David Midgley

Why do different groups of people behave in different ways when dealing with the common challenges of human life? The answer often lies in their cultural attitudes, values, and consequent behaviours. The study of human culture has been deemed a key contribution to understanding human life for many centuries. Explanations and descriptions of cultural characteristics abound, but in the field of business, none have been more influential and warmly embraced than those developed by Geert Hofstede and the GLOBE group. These models of national culture, which characterise Japanese, Americans, French, and may other nationalities in terms of common characteristics such as collectivism, masculinity, and power distance, are most widely cited and applied in business research, teaching, and recommendations for practice. But this seminal work needs a careful reality check. The authors of this book point out a range of problems associated with the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture measures which bring into question their accuracy and usefulness in meeting the expectations of management culture researchers and students. This book explains in detail why the measures developed by Hofstede and GLOBE are of dubious validity and why they should be viewed with caution by those looking for answers to the complex questions of culture.

This book overcomes the limitations of existing models of national culture by presenting a novel archetypal methodology that captures heterogeneity within and between nations in a simple manner. The authors incorporate this methodology into a new, empirically derived theory of nations as composites of diverse culture configurations (or archetypes). The theory, which is illustrated through data on secular and emancipative values obtained from the European and World Value Surveys, shows the unity and diversity of these values across 117 nations, and identifies trends in global culture over four decades. Based on the authors' research, the book argues that universal archetypes capture the unity and diversity of the global cultural mosaic with precision and fidelity. By reflecting the reality of changing culture around the world with greater clarity, the book’s novel approach provides a comprehensive lens for international business scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to view,understand and explain culture-related phenomena.

Why do different groups of people behave in different ways when dealing with the common challenges of human life? The answer often lies in their cultural attitudes, values, and consequent behaviours. The study of human culture has been deemed a key contribution to understanding human life for many centuries. Explanations and descriptions of cultural characteristics abound, but in the field of business, none have been more influential and warmly embraced than those developed by Geert Hofstede and the GLOBE group. These models of national culture, which characterise Japanese, Americans, French, and may other nationalities in terms of common characteristics such as collectivism, masculinity, and power distance, are most widely cited and applied in business research, teaching, and recommendations for practice. But this seminal work needs a careful reality check. The authors of this book point out a range of problems associated with the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture measures which bring into question their accuracy and usefulness in meeting the expectations of management culture researchers and students. This book explains in detail why the measures developed by Hofstede and GLOBE are of dubious validity and why they should be viewed with caution by those looking for answers to the complex questions of culture.

This book overcomes the limitations of existing models of national culture by presenting a novel archetypal methodology that captures heterogeneity within and between nations in a simple manner. The authors incorporate this methodology into a new, empirically derived theory of nations as composites of diverse culture configurations (or archetypes). The theory, which is illustrated through data on secular and emancipative values obtained from the European and World Value Surveys, shows the unity and diversity of these values across 117 nations, and identifies trends in global culture over four decades. Based on the authors' research, the book argues that universal archetypes capture the unity and diversity of the global cultural mosaic with precision and fidelity. By reflecting the reality of changing culture around the world with greater clarity, the book’s novel approach provides a comprehensive lens for international business scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to view,understand and explain culture-related phenomena.

Strategic Marketing for the C-Suite examines the relevance of academic research to the most senior levels of the marketing profession, the chief marketing officer (CMO), and the interests of their C-suite colleagues, particularly those of the chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO). Unless academic research is relevant at the C-suite level, it is unlikely to be paid much attention lower down the organization. Strategic Marketing for the C-Suite has three objectives: (1) to understand what we can learn from recent academic research on strategic marketing, (2) to test the validity of earlier editorial positions, and (3) to make some modest suggestions as to what the field might do better in the future. The author addresses these objectives through a review of the academic research on a set of strategic marketing issues that are of relevance to top executives. Strategic Marketing for the C-Suite is structured in four steps. First, it examines the meaning of the phrase strategic marketing to help define the scope of the literature review and the role of the CMO in the firm, drawing on both the academic and practitioner literature. The second step identifies the key domains and associated issues that are currently relevant to the CMO and C-suite including the value of marketing to the firm, managing the new digital market space, achieving profitable growth through innovation, marketing capabilities as a source of competitive advantage, and addressing society's major concerns. The third step reviews the marketing literature relating to these five domains, and, in doing so, identifies the key research themes within each domain, and draws conclusions on these themes and overall conclusions on the domain itself. The fourth and final step summarizes what we learn from a decade's worth of research on strategic marketing, draws conclusions on the validity of earlier research, and discusses the implications for the field of academic marketing.

The Innovation Manual provides a solution to the problems faced by those at the forefront of innovation. It takes you through the seven topics that have the highest impact on the success of value innovation, be this innovation a new product, a new service or a new business model. The seven topics are: - Creating advantage in the minds of many - Chartering innovation within the organization - Preparing, developing and supporting the right team - Placing customers at the centre of innovation - Changing the organization to deliver the innovation - Motivating the right partners and sharing the returns - Building momentum in the market Each topic is linked to an organized toolkit that allows managers to apply this knowledge immediately. The tools sit within an overall framework to show how they build on and reinforce one another. Along with this, the book guides busy managers on applying the tools properly, detailing the relevance of each for specific industries, and how to customize them when necessary.

David Midgley's autobiography describes the author's own Life Script; from childhood failure and humiliation, to recovery, transactional analysis and a career in casework and counselling as a probation officer. Midgley writes about his training to be a psychotherapist, his experience of personal therapy, training workshops, and the trauma of deferment at a Final Exam Board before he eventually qualifies as a clinical transactional analyst. After his early retirement from the Probation Service the author describes how he established a successful private practice. Experiencing conflict between his humanist professional stance, the growing awareness that there is more to the remarkable pattern of his life than mere chance, finally precipitates a crisis and professional burnout. David Midgley's richly varied life has taken him into military intelligence, probation and prison work, television and radio presenting, preaching and lecturing, counselling and psychotherapy and, finally - after motor neurone disease had robbed him of mobility and the ability to speak coherently - writing.

The years of the Weimar Republic saw complex cultural change in Germany as well as political turmoil. Writing Weimar draws on the large amount of research done on the period since the 1980s in order to show how literary writers developed critical perspectives on the social and political issues of the time, and how those perspectives were related to longer-term developments in German culture which run beyond the watershed events of 1918 and 1933. Individual chapters discuss the dominant trends in the poetry, the theatre, and the novel, as well as the literary representation of the city, of technology, and of the First World War. The book also sheds new light on one of the abiding mysteries of German culture in the 1920s: precisely what were the implications of the term Neue Sachlichkeit as it came to be applied to the cultural trends of the time?