This course aims at providing students with new skills and insights on how to approach intercultural contexts.
Cultural awareness is often taught in relation with typologies (Hofstede, Trompenaars, Graves). While typologies certainly speed up the discovery process, and will therefore be part of the lecture, they do not always provide practical solutions on how to solve management problems. Moreover, they may even in some situations backfire, when used with the aim of solving a problem. For this reason, knowledge of typologies will be balanced with:
- Non-verbal communication skills, through the works of Paul EKMAN, PhD.
- General understanding of group interactions, through the knowledge of social psychology (impact of stereotypes, conformity) and practical serious game play based on the MIT’s works on systems dynamics.

After completing this course the students should:

• Understand some pragmatic dimensions of human communication ;
• Know about some key psychological mechanisms which are not specific to intercultural contexts, but are more likely to arise in those settings (stereotypes, pro-endogroup biais,…)
• know about some important dimensions that influence how groups from different cultures interact and perceive the world in general (typologies)