to support us to achieve this goal.

6 years before, when I worked in an international construction project consulting company, I worked with a Germany client. We did a design brief for their new factory to be built in China.

During the presentation, engineers from the client asked hundreds of questions about almost each figure/number, even some of their questions were pretty simple. They wanted to know every detail. This course of action is really different than that of local Chinese clients. In China, it’s common for people to take you for an idiot if you ask pretty simple questions; such as “what is air conditioning?”.

So for most Chinese people, even they don’t know exactly the answer to a simple question.  But, they don’t ask and instead just pretend they clearly know the answer.

That meeting was one of the most difficult meetings I had in my life. And after the meeting, when I talked about the story with my friends, they said, when you work with German people you need to be strong and aggressive, or they may think you are not fully capable of the work.

From then on I understood.  For each country, the people have their own typical character and you need to act accordingly when working with them.

It is an asset, especially on the Paris campus, with students coming from Russia, Germany and also French students having experiences abroad.

Well, as a matter of fact, an EMBA directed in Paris by an American coming from Le Morillon, Toulon, isn't it a good example of multiculturarily ?