Learning to Think Korean - (Interact Series) by L Robert Kohls & Robert L Kohls (Paperback)

About the Book

Discusses the cultural patterns and practices of the workplace, going beyond business interaction as it explores Korea's private life culture

Book Synopsis

From first page to last, Learning to Think Korean is quintessential Bob Kohls. Ever the pragmatist and diviner of values structures, Kohls provides critical incidents based on personal experience and explores Korean values-traditional values, value changes over the past forty years, and projected values for the early decades of the twenty-first century. Kohls is equally insightful when it comes to discussing the cultural patterns and practices of the workplace; he takes up management style, personnel issues, networking and "pull," negotiating style, persistence, key Korean business relationships, and more. Perhaps more than any other East Asian country, Korea adheres to the traditional collectivist and Confucian traits of harmony, hierarchy, ingroups/outgroups, status, and proper behavior. According to Kohls, these traits plus the more Westernized values of the younger generations and the veneer of twenty-first century urban savvy are mixed in sometimes surprising combinations in personal and workplace relationships.

Review Quotes

Robert Kohls' book is impressive in its depth of understanding of the ways in which cultural differences affect behavior, the ways we are not alike underneath.--Horace H. Underwood, executive director, Korean American Educational Commission, Seoul

About the Author

L. Robert Kohls has thirty years' experience as an intercultural trainer and trainer of other trainers; he has worked, lived and traveled in more than eighty countries, with extensive stays in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He is a founding member of SIETAR International, and is also the author of Survival Kit for Overseas Living.