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Today, global competition and rapid market developments preoccupy top management. They have less time for internal issues. If not checked, this preoccupation with the external world will leave top management in the same position as the military commander who may have a brilliant battle plan but does not know or understand the nature of his own troops. To be successful, top management requires in‐depth and quality knowledge of the company′s people and the corporate culture which binds them together. Typically, top management does not get quality information. They work on unchecked hunches and shallow, filtered information. By retooling the frequently underutilized human resource manager with the analytical skills for cultural analysis, general management can be strengthened with skilled and knowledgeable co‐pilots and internal change agents. Discusses these issues and some of the basic concepts of cultural anthropology useful for analysis in both domestic and multinational corporations.

Views Game Theory, as a long‐time companion model and guide for the exploration of negotiations, as having not only reached its limits but, perhaps, as having become counter‐productive in the search for greater understanding and skill. Suggests that a more powerful heuristic model may be available by turning to the current work on learning organizations. Suggests that by borrowing some of the basic concepts developed by C. Argyris and D. Schön, and considering negotiations as learning organizations, we allow ourselves to move from the analytical mode of Game Theory to a more synthetic approach. The synthetic approach allows us to distinguish more carefully between simple and difficult negotiations and to rethink success and failure. It also allows us to account more adequately for such phenomena as the preliminary negotiations to negotiate, the role of form, and the significance of the links between negotiator and home base. The pressing reality of current events in both international politics and business certainly should incite us to give serious consideration to this more operational model.

The fundamental task of a business programme is to foster student acquisition of managerial acumen in a classroom setting. This is not a simple undertaking and the current dissatisfaction with business programmes involves many complex issues. Looks at two of the underlying difficulties and discusses three partial solutions to improving our effectiveness as educators.

What will make the potential reader of Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal pause, pick up this new journal, flip through, stop now and again for a serious look, and return to the journal again and again over time? I do not know for sure, but what I would like to do in this position article is offer my hunch. In addition to being a hunch it is an invitation to start an early dialogue between readers, contributors and editors on just what would be most heuristic.