Cultural Indoctrination and Management Education Curriculum

Abstract

As organizations are increasingly confronted with the need to engage with stakeholders from a variety of different cultural backgrounds, the need to understand the ways in which cultural imperatives play into individual and collective performances becomes increasingly important. These cultural traditions exert immense influence on business issues ranging from consumer behavior to management. This article examines the need for management education to establish an introductory course on cultural indoctrination (CI) for business students in an era of global hypercompetition. CI is defined as the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, and cognitive strategies during the transfer of cultural traditions from one generation to the next with the expectation that such traditions will not be questioned in the future. This article introduces the CI concept and subsequently suggests how it should be incorporated into a university curriculum focusing on factors that promote convergence in international management contexts.