Perspectives and Challenges in Developing Global Mind Sets: Introduction

1. Perspectives and challenges in developing global mind sets

Having a global mind set is an invaluable asset for an international business executive. With such a mind set, goal setting and decision making in cross-border settings become more instinctive and are much more effective and efficient. Such a situation usually leads to higher revenues, profits, and valuation for the enterprise.

With ever more businesses seeking to expand their operations across borders, there is a rising demand for business graduates with global mind sets, graduates who can help organizations achieve corporate objectives both locally and internationally. This poses important additional challenges for international business education, as global mind sets unfortunately do not form on their own. Further, many traditional teaching approaches and pedagogies are of uncertain effectiveness in developing global mind sets, as forming global mind sets requires learning that is deeply embedded.

As discussed briefly in the following, as important as they are, such global mind sets are not easily acquired, and teaching students to learn to acquire global mind sets is a challenge for students, teachers, and academic administrators.

Rhinesmith (1993) defines the global mind set as the “ability to scan the world from a broad perspective, always looking for unexpected trends and opportunities that may constitute a threat or an opportunity to achieve personal, professional or organizational objectives.” Ideally, a person with a global mind set can assess opportunities and threats in local and foreign environments with decision making based on cross-cultural understanding that is so deeply rooted that it is almost instinctive. With mind sets that are less global, cross-cultural and cross-institutional decisions require more effort and explicit thinking about such differences.

Specific and right skills and knowledge support the development of individuals’ global mind sets (Kedia & Mukherji, 1999). Knowledge and understanding of cultural differences among people are essential for today’s business leader. People from different cultures have widely different ways of perceiving, thinking, and doing things. Even common concepts could have different interpretations in different cultures. For example, Italians’ and Germans’ interpretation of “on time @ 9:00” could dramatically different from each other (Lewis, 2014). One national may well think that arriving at 9:30 for a 9:00 meeting will not be consider late, while the other will not tolerate 5 minutes pass 9:00. Understanding such differences is essential for people to work effectively across borders and cultures.

Skill is another important element in the development of global mind sets. Language skills and communication skills are just a few examples. Even though English is the global language for business communities, not everyone has the same level of proficiency in English. This is especially true when doing business in emerging markets such as Asia and Latin America. These differences in language could have direct impact on understanding various documents, as well as on daily communications. In addition, adequate language skill helps in understanding cultural differences across borders. Many international business programs today, one way or another, require some level of efficacy in a second language.

Understanding how skill and knowledge are important in the development of a global mind set for the students, such knowledge and skill are also important elements for teachers. In today’s information-rich environment, professors are challenged to keep up with changing political and economic environments, as well as aligning theory in textbooks with this quick-change reality. Also, with rapidly developing new technologies, professors are also having to adopt new technologies and are simultaneously using new pedagogical approaches to communicate and deliver a different learning experience to Millennials or Xennials.

Further, the development of the global mind set cannot be a single-minded pursuit, as the development of the global mind set has to proceed simultaneously with the acquisition of knowledge regarding other related aspects of organizational functions. For example, broadly speaking, technology is the driver of many changes in business and society, including globalization. Similarly, demographic trends are another fundamental force driving change, including the shape of globalization. In addition, successful business education must include the understanding of how to achieve greater sustainability and mitigate climate change (Aggarwal, 2011). Finally, traditional business schools include the teaching of traditional functions such as marketing, accounting, finance, operations management, and organizational behavior. Thus, developing global mind sets must fit in with these other demands on student’s intellects, attention, and time—demands that can often be overwhelming.

Add to all of these contemporary challenges in teaching IB the challenges of teaching global mind sets. In teaching students to develop global mind sets, traditional pedagogies like class lectures and discussions may only have limited effectiveness. Teaching pedagogies for developing global mind sets need to involve student brains more deeply and so have to have as heavy a cross-border experiential and cross-cultural interactive component as possible. Examples of experiential pedagogies include but are not limited to term projects, internships, projects with people from across borders, and short- and long-term study-abroad programs. Consequently, deploying experiential pedagogies generally are comparatively more expensive in time and resources. Thus, a major challenge for IB education is to design less expensive (in time, convenience, and resource use) experiential pedagogies so they can be extended to ever larger proportions of IB students.

This is an important challenge, so past issues of the Journal of Teaching in International Business (JTIB) have published many papers on experiential approaches in IB education and on pedagogies for developing global mind sets. As this brief review of challenges in developing global mind sets illustrates, in term of knowledge and skills for the students as well as for professors, IB education needs to continue to discover new, cheaper, and more effective approaches to communicate and deliver the necessary knowledge and skills to the new generations. JTIB will continue to bring additional innovations in teaching global mind sets to its readers. As we describe in the following, we do some of that in this issue.

2. Introducing this issue

This issue of JTIB is focuses on overcoming challenges in developing global mind sets through international business education. Papers published in the past issues of the Journal of Teaching in International Business reflect varied learning environments and learning outcomes in IB. In this issue we highlight the important factors that affect students’ choice of study abroad, with various models and teaching methods that can be used to improve international business education and prepare students for developing a global mind set.

The first article in the issue, “Factors Affecting Students’ Preferences to Study Abroad Program: A Case of Indian Business School Students,” by Neha Singh and Deepak K. Srivastava of Nirma University, India, explores the factors affecting Indian students’ preferences in study-abroad programs. The authors find that factors such as quality of education, safety issues in the host country, and the reputation and ranking of the host institution are important in determining Indian students’ study-abroad preferences. Nevertheless, the United States is still the most preferred country to go to for study for Indian students, especially for students coming from family businesses. Also, the authors did not find any significant relationship between country choice and gender or between country choice and area of study.

The second article in the issue, “Use of a Parallel-Emic Research Model and Key-Word-In-Context Indexing Tool to Develop an Instructional Exercise to Promote Student Global Mindedness,” by Michael Mayo and William Howell of Kent State University and Sara De Masi of the University of Florence, Italy, provides a new pedagogical approach to preparing students for developing a global mind set and for working under complex conditions and uncertain environments in global settings. Their study provides a step-by-step procedure based on a “parallel-emic” research model focusing on cross-cultural differences. A Key-Word-In-Context (KWIC) indexing tool was employed to help students readily identify common (etic-derived) and unique factors (emic-specific) shaping business concepts/practices cross-culturally. The study provides “hand-on” exercises readily adaptable across the business curriculum and helps educators design instructional exercises so students better understand how cultural differences may impact business practices.

The third article in the issue, “Cognitive Load Theory: Why It’s Important for International Business Teaching and Financial Reporting,” by Anne M. Garvey of Universidad Nacional de Education a Distancia, Spain, and Laura Parte and Jose Antonio Gonzalo Angulo of Universidad de Alcala de Henares, Spain, shows that using cognitive load theory (CLT) in teaching IB and financial accounting and reporting concepts has several advantages. By reducing the load of complex concepts in the working memory, using CLT can achieve more effective results. The study shows that adequate financial presentation formats reduce extraneous load, and where presentation formats cannot be changed, results can be improved by decreasing cognitive load by dedicating more time to teaching the more complex option. Their findings provide needed guidelines to support more effective pedagogies and develop more effective materials for international business education.

The last article in the issue, “The Impact of Alienation Through Neutralization on Students’ Academic Dishonest,” by Luqman Hakim, Yoyok Soesatyo, Laksmi Dwiharja, Albrian Prakos, Riza Kurniawan, Novi Marlena, and Irin Widayati of Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia, examines the effects of alienation through the neutralization of the students’ academic dishonesty in vocational accounting competence and expertise in Indonesia. They find that alienation does not directly affect a student’s academic dishonesty. Nevertheless, alienation had a significant correlation with academic dishonesty through neutralization. Students who are alienated can also engage in academic dishonesty under certain conditions, such as when feeling incompetent or facing difficulty in the subject compared to others. Also, when students feel pressure to achieve certain performance targets, there will be an increased tendency to behave dishonestly.

As in the past, we hope you enjoy reading this issue and that you find it thought-provoking, perhaps even providing ideas to further improve your own teaching. We would appreciate your comments on this issue. We can be reached at [email protected].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raj Aggarwal

Raj Aggarwal is the Sullivan Professor of International Business and Finance Emeritus and the former Business Dean at the University of Akron, USA. For the Academy of International Business (AIB), he is an elected Fellow and an ex-Program Vice-President; he is the finance and accounting editor of the Journal of International Business Studies and has served on and headed numerous AIB committees, including the Best Dissertation awards and the Outstanding Educator of the Year award. He has won many awards for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He is also a board member of corporations, mutual funds, and nonprofit organizations. He is a past editor of Financial Practice and Education and the current editor of the Journal of Teaching in International Business. Raj Aggarwal is the author of numerous publications and is in the top one-third of a percent among SSRN authors ranked by downloads, and has omore thanver 6,700 Google Scholar citations with an h-index of 40 and an I-10 index of over 100.

Feng Zhan

Feng Zhan, PhD, is the Mulwick Scholar and the Assistant Professor of Finance at the Boler College of Business, John Carroll University, USA. His recent publications include articles in Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of International Financial Markets, and Institutions & Money, among others. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Teaching in International Business.