Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions

Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions' provides managers of technical professionals with clear and tested strategies to improve communication and increase productivity among culturally diverse technical professionals, teams, and departments. Dr. Laroche outlines the differences in education and training, career expectations, communication styles, and management expectations in countries around the world. He explains cross-cultural concepts and presents his case for the importance of cross-cultural competence supported by hard data, including charts, tables, and readily accessible schematics.

You'll benefit from the author's experience and expertise as a manager and consultant in this area, illustrated by numerous anecdotes, critical incidents, and mini case studies, centered around two central themes:

* Most technical professionals do not recognize the impact of cultural differences in their work * Cross-cultural issues lead to a significant under-utilization of talent and affect productivity negatively 'Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions' offers proven tactics for improving your personal effectiveness and the efficiency of your multicultural teams, breaking the communication barrier in the multicultural workplace.

About the Author

Dr. Lionel Laroche, P.Eng., is a cross-cultural trainer and consultant who facilitates workshops specifically designed for technical professionals. In this book, he makes use of his 15 years of international engineering experience, during which he has worked with people from over 50 countries. He has worked in eight different countries (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States) for several multinational companies, including Xerox, Procter & Gamble, British Petroleum, and Jeumont-Schneider. In particular, he has worked as a member of multinational project teams on several assignments.

Over the past five years, Dr. Laroche has provided cross-cultural training, coaching, and consulting services to over 1000 people in seven countries (Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Peru, France, Belgium, and China).

He is the author of over 80 publications examining the impact of cultural differences on business in general and technical functions (engineering, science, and software) in particular. His publications have appeared in over 20 trade magazines published in seven countries (Canada, U.S., U.K., Netherlands, France, Mexico, and Australia).

Dr. Laroche has made numerous invited presentations in a number of conferences and venues, including the 27th Annual Conference for Insurance Companies organized by the Royal Bank of Canada, and the 2000 Summer Diversity Institute organized by the University of Calgary. Recently, he has been invited to make several presentations on the impact of cultural differences in business by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Peru, the Swedish-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the International Trade Club of Toronto.

Born in France, Dr. Laroche obtained his Diplôme d’Ingénieur Polytechnicien from the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.