PMGM7002 Managing Across Cultures
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · PMGM7002 Overview
- The University of Hong Kong
- First Semester, 2026-27
- Postgraduate course
- Management
- Case reports and group presentation
What this course asks you to do
Managing Across Cultures is a postgraduate course in the Faculty of Business and Economics about organisational behaviour and human resource management in multinational organisations.
- Assessed by Group and individual case reports, a group presentation of an international hiring design, and participation in case discussion.
- The skill being tested Applying a course framework to diagnose a cross-cultural management problem and recommending something feasible.
- Hardest step Fitting a real analysis, problem, causes, alternatives and recommendation, into three single-spaced pages.
- Where to confirm Case assignments, deadlines and submission settings are published on the course Moodle page.
How PMGM7002 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance and participation | 20% | Attendance at lectures, case discussions and presentations, and contributions in class |
| Group Case Analyses | 30% | Written group reports, no more than three pages, submitted before each case is discussed |
| Group Final Project | 30% | A 20-minute group presentation of a reality show representing an international hiring process |
| Individual Project | 20% | A written analysis of an assigned case near the end of the course, up to three pages |
The published syllabus lists these four components and they total 100%. Both kinds of written case report are graded against the same rubric and are limited to three pages, and the syllabus states that late submissions will not be accepted or graded. Attendance is taken at lectures, case discussions and presentations, and class discussion counts toward the participation mark. The syllabus leaves some case assignments and due dates to be confirmed during the course, so check the course Moodle page for the current deadlines and submission settings.
Assessment structure
Segment widths reproduce the published percentage weights and total 100%.
Current PMGM7002 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 7 October 2026 | Group Case Analysis | Deadline 14:00, shown on the submission point on the course site for this offering. |
Dates are as published in the submission points on the course site for this offering. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What PMGM7002 covers
Ten chapters follow the lecture sequence from what culture is and how to compare cultures through expatriate adjustment, motivation, justice, decisions and ethics to global teams, then turn to the case method and the hiring project.
What Culture Is and How It Is Transmitted
culture as acquired knowledge · the iceberg and onion metaphors · artifacts, espoused values and assumptions · tight and loose societies · high and low context · parochial, ethnocentric and polycentric stancesA definition built around interpretation
The course opens by treating culture as the knowledge people acquire and then use to make sense of what happens around them. That knowledge turns into values, beliefs and attitudes, and those guide behaviour.
- Culture as acquired knowledge that shapes interpretation
- The iceberg and onion metaphors
- Observable artifacts, espoused values and underlying assumptions
- Culture at national, organisational and team level
- Tight and loose societies
- Formal and informal transmission
Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck and Hofstede Frameworks
six value orientations with three variations each · the IBM survey basis · power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, achievement · long-term orientation and indulgence · why scores are only meaningful by comparisonTwo instruments for describing difference
After defining culture, the course gives you two ways to describe how cultures differ. One comes from sociology and asks a small set of questions every society has to answer.
- Six value orientations and their three variations
- The survey basis of Hofstede's framework
- Power distance and organisational structure
- Individualism and collectivism
- Uncertainty avoidance and rules
- Achievement and success values
Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment
culture shock and its symptoms · honeymoon, irritation, gradual adjustment and biculturalism · re-entry shock · why firms still send expatriates · factors behind work, interaction and cultural adjustment · the cost of failure and how to reduce itWhat culture shock is and how it shows
Culture shock is the disorientation of suddenly living and working somewhere very unlike home.
- Culture shock and its symptoms
- The four stages of adjustment
- The adjustment curve over an assignment
- Re-entry shock on returning home
- The talent case for expatriation
- Factors that predict adjustment
Motivation Across Cultures: Needs and Expectancy
direction, intensity and persistence · content and process theories · Maslow, Alderfer, Herzberg and McClelland · reinforcement and punishment · expectancy, instrumentality and valence · cultural influences on each linkWhat motivation is, and two questions about it
The course defines motivation as an internal state that activates behaviour and directs it toward a task, and splits it into direction, intensity and persistence. It then separates two questions.
- Direction, intensity and persistence
- Content theories and process theories
- Four content theories compared
- Reinforcement, punishment and their cultural reading
- Expectancy, instrumentality and valence
- Obstacles to each link
Equity, Organizational Justice and Goal Setting
outcome to input ratios and comparison others · under-reward and over-reward · five ways to restore equity · distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice · specific, challenging goals with feedback · cultural implications of eachEquity is a comparison of ratios
Equity theory says people compare the ratio of their outcomes to their inputs with the ratio of a comparison other, inside or outside the organisation.
- Outcome to input ratios
- Under-reward and over-reward inequity
- Five ways people restore equity
- Cultural differences in inputs, referents and tolerance
- Four dimensions of organisational justice
- How procedural justice interacts with outcomes
Decision Making and Ethics Away From Home
the rational model and bounded rationality · satisficing and heuristics · culture at each decision step · selective attention, escalation of commitment and mood · relativism against absolutism · three balancing principles · codes of conduct and ethical leadership in corrupt settingsFrom the rational model to how people really decide
The rational model defines a problem, generates options, analyses them against criteria and chooses the best.
- The rational decision model
- Bounded rationality, satisficing and heuristics
- Cultural influence on each decision step
- Selective attention, escalation and mood
- Ethical dilemmas for global managers
- Relativism and absolutism
Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence
the input, process and output model · disjunctive, conjunctive and additive tasks · surface and deep-level diversity over time · homogeneous, token, bicultural and multicultural groups · pooled, sequential, reciprocal and comprehensive interdependence · why hybrid task and reward designs failThe inputs a manager controls
The course models teams as inputs, processes and outputs. This chapter covers the inputs: size, roles, norms, personality, ability, diversity and demography.
- Inputs, processes and outputs
- What counts as a team's ability
- Personality and the weakest link
- Surface and deep-level diversity
- How diversity effects change over time
- Four types of multicultural group
Global Team Processes, Conflict and Virtual Teams
transition, action and interpersonal processes · what 58 senior executives rated most important and most difficult · conflict habits of top teams · adaptation, structural intervention, managerial intervention and exit · cohesion, potency and transactive memory · four-stage development and punctuated equilibrium · virtual teams and remote work evidenceProcesses that alternate over time
Teamwork processes fall into transition processes, such as analysing the mission and setting goals, action processes, such as monitoring and coordinating, and interpersonal processes, such as managing emotion and conflict, which run throughout.
- Transition, action and interpersonal processes
- The executive survey on importance and difficulty
- Conflict habits of top-performing teams
- Four strategies from adaptation to exit
- Cohesion, potency and transactive memory
- Four-stage development and punctuated equilibrium
Case Analysis: From Problem to Recommendation
the four-step case method · problems as gaps between actual and desired situations · causes at individual, team and organisational level · alternatives with resources and constraints · recommendations that map back · the rubric bands and the three-page formatWhy this chapter carries so much weight
The group case analyses count for 30 per cent and the individual project, a written analysis of a case the course assigns, for 20 per cent.
- Why case analysis carries half the weight
- Defining a problem as a gap
- Causes at individual, team and organisational level
- Alternatives with resources and constraints
- Recommendations that map back
- The rubric bands
Hiring for an International Management Role
the reality show as a hiring process · job analysis, KSAs and core tasks · framing the show around two cultures · behavioural challenges over written tests · reliability and validity · compensation and incentives · the five grading criteriaInternational HRM, put to work
The schedule gives two sessions to international human resource management, and the group final project, worth 30 per cent, applies them.
- The show as a hiring process
- Choosing the framing and the job
- Industry fit with real business links
- Job analysis and core tasks
- Knowledge, skills and abilities
- Behavioural challenges over written tests
Its published premise is that globalisation requires managers to accomplish international assignments, lead cross-cultural teams and manage an increasingly diverse workforce, and that this needs cultural competence beyond traditional managerial skill.
The syllabus stresses that, unlike many business courses, it asks you to apply management theories to real-world problems in international business, and every assessed component is built on that application: case reports, a presented hiring design and contributions to case discussion.
What Culture Is and How It Is Transmitted
The first chapter defines culture as acquired knowledge used to make sense of events, and uses depth, from visible artifacts to unspoken assumptions, to forecast how long a cultural friction will last.
It covers culture at national, organisational and team level, tight and loose societies, formal and informal transmission, high-context and low-context communication, and three stances a manager may take toward difference.
Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck and Hofstede Frameworks
Two instruments for describing difference are set side by side: six value orientations with three answers each, and Hofstede's six survey-based dimensions.
The chapter gives the organisational signature of each dimension and insists that scores are only meaningful in comparison.
Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment
An assignment is followed in time, from the honeymoon through irritation to adjustment and biculturalism, and then through re-entry.
The adjustment model links anticipatory, individual, job, organisation and non-work factors to adjustment and to outcomes such as withdrawal, and the chapter closes with the cost of failure and how to reduce it.
Motivation Across Cultures: Needs and Expectancy
Content theories of need are compared and their cultural limits marked, reinforcement is set out as four kinds of consequence, and expectancy theory becomes a diagnostic checklist in which the weakest link, not the size of the reward, decides motivation.
Equity, Organizational Justice and Goal Setting
Equity is treated as a comparison of ratios, justice is split into distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational dimensions, and goal setting is examined for the ways it travels badly, from goals that seem unobtainable to individual targets in collective settings.
Decision Making and Ethics Away From Home
The rational model gives way to bounded rationality, and culture is followed into each step of a decision.
The ethics half asks when different is just different and when it is wrong, and answers with three principles applied in order between relativism and absolutism.
Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence
Team ability, surface and deep-level diversity, four kinds of multicultural group and four kinds of task interdependence are the inputs a manager controls.
The chapter's key finding is that mixing individual tasks with group rewards, or the reverse, performs worst.
Global Team Processes, Conflict and Virtual Teams
Teamwork processes, a survey of senior executives on what matters and what is hard, conflict habits of top teams, four strategies from adaptation to exit, development models and the evidence on virtual and remote work make this the most evidence-heavy chapter.
Case Analysis: From Problem to Recommendation
The course's own four-step method is run end to end, with the rubric bands and the published format rules for written reports.
Hiring for an International Management Role
The group final project asks for a reality show that represents a hiring process.
The chapter drills job analysis, KSAs, behavioural selection, reliability and validity, and the grading criteria.
How to use this guide
Read the front matter, then one chapter at a time. Each chapter ends with a model answer to an original scenario and short practice items; write your own answer first.
The practice chapter runs the whole method on one original case, and the closing chapter is a last pass before a report is submitted or a presentation delivered.
Evidence and assessment control
Assessment labels and weights follow the published syllabus for this offering.
Teaching explanations, worked examples and practice items are independently authored and are not University assessment material; any marks shown on them are an AskSia study allocation. Case assignments and due dates are confirmed during the course, so check the course Moodle page for the current deadlines and submission settings.
Worked example · free
Turn a cross-cultural complaint into a case analysis problem statement
- 2Rewrite the complaint as a gap between the actual and the desired situation.
- 2Name a communication cause using high-context and low-context cultures.
- 2Name a process cause using procedural justice.
Key terms
- Cultural Intelligence
- The capability to understand and work effectively with people from other cultures, which the course lists among its development objectives.
- Expatriate
- An employee sent by an organisation to live and work in another country on an international assignment.
- Culture Shock
- The disorientation of being moved abruptly into an unfamiliar culture to live and work, with symptoms from confusion to illness.
- Power Distance
- How far people with less power in an organisation accept that power is distributed unequally.
- Expectancy Theory
- A process theory in which motivation depends on expectancy, instrumentality and valence together, and is zero if any one is zero.
- Procedural Justice
- The perceived fairness of how decisions are made, including whether people have a voice and a route to appeal.
- Ethical Relativism
- The view that no culture's ethics are better than another's, which the course treats as morally blind.
- Task Interdependence
- The way a task links team members, whether pooled, sequential, reciprocal or comprehensive.
- Virtual Team
- A team working interdependently across space, time and organisational boundaries through technology.
- Case Analysis
- A written diagnosis of a real business situation that identifies problems, analyses causes and recommends a feasible solution.
- Job Analysis
- The study of a job's core tasks and required knowledge, skills and abilities, the basis for recruitment and selection.
PMGM7002 FAQ
How is this course assessed?
The syllabus lists four components that total one hundred per cent: attendance and participation at twenty, group case analyses at thirty, a group final project presentation at thirty, and an individual project at twenty. Half of the weight therefore rests on written case analysis, done in groups and individually, and graded against a shared rubric.
How long is a case analysis report?
At most three pages, single-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins. The group submission page adds that the title page and external reference list are excluded from the limit, that no appendix should be attached, and that the file must be a PDF carrying every member's name and student number.
What is the group final project?
Two paired teams merge and create a reality show that stages the recruitment of an international manager, presented in twenty minutes. The show must be a reliable and valid hiring process, must teach the audience about the two cultures and the job, and should entertain. Groups receive the same grade.
What textbook does the course recommend?
The syllabus recommends Cross-Cultural Management: Essential Concepts by Thomas and Peterson, fourth edition, published by Sage in 2018. It lists no prerequisites or co-requisites. The lecture material in this guide draws on the same frameworks, including Hofstede's dimensions and the Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck value orientations.
How is class participation judged?
Attendance is taken, but the syllabus grades behaviour in discussion: listening, making relevant comments that build on others, using course models to diagnose a situation, defending recommendations, challenging others professionally and contributing new ideas. It also expects awareness of your own cultural values and respect for classmates' contributions.
Are late case reports accepted?
No. The syllabus states that late submissions will not be accepted or graded, and the group case analysis submission page repeats that late submission will not be accepted. It also warns that a draft upload is not treated as a submission, so the final submit step must be completed before the deadline.
Which frameworks are most useful for a case analysis?
Choose the framework that names the cause you are analysing. Hofstede's dimensions, especially power distance and individualism against collectivism, fit problems of authority and group loyalty. Expectancy theory, organisational justice and the expatriate adjustment model fit people problems, and the team chapters supply the vocabulary for conflict inside multicultural groups.
Questions students ask in each PMGM7002 chapter
- Is culture the same thing as nationality?
- No. The course describes culture as existing at many levels, including organisations, teams and couples, so a behaviour that looks national may belong to a firm or a profession. When you analyse a case, check whether people of the same nationality in a different organisation behave differently before attributing a habit to a country. Chapter 01 · What Culture Is and How It Is Transmitted
- How many dimensions does Hofstede's model have now?
- Six in the version the course teaches. Four came from the original IBM survey, a fifth covering long-term orientation was added through later work and reframed as pragmatic against normative, and a sixth on indulgence against restraint was added more recently. Older readings that list four or five are describing earlier stages of the same model. Chapter 02 · Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck and Hofstede Frameworks
- When does culture shock usually hit hardest?
- After the novelty has worn off rather than on arrival. The course's stages begin with a honeymoon of excitement, and the irritation and hostility stage follows once everyday things stop working as they did at home. Support that is concentrated in the first weeks can therefore run out just before it is most needed. Chapter 03 · Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment
- Is negative reinforcement the same as punishment?
- No. Negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant so that a behaviour increases, for example dropping a reporting requirement for staff who hit targets. Punishment aims to decrease a behaviour, either by adding something unpleasant or by taking away something valued. Mixing them up reverses the prediction you make about behaviour. Chapter 04 · Motivation Across Cultures: Needs and Expectancy
- What can people do when they feel underpaid?
- The course lists five responses. They can reduce their inputs, try to raise their outcomes, reinterpret either side of the comparison, leave the organisation, or start comparing themselves with someone else. Only one of these involves asking for more, which is why perceived unfairness often shows up as lower effort or resignations. Chapter 05 · Equity, Organizational Justice and Goal Setting
- Is it wrong to follow a local business custom?
- Not in itself. Respect for local traditions is one of the course's three principles, with gift exchange in Japan as its example. The limit is the threshold of core human values, meaning human dignity, basic rights and good citizenship. A custom that stays above that threshold can be adopted; one that falls below it cannot be justified by being local. Chapter 06 · Decision Making and Ethics Away From Home
- Does cultural diversity make teams perform better?
- Not automatically. The course reports that diversity tends to have no effect or a minimal negative effect on team performance overall, with positive effects found in dynamic or creative jobs. Different worldviews can widen the information a team uses, but diversity can also create faultlines, so whether it helps depends on the work and on how it is managed. Chapter 07 · Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence
- What matters most for a global team to be effective?
- In the survey of 58 senior executives presented in the course, cultivating trust among members was rated the most important task, at 6.52 on a 7-point scale, followed by overcoming communication barriers. Trust was also rated the most difficult. Clarity about team objectives scored high on importance but much lower on difficulty, so it is the quickest gain. Chapter 08 · Global Team Processes, Conflict and Virtual Teams
- How long can a case analysis report be?
- Three pages at most, single-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins, according to the syllabus and the submission page. The title page and external reference list do not count toward the limit, and the submission page states that no appendix should be included. It must be uploaded as a PDF. Chapter 09 · Case Analysis: From Problem to Recommendation
- Can we use a written test in the reality show?
- Only for the initial screening of applicants. The project instructions say the challenge rounds should emphasise behavioural observation such as work samples rather than paper tests or interviews, and they point out that a show filming people taking a paper test would not work as television. Keep tests and interviews to the first filter. Chapter 10 · Hiring for an International Management Role
How to prepare for the assessments
Keep one cross-cultural situation of your own, a job, an exchange or a family move, and apply every chapter to it as you read. Then practise the four-step case method on a short news story each week: problem as a gap, causes at three levels with a named concept each, two alternatives with their constraints, and one recommendation that maps back.
The method is what half of the assessment grades, and it improves only with repetition.
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