Sharon Beaudry

Cultural dimensions theory provides a framework for cross-cultural understanding and communication. Geert Hofstede's work in this area offers a foundational appreciation of how a society's culture can shape values and behaviors encountered in an international business setting. This paper presents an experiential learning project, based on Kolb's model, designed to introduce cultural dimensions theory, as well as engage students in a first-hand international experience. This model places students in the position of exploring cultural differences by being a member of an international working team so they experience the challenges of working remotely. Students encounter what it is like to work in a global team and face both cultural differences and communication difficulties. This experiential learning design creates an environment that challenges students to apply and test the theory, discover practical applications and reflect on their own culture to bring greater meaning...

Organizational behavior, often included as core business curriculum, instructs students how individuals and teams successfully work within organizations. This theory-based course, which often utilizes case studies, can be challenging to transform into a hands-on, applied learning approach. This paper presents an experiential course design for organizational behavior around the theme of summiting Mount Everest. This model utilizes a variety of activities, along with a short computer simulation, in order to immerse students into the experience of ascending the famous mountain. Students encounter what it is like to maintain individual motivation, communicate effectively, develop trust within their team, build a culture, and experience conflict and change, all while designing a successful organization. The course begins with researching the individuals who made the first successful summit of Mt. Everest, which is then followed by a simulated summit attempt with their climbing team, and ...

Organizational behavior, often included as core business curriculum, instructs students how individuals and teams successfully work within organizations. This theory-based course, which often utilizes case studies, can be challenging to transform into a hands-on, applied learning approach. This paper presents an experiential course design for organizational behavior around the theme of summiting Mount Everest. This model utilizes a variety of activities, along with a short computer simulation, in order to immerse students into the experience of ascending the famous mountain. Students encounter what it is like to maintain individual motivation, communicate effectively, develop trust within their team, build a culture, and experience conflict and change, all while designing a successful organization. The course begins with researching the individuals who made the first successful summit of Mt. Everest, which is then followed by a simulated summit attempt with their climbing team, and finally, a merger of the teams to create a world-class climbing expedition organization. This experiential learning design creates an environment that challenges students to apply and test approaches, discover solutions and personalize the task to bring greater meaning and learning to organizational behavior theory.