In a fast-moving globalised world, issues of multicultural management take on increasing importance.

That’s why we, participating MSc students, attended a three-day, intensive Intercultural Management seminar using innovative teaching methods.

One of the methods Prof Suder used was to show us videos of last year’s students presenting their experiences of multicultural management problems; we then had to come up with our own solutions to those problems.

Then we presented our solutions to last year’s students’ problems; after that, we watched videos of last year’s students presenting their solutions to their problems. Finally, we compared and analysed our solutions to last year’s students’ solutions. This was a fascinating exercise because we could see how different groups’ solutions depended on the cultures within each group, i.e. comparing solutions from a North American group vs. an Asian group, we could see greatly different solutions being proposed by these different groups. In other cases, more subtle differences were noted.

The Intercultural Management seminar gave me a chance to reflect about my culture and identity, to think in detail about who I am— me, myself and I.

Basically, who am I? What is my culture? What is culture? What do I know about other cultures?

With so many questions, this seminar helped me to think about me, to think about people to better know and understand behaviours, values and norms across borders and societies.

Culture is much more than the identity and behaviours of people inside a particular country.

Culture starts when a group of people is formed and recognized by other people. They may share similar values. However, you do not belong to only one culture. Nothing is frozen.

The second reason is that at SKEMA, people encourage students to have multicultural experiences, go abroad to develop international careers but no one before Prof. Suder had addressed culture and intercultural management so explicitly.

So, in a few months, I am going to leave France to go to Berlin in order to start my professional life. I feel more confident about working and living in a new culture. I am now prepared for intercultural management and with the right tools.

Intercultural management is about managing diversity, showing tolerance, discovering people, work attitudes and ethics, levels of commitment, managing to reach objectives while understanding that it is important to value your own culture, your own identity and your own community.